This passage from Elie Wiesel’s book Night is an example of verbal irony. Verbal irony is a statement the expresses the opposite of what the writer really means. It is a way of emphasizing the writer’s true intent.
In Night, Elie and his family have been deported and sent to a Nazi concentration camp. We all know that concentration camp life is brutally hard and many do not survive. Elie has already lost his mother to the crematorium and has worried constantly over the fate of his weakening father. However, when Wiesel writes
The SS offered us a fine New Year’s gift
it is not his father he has to worry about, it is himself. At this point in the story the SS has decided to conduct a selection for his block. Selection refers to the process in which prisoners are evaluated. If they are found unfit they are sent to the crematorium. When Wiesel calls it a “fine” gift he obviously means the opposite—it is very bad news, not really “fine” at all. It is possible that he will not survive the selection.
Wiesel survives the selection, but he concludes this section with a chilling observation about the poor souls who did not:
Those whose numbers had been noted were standing apart, abandoned by the whole world. Some were silently weeping.
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