This is the essay I wrote the memoir my class has read:
The Holocaust, where over 10 million innocent lives were taken. The Holocaust started in 1941 and dragged out for many years. My English class has been reading a memoir called "Night" written by Elie Wiesel who was a Holocaust survivor. Some of the techniques Elie Wiesel used throughout the book are sibilance, repetition, metaphor, hyperbole, and first-person narration. Elie's writing which included these techniques shocked me, they made me feel horrible and disgusted at humanity. No person should have to go through that.
An incident from Elie's story that affected me was when children and infants were thrown into the fire while they were still alive. This happened on the first night Elie was at the concentration camps. A quote that was in Elie's writing when this incident had just happened was, "Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky." One of the techniques Elie used in this quote is sibilance which is the repeat of the S sound. Another technique Elie used in this quote is repetition, in the poem, he repeats the words "Never shall I forget '' seven times. Using this repetition technique made it get into your head and have a much bigger effect on you than it would've if it just said "Never shall I forget" only once. His writing made me feel terrible, being treated like you are worthless and your life means nothing, just being thrown into a fire without a second thought about you. Throwing the children into the fire and then carrying on with life as if nothing happened, I don't comprehend how people could do that.
The selection overwhelmed me with glumness. For the selection, they had to run a certain distance while the selectors were watching. Not being up to the health and look standards meant you would get your number written down and be sent to the crematorium to die, "Those whose numbers had been noted down were standing apart, abandoned by the whole world." This quote is said once the selection had just happened. This incident made me feel sick. Devastating, they'd just been chosen to die and couldn't do anything. Not a single person was fighting to keep them alive, it was like they were already dead once they'd been chosen. Metaphor and hyperbole are the techniques in this quote. "Abandoned by the whole world" metaphorically the whole world abandoned them in the sense they knew what was happening but did nothing to stop it. But literally, they were only being abandoned by the people that weren't selected.
The death marches deeply impacted me. It was almost at the end of the story and war when this incident happened. Everyone was tired and had zero energy left. People had been jogging for days. Being starved. Horrible, constantly moving and not being able to stop, being trampled or shot if you did stop. Being treated like you weren't human and your life didn't matter. The fact that people wanted to die to get out of that misery is awful and shows how bad it truly was. "We were stronger than cold and hunger, stronger than the guns and the desire to die, doomed and rootless, nothing but numbers, we were the only men on earth". This is the quote that really bothered me in that part of the story. It made me feel terrible. Disgusted at the people who could do that to another human being. A technique in this quote is first-person narration, using the first person plural pronoun "we" showed that they were all in this together and together they would survive.
Reading this memoir 'Night' made me realise how truly heart-breaking the Holocaust was. People should never go through that and we need to make sure that history never repeats itself. I have learnt how much a technique can affect your writing and that certain techniques can add so much emotion. When Elie used first-person narration it helped the readers understand that all the people walking were struggling together and they were not alone. Reading this book really emotionally impacted me. I feel now that I will never take anything for granted. And I'm extremely grateful for all the things I have in my life and how lucky I am to have been born into my family.
