'Night' by Elie Weisel.
The Memoir 'Night' by Elie Weisel is his record of his experience during the Holocaust in 1941, when he and his family were affected. In his writing, he used a range of techniques such as repetition, metaphor, and first person narration. His writing had a big emotional impact on me, making me feel sad, anxious, and angry. I learned that this event of racism could have happened to any other culture and race. Weisel's autobiography made me think about how others can be treated badly for no reason.
Writing about the first night at the concentration camp Elie Wiesel said, "Never shall I forget the smoke. Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent night." Elie used repetition by using 'Never shall I forget' at the start of every sentence. The effect of this is to show that the events of that night changed him forever. Reading this made me feel sad, upset and sick because of how inhumane those people were. It made my stomach tighten with the words that Elie used when he saw those children being thrown into those horrid fires.
When Elie's father was dying, he wrote, "An officer passed between the bunks. My father was pleading: 'My son, water... I'm burning up... My insides...'" Elie used the metaphor 'burning up' to describe what incredible pain his father was in, on the inside. The simplest word to describe what I was feeling during this event was 'anxious'. Not knowing what was going to happen was nerve-racking. Wondering what was going to happen next made me anxious.
When Elie's father had passed away he wrote, "I did not weep, and it pained me that could I have searched the recesses of my feeble conscience, I might have found something like: free at last!" Elie used first person narration, using 'I' and 'my' to show us his perspective in the story. This made me feel angry: I was angry at the soldiers, I was angry at the people of the country, and I was angry at Elie, but I couldn't be angry at him so I was worried, and concerned for him and his childhood, for how he might not cry again because of what he had been through.
The events I have talked about in the three paragraphs above were events that made me feel something of sadness, anger, anxiety, upset, etc. These events were just three of the many in the book that I felt emotion towards. Through those events I also learnt a range of language techniques such as repetition, metaphor and first person narration. Elie's story has shown me history that I did not know I needed to know. It showed that people can be manipulated by one person, then those people manipulate more and more people. To have the words of a 16 year old boy that survived the Holocaust and experienced mental and physical abuse, made me change the way I felt about the world. In my opinion, there are still good people out there but there are still those bad people.
