Night by Elie Wiesel

There are numerous historical papers, researches, novels, written about the awful time of Holocaust. Holocaust survivors shock the readers with the terrible details of the torments, they were to go through during the years of the Second World War. It is known, that there were several nations, which suffered most of all, including Jews, Gypsies, Russian and Ukrainian people. “Night” is one of the most well-known works, devoted to the problem of Holocaust. Initially, publishers didn’t want to issue this book, as they were not sure about the reaction of the audience to the absolutely pessimistic presentation of events. In fact, this story turned out to be one of the most widely read and bright descriptions of Holocaust. It was said to be a serious break through in publishing of the specific Holocaust stories in the second part of the twentieth century (Cargas, 6). Night is not a simple story about Holocaust times, this an investigation of human relations, of the power of family bonds and family responsibilities. Night tells about personal experiences of the author, but Wiesel is not the protagonist of the story. The story is told by a boy – Eliezer, who is the representation of the author and at the same time differs from him in a way. One of the most painful situations and preoccupying thoughts that trouble young Elie involve the ways in which father-son relationships are torn asunder by the camps. He watches as sons deny or at least consider denying care to their fathers, putting their own interests before familial ties. Elie struggles with the same conflict when his father becomes ill, and when his father finally dies, Elie is profoundly sad though also proud that he never wholly compromised his own beliefs about family. The reason that Elie finds the deterioration of father-son relationships so painful is that the maintenance of this relationship seems to be the last barrier between a world that is semi-normal and one that has completely been turned upside down. Elie must continue to care for his ailing father because to do otherwise would mean that he had become as evil as the Germans.

Sometimes Night is considered to be a memoir, not a novel. However, it doesn’t mean, that Wiesel used few or not effective literary devices. Thanks to the techniques he used, the novel presents a convincing and psychologically profound story, providing clear explanations for all the main events that take place and characterizing all the heroes. On the other hand, the novel is very personal one, i.e. the readers are able to trace only the events, which are directly observed by the author or protagonist (Petterson, 111). One of the brightest examples of this is the fact, that after being separated from his mother and sister, the main hero never gets the chance to see them again. Neither do the readers get any information about what happened to the women further. This personal description of the events helps the readers to better understand or even feel the horrors of Holocaust. Such literary elements, as meeting with the woman from concentration camp, which happens in the Metro is a usual technique of a literary work.

The poetic language of the author makes the perception of the events deeper and more emotional, underlining all the details, important for transmitting of the mood, atmosphere of the setting as well as feelings of the narrator.

There are several important themes, investigated in the novel, we are going to stop in detail at the most important one – namely the family bonds in critical life situations, as this is one of the things, which bothers the main hero most of all. Seeing all the miseries and horrors around him, Eliezer looses his faith in God and gradually also in everything around him, in people, in events, in himself. There is no more the world, the boy used to live in, instead cruelty and torments are assuming power in reality, Eliezer got into. There are no more illusions, as soon as not only Nazi officers express severity, but his fellow prisoners turn out to care only for themselves, each for his own survival and nothing more. Moreover, Eliezer suddenly realizes, that he is not much different from them in his cruelty and blind aggression. The war conditions, the physical and emotional pressure break people, break their principles and attitudes, turn them into robots without compassion, love and fidelity. Eliezer, having realized this, seems to be rather alarmed by this fact.

For the first time Eliezer has to face the cruelty of Nazis is not the very moment, when they appear. He says about this: “Our first impressions of the Germans were most reassuring. . . . Their attitude toward their hosts was distant, but polite” (Wiesel, 13) . Wiesel concentrated so much on this situation, because he wanted to underline, that Nazis also belonged to human beings and were also just people. The more shaking is then the fact, that humans were able to treat humans in such a cruel and humiliating way, were able to exterminate millions of innocent people, including women, and children. The first description of the Nazis is followed by their behavior and actions in the concentration camps, showing their brutal and blood-thirsty natures. Then the readers follow the transformation of the prisoners, how they turn into enemies towards each other, as cruelty usually breeds cruelty. This idea is perfectly well reflected in the words of Kapo: “Here, every man has to fight for himself and not think of anyone else. . . . Here, there are no fathers, no brothers, no friends. Everyone lives and dies for himself alone.” (Wiesel, 111). Kapo knew it better, than others as he had the chance to prove to Nazis his devotion, by being set over other prisoners and demonstrating the same cruel attention to his fellow prisoners, as the Nazis did. This position was another symbol of return cruelty. This selfishness, which Eliezer faces everywhere around him, makes him sad and depressed. Finding himself in the same terrible conditions, he is still not able to accept this “war for survival” between fathers and sons. He is forced to see, how sons mistreat their fathers, forgetting about family bonds and family duties to support and to protect the members of the family. Pipel, who abused his father, the situation with Rabbi Eliahou’s son, the narration about fight for food are the brightest moments, which evoked disgust and despair by Eliezer, who was so much afraid to become the same son. The hardest conditions, fake chances to survive are the main forces, which impact the actions of people, who are ready to sacrifice their fathers for their own lives. Though Eliezer did his best to properly treat his father and not to be assimilated with other sons, he still feels very sad after his father’s death, and the feeling, that he still sacrificed his father’s life in a way depresses him a lot. The boy describes his attitude to his father in the following lines: “My father’s presence was the only thing that stopped me [from allowing myself to die]. . . . I had no right to let myself die. What would he do without me? I was his only support.” (Wiesel, 92). From these words the readers might conclude, that for Eliezer family bonds, love and devotion to his father stood much higher, than self protection and survival instincts.

Overall, based on the brief analysis of Night by Elie Wiesel, we can conclude, that this novel really belongs to the brightest and the most profound interpretations of the Nazis’ cruelty and sufferings of the people, who were prisoners in the concentration camps during the Second World War. These themes are ably combined with other theme- family relations and family bonds, their importance and inviolability in everybody’s life.

Works cited:

Cargas, H. J. In Conversation with Elie Wiesel. Diamond Communications, 1992.

Cargas, H. J. Telling the Tale: A Tribute to Elie Wiesel. Saint Louis: Time Being Books, 1993

Dawidowicz, L. S. The War Against the Jews: 1933–1945. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975.

"Elie Wiesel", Holocaust Literature: An Encyclopedia of Writers and Their Work, Routledge, 2002.

Greenberg, I. and Rosenfeld, A. H. Confronting the Holocaust: The Impact of Elie Wiesel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978.

Patterson, D.  In Dialog and Dilemma with Elie Wiesel.  Wakefield, New Hampshire:
Longwood Academic, 1991.

Wiesel, E. Night. Oprah's Book Club edition, and a new translation by Marion Wiesel, Hill and Wang, January 2006

Wieseltier, L. Kaddish. New York: Random House, 1998.

Young, J. E. Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988.