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Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
Shoes
Shoes are one of the first necessities the Nazis take to make the prisoners utterly dependent on them. In the scene where Levi and his fellow Italians undergo intake into Auschwitz, the SS make sure the new prisoners appreciate their deprivation. They emphasize the value of shoes by telling them to guard them from theft and then immediately sweep them like trash out of the room. The leather shoes will enter the camp barter system as a luxury item. The prisoners receive clogs, a wooden sole with a leather upper, ostensibly to impede escape attempts. Some work details require walking several kilometers to the worksites, and their feet endure painful open sores from the wooden shoes. Infected sores prove deadly. Engineer Kardos performs a nightly mission of mercy in Levi’s block, circulating to attend to their feet, and Levi credits him with helping their survival.
The Sun
The sun is anthropomorphized as either an ally or an enemy. On the day that the Italian Jews know the SS will deport them from their home to probable death, Levi characterizes the sun as a “betrayer,” the dawn colluding in their destruction. The geographic location of Auschwitz in the fiftieth parallel guarantees long, cold winters spanning October through April, when seven out of ten people die in the harsh conditions. On the first day of spring in Auschwitz, instead of the endless mists and wan light of winter, the sun rises brightly. In gratitude for its warmth and cheer, Levi understands at that moment why cultures have come to worship the sun. Clouds that cover the sun behave maliciously, separating the men from the sun’s warmth and light.
Phantoms
The appearance of phantoms evokes both benign and sinister illusions. On the very first page, Levi characterizes their presence in his limited worldview. As a young man just out of college, his head is full of abstract ideas, “Cartesian phantoms.” Descartes, the founder of the rationalism philosophical school, postulates mind-body dualism, abstractions difficult to grasp. The reality of the mind as a separate entity from the body will become a helpful concept in Levi’s struggle for survival in Auschwitz. But the phantoms he sees during their first stop en route to Auschwitz alarm him. Their striped clothing identifies them as camp prisoners, transformed from men into wraiths by deprivation and subjugation. Levi recognizes that he will soon become one of them.
