In one scene taken from the novel Night, Elie Wiesel conveys a powerful experience based on his first arrival at Auschwitz. The beginning of this scene starts off with dialog and this technique is also used much throughout the rest of the scene. The use of this literary technique allows the reader to become submerged within the moment Wiesel is describing. The reader experiences the moment just as Wiesel himself might have experienced it at the time which creates a more suspenseful feeling in the scene. Each sentence of dialog allows the reader to be "in" the moment because we are gathering pieces of the story just as the character is. The reader has become the character in their mind and this allows the situations and emotions that the actual character experiences to affect the reader on a much deeper and personal level.
The author does not use a great deal of descriptive imagery either.
Elie Wiesel aged 15, late 1943 or early 1944
Night
English: Writer and political activist Elie Wiesel...We are shown more of the characters inner conflict rather than a detailed depiction of the setting itself. This further reinforces the fact that the reader is in a sense going through these conflicts with the character. It is much more effective to convey the horrors of the concentration camp through the emotions of the character rather than actually give a descriptive setting. For example, when Wiesel writes, "Not far from us, flames were leaping up from a ditch . . . I saw it with my own eyes . . . those children in the flames." (P30) You would think that the author would describe more in depth, the horror being witnessed, but instead he uses the character's reaction to this scene to portray the nightmare. "I pinched my face. Was I still alive? Was I awake? I could not believe it. How could...