Samantha Bobbio
photo #1 (furniture belongings left in the snow)
photo #2 (dead prisoner left in the snow)
Artifact: Snow
Passage of Night by Elie Wiesel
pg.(80) "We finally succeeded in entering. Inside, too, the snow was thick. I let myself slide into the ground. Only now did I feel the full extent of my weakness. The snow seemed to me like a very soft, very warm carpet. I fell asleep. I don't know how long I slept. A few minutes or one hour. When I woke up, a frigid hand was taping my cheeks. I tried to open my eyes: it was my father.
How he aged since last night! His body was completely twisted, shriveled up into himself. His eyes were glazed over, his lips parched, decayed. Everything about him expressed total exhaustion. His voice was damp from tears and snow. "Don't let yourself be overcome by sleep, Eliezer. It's dangerous to fall asleep in snow. One falls asleep forever. Come, my son, come...Get up."
Get up? How could I? How was I to leave this warm blanket? I was hearing my father's words, but their meaning escaped me, as if he had asked me to carry the entire shed on my arms...
"Come, my son, come..."
I got up, with clenched teeth. Holding on to me with one arm, he led me outside. It was not easy. It was as difficult to go out as to come in. Beneath our feet there lay men, crushed, trampled underfoot, dying. Nobody paid attention to them.
....pg.(90) " Heavy snow continued to fall over the corpses."
"Heavy snow continued to fall over the corpses": Heavy snow continued to fall over the horror, the innocent white snow became the mask that hid the conflict at hand. To Elizier the snow became a question. A question that he didn't want to face...Should i escape my suffering? Why continue living this life, when i am only just a number, a body per-say. A life were god is not real anymore, were he left us to suffer with no control. When Elizier begins to lay in the snow, the snow becomes warm to him like a comforting blanket. In no way snow could possibly be warm nor a comfortable place to sleep. Elizier found the snow to be warm and comfortable he had no longing to leave his sleeping place in the snow because the snow was a way for Elizier to escape life like he wanted to. Elizier's wish was sleeping in the snow so that he would never wake up to the nightmare that was his life.
Awakened from his sleep, Elizier's responsibility, his father. Elizier allowed himself to possibly give into death that slumber in the snow but was quickly reminded why he must keep fighting on to live. His father needed him, he knew that and got up from the snow to not fall into death.
Wiesel used irony in this passage by the symbolism of the snow becoming a blanket that covered up the truth of it all. True white innocent and beautiful snow became a curtain concealing the truth. The snow slowly covered the bodies causing everyone to not pay attention. Symbolizing what the holocaust was as a whole, pushing away what had to be done and letting horror take place. People of Germany just sat back and watched, letting snow fall over the monstrosity they let happen, so they no longer were confronted with what they had done. Snow became the avoidance of what was happening.
Samantha Bobbio
