Blog #1 -Sage

If I’m being honest, I was never emotionally touched by this novel but I can understand how much this book and the story means to Elie Wiesel. It was truly awful what he went through and it should never happen to anyone ever again. Here Elie is speaking after he witnesses people dying in the crematorium: “Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turn my life into one long night seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under the silent sky. Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever” (34). Elie Wiesel wanted this portion of the book to stand out, so he wrote it in a different form then the rest of the book. He indented this paragraph in the text so it would really stand out in the book. He wanted people to know what he went through. He wanted people to know the horrors of the camps. By starting the sentences with the same word he wanted to emphasize what he went through. This next passage shows what Elie’s thinking of what happened after the events: “The night had passed completely. The morning star shown in the sky. I too had become a different person. The student of Talmud, the child I was, had been consumed by the flames. All that was left with a shape that resembled me. My soul has been invaded -- and devoured -- by a black flame” (37). Having been the person he used to be so devoted to god and the scriptures. He was now an empty shell of that person. His soul had been invaded with unfaithfulness towards his god because of god not helping him. He felt empty with nothing to hold him to this earth.