Figurative language being used in this passage includes rhetorical question and personification. In order to unearth the literary devices in this sentence, we need to understand the context in which the first-person narrator, Elie, speaks.

When Elie makes this statement, he has just been told he is being marched to a crematorium. Because he sees "huge flames" rising up from a ditch, he believes this. He then sees babies being thrown into the flames. He stops for a moment to emphasize that he was an eyewitness to this heinous event. He then asks parenthetically if we, as readers, wonder that he now has trouble sleeping.

A first literary device or example of figurative language Weisel uses in the question is the aside. The parentheses show that this is a comment breaking into the narrative line, a comment that is unneeded to propel the story forward but that stops us and draws attention to the horror of what Elie has seen.

A second example of figurative language is the rhetorical question. A rhetorical question has only one answer and is used for effect, to emphasize a point. Our only possible answer to question of if we wonder why Elie can't sleep after seeing babies murdered is no.

Finally, the narrator personifies sleep. Personification attaches human attributes to an animal or inanimate object. In this case, sleep is described as if it is a person eluding or wriggling away from Elie. This figurative language adds value to his statement. Painting a picture of sleep as person eluding him shows us that he is desperate for sleep, chasing it, and unable to find it.