Bassani 1

Vianna Bassani
Mrs. Butorac
English Foundation I Honors
23 March 2016

Wiesels Writing Techniques in Relation to Purpose

Night by Elie Wiesel, is a collection of struggle and survival that is written about the
Holocaust. Wiesel is Jewish and lived in Transylvania when he was a little boy. It was the time of
the war and people knew that it was close to being over. No one expected their lives to change.
Once Hungarians began to take over their community, there was no turning back. Each day,
rights were stripped from the Jewish people. It only took one night for the lives of the Jewish
people to change forever. After surviving the Holocaust, Wiesel is scarred with memories and
guilt. His writing techniques make it clear that he is trying to deliver a purpose. The use of
overall structure, tone, and word choice helps Wiesel to achieve his purpose that an event like the
Holocaust should never happen again.
Wiesels assembly of overall structure makes the reader feel like they are disappearing
from reality. Wiesel used time phrases to show how time had passed at the camp. He had to
estimate around the time that things were happening. He uses around midnight to describe a
time when they were forced to run (Wiesel 41). At a time when he should have been sleeping and
resting, he was forced to run. His exhaustion was a sign that it was late at night. He was so cut
off from the world that he only knew time based on what the day looked like and how he felt. He
does not want other people to experience the disconnect of time like he felt while at the camps.
To describe one of the days at the camp, he starts with next morning which was followed by

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at about noon then ended with at dusk (Wiesel 42). Wiesel had to live at these camps and use
the time of day to help him follow how days were passing. There was no calendar for anyone to
follow. His writing is very vague in the sense that time was going by. There is a disconnect
between when things really happened and when he thought they did. He was able to remember
the cycled feeling that each day brought. For him to realize that time was passing, he paid
attention the the seasons. The passing of the seasons were a sign that a long time has passed at
the camps. Wiesel knew that the summer season was coming to an end because the Jewish
year was almost over (Wiesel 66). At that point in time, Wiesel had lived at the camps for a
great amount of time. During these months, he became more distant with the world. The change
in seasons was a turning point during this time period in his life. If the weather did not change,
Wiesel might have never known how long he was in the camps for. This also demonstrates the
length of time that had passed from Wiesels first night at camp. Now that seasons were
changing, it proves that Wiesel had suffered for many months. Another example that shows how
Wiesel seemed to be lost in time was when he described things as ONE DAY (Wiesel 51). He
had no recollection when events were even taking place. He seemed to live by himself in
loneliness. The days did not even matter to him anymore, because there was no one to help him.
This goes to show that being in the camps was like losing part of life that could never be brought
back. Everything seemed like a blur and shaken up in his head. Wiesel never wants someone to
lose part of their life like he had lost his.
The authors serious tone shows the indifference of man during the Holocaust. Wiesels
use of repetition creates emphasis which shows that his life changed forever. He explains how his
arrival at the camps left an effect on him that he can never let go of. He states NEVER SHALL
I FORGET that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times

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sealed (Wiesel 34). Before Wiesel was brought to the camps, he had a normal life. As soon as he
was brought to the camps, he was able to recognize things that he would never forget. He creates
a parallel structure by starting each sentence with never shall I forget (Wiesel 34). Throughout
this paragraph, he says he saw smoke and flames as well as felt the silence and moments that
murdered him. The effectiveness of his parallel structure sets up readers for horrors in which he
endured. He makes readers remember his images in a way that will stick with them, just like they
stuck with him. Wiesel is being very honest about how he feels throughout the book. He states
exactly what happens without sugarcoating anything. Some of the things he saw at the camps
surprised him beyond disbelief. He saw a truck that unloaded its hold: small children. Babies!
and with his own eyes he saw chil-dren thrown into the flames (Wiesel 32). At the camps,
everyone was at risk for death. Children were not exempt from these crimes. Wiesel saw these
truck loads of children and was astonished at the result. His surprise is shown when he uses an
exclamation point. These children were not even given a chance at life. They were younger than
him and had done nothing wrong to deserve death. In his own community, it was not normal for
children to be killed. He is taken back by these actions because they do not seem real to him. He
wants people to know that this really happened and can never happen again. This is a very
serious and perverted act that could happen again if people do not receive his information about
these deaths. He is showing that this practice is inhumane and that the world let it happen. He is
in disbelief that this was real because he thinks that the world would never tolerate such
crimes... (Wiesel 33). He could not believe that humans were being burned in the real world
(Wiesel 33). He knew the real world as a place where people would help each other if they were
in harm. This place felt like a nightmare to him. The shock inflicted on him by these crimes was
so clear that Wiesel felt like the world had rejected him. In addition to being very serious, he also

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shows a questioning tone. He questioned himself a lot because he wanted to know if he was
really living. He wondered if he was still alive and awake so he pinched himself (Wiesel
32). He felt like he was already dead from everything that he had seen. This experience had
impacted him so much that he is began to lose sight of his life. In Wiesels life, the image of
death and suffering was shielded. For him to see this for the first time, he was shocked and
started to question everything he saw and heard. He does not believe that it was possible that
men, women, and children were being burned and that the world kept silent (Wiesel 32). Wiesel
is baffled that such abhorrent crimes could be taking place while people ignored it. All types of
people were being tortured and no specific age or gender was left out. Wiesel might have
expected that the developed country he lived in would be more considerate of human rights.
Since there was so many people at risk, there should have been a greater urge to help. The longer
the world ignored these crimes, the more people were put in danger. He wants people to know
that if the world steps up to help people, there will be no chance for something like this to
happen again.
The simple word choice used by Elie Wiesel helps describe the brutalities of the
concentration camps. Wiesel has chosen his words very carefully which gives off an effect to the
audience. One phrase that uses simple words is factories of death (Wiesel 67). These words are
both easy to understand, but when he puts them together, it gives off a paradox of complex
simplicity. Primarily, people went into the camps as materials and came out of the camps as a
product of death. Wiesel is indicating that these camps were not a safe place to live. People had
to live everyday in fear that it might just be their last day. The continuous movement of a
conveyor belt can be compared to the constant transfer of the Jews from concentration camp to
concentration camp. Jews were treated with a lot of contempt while at the camps. Wiesel states

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many time that the Jewish people were called animals by the SS officers. Wiesel remembers
them saying that they will all be shot, like dogs if one person went missing (Wiesel 24).
Everyone has a right to life, animals and humans alike. Jews were still killed and brought down
to a level where even animals had better rights than them. Throughout the camps, there had been
a loss of respect for people. Being called a dog was a sign of dehumanization. Due to the
conditions at the camps, people could go days without caring about personal hygiene. The SS
always referred to the Jewish as flea-ridden dogs or filthy dogs (Wiesel 85). Wiesel is taking
the word dog and giving it a negative connotation. Most of the time, a filthy dog is associated
with a poor caregiver. Jews were being malnourished and poorly treated. They were stripped
from all their rights as humans and believed to be nothing more than a dirty animal. Wiesel is
trying to bring awareness that people lost their rights and were being treated as disheveled
mammalians. Using simple words linked together, Wiesel is able to make people understand how
human rights were snatched from people during the Holocaust.
Elie Wiesels purpose in writing Night is very clear when one looks at his writing
techniques. He uses vague overall structure to show how days and nights were a haze at the
concentration camps. The feeling of being alone was enforced by the unknown day of when help
would arrive. Wiesels serious tone shows the burden that had been put on him because of the
Holocaust. He questions the world and the people who let these crimes happen. Words are
chosen very precisely by Wiesel to develop a deeper meaning to his memories. His words create
a paradox of complex simplicity which helps readers to uncover his purpose. The frantic cries
from Jews were ignored by the world, and Wiesel asserts that an event like the Holocaust shall
never happen again.

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Work Cited
Wiesel, Elie, and Marion Wiesel. Night. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, a Division of
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006. Print.