Night – Literary Devices
Irony. Identify the type of irony in the following quotations. Then explain the effect of this or how it functions within the larger context.
Quotation / Type / Effect or Function1. “…we saw the barbed wire of another camp. An iron door with this inscription over it: ‘Work is liberty!’ Auschwitz.”
2. “Three days after the liberation of Buchenwald I became very ill with food poisoning. I was transferred to the hospital and spent two weeks between life and death.”
3. “Like the leader of the camp, he loved children.”
4. “I’ve got more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He’s the only one who’s kept his promises, to the Jewish people.”
5. “It’s a shame…a shame that you couldn’t have gone with your mother.”
6. “On we went between the electric wires. At each step, a white placard with a death’s head on it stared us in the face. A caption: ‘Warning. Danger of death.’”
7. “That same evening, in the lavatory the dentist from Warsaw pulled out my crowned tooth, with the aid of a rusty spoon. Franek grew kinder. Occasionally, he even gave me extra soup. But that did not last long. A fortnight later, all the Poles were transferred to another camp. I had lost my crown for nothing.”
8. “I refused to give him my shoes. They were all I had left.
‘I’ll give you an extra ration of bread and margarine.’
He was very keen on my shoes; but I did not give them up to him. (Later on they were taken from me just the same. But in exchange for nothing this time.)”
9. “Some prominent members of the community came….to ask him what he thought of the situation. My father did not consider it so grim…’The yellow star? Oh well, what of it? You don’t die of it….’”
10. “The SS gave us a fine New Year’s gift….And soon a terrible word was circulating—selection.”
Simile and Metaphor. Identify which device is being used, and what two things are being compared. Then explain.
Quotation / Type / Literal / Figurative / Effect or Function11. “Here came the Rabbi…His mere presence among the deportees added a touch of unreality to the scene. It was like page torn from some storybook, from some historical novel about the captivity of Babylon or the Spanish Inquisition.”
12. “The barracks we had been made to go into was very long. In the roof were some blue-tinged skylights. The antechamber of Hell must look like this.”
13. “We were already accustomed to rumors of this kind [that told the front was drawing nearer to the camp]. It was not the first time a false prophet had foretold to us peace-on-earth…And we often believed them. It was an injection of morphine.”
14. “Suddenly his eyes would become blank, nothing but two open wounds, two pits of terror.”
15. “When at last a gray glimmer of light appeared on the horizon, it revealed a tangle of human shapes, heads sunk upon shoulders, crouched, piled one on top of the other, like a field of dust covered tombstones in the first light of dawn.”