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.

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.