Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary
devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Tradition
Judaism is more than simply a religion; it is an entire
culture that has, for most of its almost 6,000-year
existence, been a dispersed culture, a nation without a country,
a people without a home. As a result, memory and tradition play
a significant role in Jewish life. In the absence of any geographic
continuity, Judaism relies on customs, observances, and traditions,
passed down from generation to generation, as the markers and bearers
of cultural identity. Hitler and the Nazis wanted not only to destroy
the Jewish people but also to humiliate them and eradicate all vestiges
of Judaism. As Eliezer relates in Night, the Germans
desecrated Jewish temples, forced Jews to break dietary laws, and
deliberately shaved their heads and tattooed them in violation of
Jewish Scripture. The Nazi genocide was an attempt to wipe out an
entire people, including all sense of national and cultural unity.
Conversation and storytelling have always been important
elements of Jewish folk tradition, and Shlomo’s storytelling symbolizes
Jewish culture as a whole. His story is interrupted by the arrival of
the Nazis, just as the Holocaust attempted to interrupt Jewish history
as a whole. Throughout the book, Eliezer clings to tradition, even
after his faith has apparently been lost, because it serves as an important
link to life outside the Holocaust, beyond the terror and oppression
he is experiencing. He struggles with the question of fasting on
Yom Kippur. He expresses regret when he forgets to say Kaddish (a
mourner’s prayer) for his deceased friend Akiba Drumer, not because
he feels that he has forsaken an obligation to God, but because
he feels that he has forsaken his commitment to his fellow Jews
and fellow prisoners.
Religious Observance
During the first sections of Night, there
are frequent mentions of religion and religious observance. Eliezer
begins his story mentioning the Talmud and his Jewish studies and
prayer rituals. He is upset that the Nazis desecrate the Sabbath
and his synagogue. By the end of Night, however,
mentions of Jewish observance have almost vanished from the text.
Most striking, Eliezer does not mention the Kaddish by
name after his father’s death, and says only that “[t]here were
no prayers at his grave. No candles were lit in his memory.” By specifically
avoiding Jewish terminology, Eliezer implies that religious observance
has ceased to be a part of his life. Eliezer’s feelings about this
loss are ambiguous: he has claimed that he has lost all faith in
God, yet there is clearly regret and sadness in his tone when he
discusses the lack of a religious memorial for his father.
Although Eliezer’s explicit mentions of religion vanish,
religious metaphor holds Night’s entire narrative
structure together. As noted above, the Akedah is a foundational
metaphor for the work. Throughout the memoir, furthermore, Wiesel
indirectly refers to biblical passages (Psalm 150,
for example, when Eliezer discusses his loss of faith) and Jewish
tradition (the Nazis’ selections on Yom Kippur of which prisoners
will die—a cruel version of the Jewish belief that God selects who
will live and who will die during the Days of Awe). Though Eliezer
claims that religion and faith are no longer part of his life, both
nevertheless form a tacit foundation for his entire story.
