In Night by Elie Wiesel, Death is often personified throughout the novel to develop the theme of mortality. Mortality plays a huge role in NIght as Wiesel struggles to stay alive during his stay at several different workcamps. The first time Nazi’s enter Wiesel’s neighbourhood, he describes how his first impression of them was fairly good-natured. “The German soldiers – with their steel helmets and their deaths head emblem.
Still, at first impressions of the Germans were rather reassuring.,”(27). The stark contrast between the emblem and the soldiers contributes to the theme of mortality by giving readers their first taste of the death that is yet to come. When Wiesel and his father enter Auschwitz for the first time, they are greeted by an SS officer with a cryptic message, warning them of the horrors to come and reminding them of their mortality. “An SS officer had come in and, with him, the smell of the Angel of Death… [Aushwitz] is a concentration camp. Here, you must work. If you don’t you will go straight to the chimney. To the crematorium.” (57). The SS officer reminds the prisoners how easily a person can be gotten rid of if they do not obey orders.
During the first night in Auschwitz, Elie notices signs all over the fences. “At every step, white signs with black skulls looked down on us. The inscription: WARNING! DANGER OF DEATH. What irony. Was there here a single place where one was not in danger of death?” (58). Once again, death follows the prisoners from place to place, reminding them constantly of their mortality. While the prisoners are marching in the snow to the next camp, death appears to continue to march with them. “No more gunshots. Our guards surely were tired. But death hardly needed their help. At every step, someone fell down and ceased to suffer.” (110). At this point in the novel, the prisoners are beginning to grow used to death. Death is no longer a faraway thought, but a tangible thing that one can almost hold.
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Although Wiesel uses tone as a depressant for the majority of the novel, he does also cleverly use it throughout the story to express the strength of his relationship with his father even in the face of hardship. The narrator’s love for his father was, at times, the only reason he had to keep up the constant struggle to live, “The idea of dying, of ceasing to be, began to fascinate me. To no longer exist. To no longer feel the excruciating pain of my foot” (104).
During this point, Wiesel is setting up a tone of surrender, of hopelessness. The text suggests that Eliezer has given in, and is content with death. However, as the sequence progresses, he goes on to write, “My father’s presence was the only thing that stopped me. He was running next to me, out of breath, out of strength, desperate” (104). Even when death seemed like an attractive option, Eliezer’s thoughts of his father kept him pushing through his hardships.
Works Cited
- “Night By Elie Wiesel: Literature Guides – A Research Guide”. A Research Guide For Students, 2019, https://www.aresearchguide.com/night-guide.html. Accessed 19 Nov 2019.
- Wiesel, Elie. The Night Trilogy. 2008 ed., Hill And Wang, 2008.
