Night Essay

The book Night by Elie Wiesel is a Holocaust memoir. In telling his story, Elie Wiesel has used techniques such as similes, first person narrative and strong verbs. His writing had an huge impact on me making me feel heaps of emotions such as feeling downhearted, disturbed and heartbroken for the Jews and heang that a lot of Jews died in the gas chamber.

Elie Wiesel showed us that going to the gas chambers must have been a horrific experience to see. They just got off the cattle cars, and were heading toward the gas chambers, "We must do something. We can't let them kill us like that, like cattle in the slaughterhouse, We must revolt. "Elie used the technique of a simile comparing them to cattle, which showed they were being treated like animals. It made me feel downhearted because no one should end their life to make someone else happy.

While Elie Wiesel experienced him and his father going toward the gas chambers, he witnessed a very ugly sight and it was of children and little babies getting thrown into a pit of fire, "A truck drew close and unloaded its hold: small children. Babies! Yes, I did see this, with my own eyes ... children thrown into the flames." In this part of his story, he used the technique of first person narrative using the pronouns 'I/my' which helped us see that he really experienced this. I felt awful to read this and the thought of little kids dying for no reason is heartbreaking. 

Another event that had an emotional impact on me was when Elie's father was beaten, "The officer wielded his club and dealt him a violent blow to the head." In his word choices, Elie used the technique of  strong verbs such as 'wielded/dealt' and words with negative meanings like 'club, violent, blow'. These words show how violent the officer's actions are. It was very disturbing to me because it was very violent. 

In his memoir, Elie Wiesel used a range of techniques such as similes, first person narrative, strong verbs and negative words. His writing had an emotional impact making me feel very overwhelmed because reading the book showed me what can happen if human beings are angry, mean, and vicious to others.