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Night by Elie Wiesel
Elie Wiesel
This blog is inspired by the work of Honey Kern and Margaret Lincoln. View their blog at: http://nightwiesel.blogspot.com
Night
Night by Elie Wiesel
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Elie Wiesel
4 comments:
How is it possible, that two boys of the same exact age in the same time can live completely opposite lives? In the midst of World War II, in the United States, “We were still calmly, numbly reading Virgil and playing tag in the river farther downstream…we boys of sixteen,” (ASP, 15 & 24). Elie Wiesel, however, remembers witnessing “ready to kill for a crust of bread...Men [hurling] themselves against each other, trampling, tearing at and mauling each other…when they withdrew, there were two dead bodies next to me, the father and the son. I was sixteen,” (Night, 101-102). Drafts in the United States were crushing families, and affected everyone around them.
Though the effects of war brutally impacted the lives of all Americans, none of them came close to facing what thirteen year-old Elie Wiesel faced at concentration camps. Nothing can match the fear of watching grown men fight over a bread crumb, or waking up to find your comrade, your friend, “hunched over, dead. Next to him lay his violin, trampled, an eerily poignant little corpse,” (Night, 95). While reading A Separate Peace, I mourned over the death of Phineas, and lamented over how hard the war was making the lives of the innocent boys. But while reading Night, I began to realize that though the prep-school boys were being sent off to fight in a war while their friends died, they were still truly lucky. Even in the worst moment of our lives, we can still remember the victims of the Holocaust, and realize just how blessed we are to be living in the United States.
Hayley is so right. It is incredible to think that people were and still are today, living completely opposite lives. People don't realize it, although. I guarantee not all people living during WWII thought about the thousands dying daily in Germany, and throughout Europe. It is the same today. We try to imagine all the people dying in Darfur, in Africa, in Iraq and the Middle East, but many people do not. We can't compare being afraid to leave your house incase of being bombed, because it is surreal to us. Many people don't realize how blessed we are to be living in the United States. We are so, so, so lucky. Another thing that stood out to me in the assigned reading was when Wiesel and the rest of the Jews were driving the Buchenwald and Wiesel said, "[German laborers] would stop and look at us without surprise" (100). This quote stuck out like a sore thumb to me. It haunts and hurts me that people can actually be that ignorant to see people that haven't eaten for days, and not say a word, or offer them something, but look at them "without surprise." It's unimaginable and unbelievable. Its also crazy that they are used to that; they see it all the time. They probably had people be deported in their neighborhood! That is crazy that they aren't surprised because that is what their days entitle. Men, grown men, fighting over a piece of bread. Unloading dead out of a car! Normal. Completely normal. Going back to what Hayley said, we are so lucky to live in the United States!
When did sleep become synonymous with death? Why does Elie yell, “Father! Father! Wake up,” (99) when he thinks he has died? If death is one long sleep, then night must be one long death. Perhaps this is the meaning of the title. As bodies become corpses in the snow, Elie’s father tells him that he should not fall asleep there, for “One falls asleep forever.” (88) So this everlasting sleep, this is death? Wiesel tells us as they march that, “somebody fell down and ceased to suffer.” (92) Somebody died. Therefore, in a sense, death is sleep, is it not? Sleeping strips away the suffering…just as this man, by dying, “ceased to suffer”. This explains their inclination to death. They don’t want to die; they want to be free of pain.
In this reading, it became quite clear to me how strong Elie Wiesel must have been. I feel as if it was this time in the book when Elie realizes that he can be strong and hold on until liberation comes. Every ounce of his body is weak, tired, but he does not let himself drift off into a deep sleep, which he knows is death. He became "...Stronger than cold and hunger, stronger than the guns and the desire to die" (87). Though thoughts cross his mind as he is running about just letting himself fall back and die, Elie continues to exhibit a strength so powerful and intense that he is able to perservere even when he is nothing more than skin and bones. He is living for his father. He continues to run because of his dad who is his sole support. The two have gone through so much together, and it is almost insane that they are still together after all of the hardships and possible separations that they have endured. His father urges him to continue, to hold on to their last shred of life, to hold on to the belief that liberation will soon come. Elie still has the desire to live. Maybe because of Juliek- Juliek's "unfufilled hopes" (95). So, whether it be for Juliek, for his father, or for the existence of Jews in the world, Elie wants to survive, and with his perserverance, he will do so.
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