Night: Theme Essay

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In Night, by Elie Wiesel, a rather prevalent theme of the novel is the idea of silence in place of justice. This is exhibited numerous times throughout the book, usually following a tragic incident where, in a modern society would be answered by punishment of the wrongdoer, but is instead answered by nothing. This theme has actually been noted by Elie Wiesel, and in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize, has said “silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
At the beginning of Elie’s time at Auschwitz, as the prisoners were marching closer to the crematorium, Elie states he would never “…forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live” (34). Now even though this isn’t necessarily after a tragic incident, it serves as a foreshadowing to the sheer lack of humanity and justice in Auschwitz and the Holocaust in general. It serves to show that the silence was the worst part of it; the part that, to the prisoners, showed that a good piece of them would die because no one acknowledged it. Even Elie and his family didn’t acknowledg...

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