Blog Post 1-Grace

The novel Night by Elie Wiesel is a very powerful book in many ways. A recurring main theme throughout the book is the use of manipulation. As Elie jumped right in the story my heart sank. I took me a few minutes after I read the sections to realize that something that horrible actually happened: “We were told that he was a charming man, calm, likable, and polite. Three days after he moved in he brought Mrs. Kahn a box of chocolates… Germans arrested the leaders of the Jewish community. From that moment on, everything happened very quickly. The race toward death had begun. First edict: Jews were prohibited from leaving their residence for three days, under penalty of death”(10). Before people were arrested, the Germans were living with the Jews in their homes. The Germans were very polite and had gained the Jews trust while living with them. Just 10 days later the Germans came and arrested the head of the Jewish community and made up rules with the penalty of death. The Jews thought everything was fine and did not suspect anything wrong because the Germans had gained the Jews trust. The Jews were taken to a concentration camp and like Elie's family, a lot of the families were split up. Elie and his father were taken on a long march to their assigned barracks where they were told to take off their clothes and then inspected to see who were the most muscular:“When he found out that we were there, he succeeded in slipping us a note. He told us that having been chosen because of his strength, he had been forced to place his own father’s body into the furnace”(35). Katz had arrived at the camp a week earlier than Elie and his family. He was chosen because of his strength and because of that he had to kill his own father. When I read this part I felt like somebody had stabbed me in the back. I can't imagine how it must of felt to kill a person with no choice let along it being your own father. Elie Wiesel's writing style is very different to other memoirs. I like that he wrote his book with vignettes and sections instead of the normal chapters. You can fly through the book very quickly because of how he wrote it. Many weeks can go by in just one page and it is very suspenseful seeing of the pain somebody had to go through and experience the pain mentally and physically. The book is very powerful considering he is telling about his own personal experience. It's so hard to rap my mind around the fact somebody had to go through something that horrible.