Night

Night

First, the novel “Night” was not like anything I had expected. Just from the title name I figured it would be a horror story, never the less, I was wrong for the most part. “Night” is an autobiography by a man named Eliezer Wiesel. The autobiography is a rather unsettling record of Elie’s early life in the Nazi concentration camps, such as Buchenwald and Auschwitz, during world war two. Even though “Night” is Elie Wiesel’s supposed first person narrative about his experiences in the Holocaust, he is not exactly the main character who is speaking. “Night” is narrated by a boy named Eliezer who signifies Elie.

I find myself wondering where to begin this informative blog. So, I suppose ill start at the scene where Eliezer and his family get put on the train that’s headed to the first concentration camp. On the train to the first camp there was a woman, who at the time was foretelling what was going to happen, who was screaming “Look! Look at this fire! This terrible fire! Have mercy on me!” (Night, 25). She screamed each day in the evenings for several days and each day she yelled it, the other Jews that were on the train felt more weary and angry. The night before they arrived at the camp she began screaming, and the men had enough of her delusions so they beat her. At the time while reading this I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the woman ,knowing she was right about her foreshadowing, however I couldn’t really blame the men who gave her the beating. The reason being they were all growing anxious after several days with no food, water, or not having any idea when they were going to stop the train.

This next scene of “Night” happened in the second camp Eliezer and his father was taken to. During this scene Eliezer had to be put in the hospital because of his foot. He had to have a surgery done to his foot to remove an excess amount of pus from the sole of his foot. While in recovery the officers were evacuating the Jews to a different place, however Eliezer was in the hospital and the Doctor told him he needed to stay. The Doctor told him he could put his father in the hospital also, so they wouldn’t get separated. Him and his father decided it would be best to travel to the next camp for the fear if they stayed the hospital would get bombed. The symbolic part to this is Ellie stated that if Eliezer and his father were to have stayed they would’ve liberated two days after evacuating by the Russians. This part completely stunned me because I couldn’t imagine making that big a decision nor finding out that the decision changed the course of your life forever.

This is the scene after the evacuation. The officers made the Jews run in the snow for quite some time without a break. After they were able to take a break Rabbi Eliahou asks Eliezer if he had seen his son. The symbolic thing about this to me is while they were running Eliezer had seen Rabbi’s son running directly beside of him. While running Eliezer noticed Rabbi’s son trying to out run his father while his father is slipping behind to possible “rid himself of a burden”. This scene was highly symbolic to me because I thought that it was horrible that a son would completely give up on his father and entirely throw away the bond that he had with him. The only thing that I could think of for Rabbi’s decision was that everyone changes severely after being put through the torment that all of these people went through.

In conclusion Night, is a dramatic book, which tells the evil and horror of the concentration camps that imprisoned many Jews during World War two. Throughout the entire novel the author Elie Wiesel, as well as many prisoners, lost their faith in God. There were many instances in the entire novel where people were trying to keep and reinforce their faith, but there were many more examples of people rebelling against God and forgetting their religion. Thus, creating a demoralizing setting for those without religion to lean on for reinforcement.