I feel that right when I started the very depressing book Night, this horrific tragedy kept getting worse and I’m worried that it will stay that way throughout the book. I wish that there was an extra chapter of joy instead of jumping right into the plot of the book. I found a lot of quotes that made me think in many ways. But I believe Wiesel thought there shouldn’t be a happy part of the book because World War 2 impacted Elie along with millions of people in a horrendous manner. An interesting quote I found shows an inmate asked Elie,” Hey, kid, how old are you”... “fifteen” “no, your eighteen” “ but i’m not, I am fifteen” “fool listen to what I say” “then he asked my father, who answered:” “me, I’m fifty” “No… Not fifty. Your Forty. Do you hear me? Eighteen and forty.”(30) This inmate is saying more or less, if you’re 14 you die, 18 you live, 50 you die, and 40 you live. This strikes me because if they didn’t run into that inmate, than they would probably have died a lot sooner than they did. Instead of survival of the fittest,the prisoner decided to help others. A quote I found very sad when I thought about it was when Elie said, “The synagogues were no longer open. People gathered in private homes: no need to provoke the Germans. Almost every rabbis home became a house of prayer.” (10) This made me upset because even if it is such a small quote it states how all the synagogues got burnt down by the Germans until it was all in ashes and because of this, there was nowhere to pray. Being Jewish, I understand that emotion because I have so many memories in my synagogue so I couldn’t imagine it being destroyed.
The way Wiesel writes his memoir is almost like it’s written in prose, he is extremely descriptive with his writing, and his sentences flow, but he keeps the plot fast-paced and moving like the greatest poems are. There was one part I read that almost brought me to tears: the uncertainty of it, the questions it left, and the horrifying thought that it was pure hope that was keeping these people alive when there truly was nothing to hope for. “Take care of your son. He is very weak, very dehydrated. Take care of yourselves, you must avoid selections. Eat! Anything. Anytime. Eat all you can. The weak don’t last very long around here”… And he himself was so thin, so withered, so weak… “The only thing that keeps me alive,” he kept saying, “is to know that Reizel and the little ones are still alive. Were it not for them, I would give up.” One evening, he came to see us, his face radiant. “A transport just arrived from Antwerp. I shall go to see them tomorrow. Surely they will hav...
Eli, I thought your blog was very well written. You can really connect because you are actually Jewish, this happened to your people. I can understand how in the book when the synagogues were destroyed that it affected you. That is terrible to happen to any place, but it is even worse when it is in a place that people literally worship. Overall I thought your blog was very well written.
ReplyDeleteI find your cynical perspective fascinating. At times throughout the book the more tragic themes are undermined, you succeeded at bringing it back into the spotlight. I felt really touched by your personal connection to book, and your image of loss shows. I thought you could of put the quotes into more detailed context, but your emotions are really well phrased.
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