100 pages 3 hours read

Elie Wiesel

Night

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1956

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.

Symbols & Motifs

Night

Night is the central symbol and motif in Wiesel’s memoir, as its title indicates. Many crucial events in the narrative occur during the darkness of night: the eve of the deportation from Sighet, the terrifying night of the deportees’ arrival at Birkenau-Auschwitz, the horrific march to Gleiwitz, and the night Eliezer’s seriously ill father is beaten to death. As a master trope, night symbolizes physical and spiritual darkness. It signifies death and loss: the death of childhood, innocence, faith in God, and reason. It also signifies the death of the millions of victims of Nazi genocide.

Metaphorically, night also symbolizes the absence of God from the world. For Eliezer, night is a psychological state of living death, the extinction of the soul and the desire to live that his experience at the concentration camp has caused, and from which he claims he will never recover.

Fire

The symbol of fire recurs several times in the narrative. First and foremost, it represents death and destruction in their most terrifying forms. The fire leaping out of the crematorium chimney and the burning pits at Auschwitz consume the bodies of the Jews that have died there.

Related Titles

By Elie Wiesel

Study Guide

logo

Hope, Despair and Memory

Elie Wiesel

Hope, Despair and Memory

Elie Wiesel

Study Guide

logo

Never Shall I Forget

Elie Wiesel

Never Shall I Forget

Elie Wiesel

Plot Summary

logo

The Forgotten

Elie Wiesel

The Forgotten

Elie Wiesel

Study Guide

logo

The Perils of Indifference

Elie Wiesel

The Perils of Indifference

Elie Wiesel