Toon Zone Book Club - Night

[Shnay]

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Night
Elie Wiesel

"Never shall I forget that night, the first night in the camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed."

Night — A terrifying account of the Nazi death camp horror that turns a young Jewish boy into an agonized witness to the death of his family...the death of his innocence...and the death of his God. Penetrating and powerful, as personal as The Diary Of Anne Frank, Night awakens the shocking memory of evil at its absolute and carries with it the unforgettable message that this horror must never be allowed to happen again.
Thoughts?

[RD!]

Alright I read this in a sitting tonight and am kind of conflicted with my thoughts on it.

In my school district in 7th grade English and Social Studies teach the Holocaust through literature and world events and you read Anne Frank's Diary. In 8th grade you read the play (this really perplexed me)... in 10th grade you hit the latter half of Global Studies which includes some good time on the Holocaust. Now as a senior (a little unrelated, yes) I am reading Hiroshima in Mass Media and in the mandatory class, Participation in Government the Holocaust is never a subject far off hand. Plus a few random Holocaust books I've read and movies I've seen.

Night doesn't really open my eyes to anything new at all. I really think I've been so over saturated by the tragedy that I've almost been desensetized to it. But I can't put the book down just because of what it's helped establish. A victim of it's own purpose!

I can say that I did find the pre-camp bits interesting. That it wasn't just the blanket statement of "no body would do anything" but it was even that no one believed it and no one would bother to leave when they had the chance.

I enjoyed his battle with God's belief or rather who he was looking out for and if he were alive. Interesting to think that they were put into the camps specificaly for their beliefs in God and it's hard to imagine how any truly caring God wouldn't reach out and prevent something so terrible.

[don Jaime]

A great book, but like In Cold Blood, one I don't care to read a second time. It covers a whole lot of ugly in very tight text, and remains harrowing despite the oversaturation SJ mentions.

[Youko Recca]

I enjoyed his battle with God's belief or rather who he was looking out for and if he were alive. Interesting to think that they were put into the camps specificaly for their beliefs in God and it's hard to imagine how any truly caring God wouldn't reach out and prevent something so terrible.Really, for me, this was the best part of the book as far as on-going conficts go. This whole battle/questioning helps in aiding the events throughout the story and are also effected by it in return, and by the end it makes the conclusion more of such despite how things may put you on/off. Look at him in the beggining, and then look at him in the end. That's something you look foward to seeing in the end. Just, where he finally stands.

[tigerrunner]

My entire class read this way back in 8th grade and I remember feeling devastated. We had learned all about the Holocaust, and we even had people who had survived it talk to our school, but I didn't experience the "over saturation" that others have in school (the Holocaust wasn't covered in school with as much depth afterwards; maybe because of the switch over to public school or something).

It was emotionally painful to read Wiesel's account, and honestly not something I'd want to read again, but the impact it made on me is undeniable. It's certainly something that people should read to better understand the horrors of the Holocaust. It's an eye opener.

[sun]

My entire class read this way back in 8th grade and I remember feeling devastated. We had learned all about the Holocaust, and we even had people who had survived it talk to our school, but I didn't experience the "over saturation" that others have in school (the Holocaust wasn't covered in school with as much depth afterwards; maybe because of the switch over to public school or something).

It was emotionally painful to read Wiesel's account, and honestly not something I'd want to read again, but the impact it made on me is undeniable. It's certainly something that people should read to better understand the horrors of the Holocaust. It's an eye opener. What you have here is one of the wisest posts I have ever seen.. While Wiesel account is exceptionally painful, its impact over time is just as strong. Its imagry, the stench, the feel of death, are overwhelming, and the trust that was forever shattered remains burned in my mind.."I have lost my God," Wiesel says, and it its true. He did.

....But to me, as a teacher, teaching this book, it allows the reader to be in and live through one of many situations, where man's inhumanity to man becomes paramount. My sadness, is even more, as Wiesel himself says, as he occastionally lectures on this book, yes, he is alive and well. When he talks, sometimes he talks about the over all behavior of man,and what appears to be an inherent evil that sometimes comes to the surface.
...Last I heard, that after the so called Jewish, "Holocaust" there were others. They were in Nigeria, Cambodia, Ruwanda, and even in Sudan. (Let us not forget "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee", 1971, written brilliantly by Dee Brown, and meticulously documented, about a similiar tragedy in the U.S.A in the 1800s)
What is it in man that can promote such behavior? And as far as oversaturation of this issue, yes, that may be true, but if one looks at the whole issue, of man's inhumanity to man, within the context of my previous paragraph, then that is impossible..Only when this stops forever, has this book, and others about similiar situations, saturated enough.
....While reading "Night" does not answer that question, it raises it, and below the serface asks why?, and how can this event (and others like it) ever happen. And I believe that every person at Toon Zone sould ask themselves the same question..If they haven't yet, then I believe they should..
.................................................. ...Stuart:crying:

[Condiment King]

I'll agree with what StrawberryJam said. I thought that the story was interesting and well-written, especially for such a slender novel, but I wasn't really taken aback by anything I read. I don't contend that I've had that well of an education on the Holocaust either, yet just the general idea of some of the punishment that the Jews wrongfully recieved there seems to have already been engrained in me. On the contrary, I find some of the bad luck that the child and his father had to be the saddest.

I also thought the most riveting portion of the novel was the boy's inner struggle with his faith and the hopelessness of his situation. Particularly, the "hotly contested" debate over whether they should fast or not. I don't know why, but I just felt that the worst thing that happened to the child was to see his father in such a helpless state, where he was even having small thoughts of just letting him die and taking his rations. He must have been very deathlike to have been mistaken for a corpse by the people taking them out. The very end is sort of gloomy, but again I don't think Night affected me in a big way other than being an interesting read.

[Damien]

I read this in 11th grade as part of my World Religions/Holocaust class, then was assigned the book this past semester in Modern Short Novel. A good book, but of course not something to read when you're feeling down. Some unbelievable stuff in there.

[Shnay]

Night doesn't really open my eyes to anything new at all. I really think I've been so over saturated by the tragedy that I've almost been desensetized to it. As far as factual information goes, I'm in the same position. However, I still found a great deal of historical (not to mention emotional) value in Night.

Awhile back, I read a book for school called How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed, which collects a series of writings by a woman who grew up in a communist country and saw the collapse of the system. Most of these writings are personal stories about seemingly mundane memories, such as going out to eat pizza with friends or shopping for a doll with her parents. These stories bring up issues of shortages and a struggle for individuality seen during the rule of the Communist Party, neither of which are exactly shocking revelations. However, to fully understand history, we must understand the ordinary people who lived it. Each personal story about Communist countries or the Holocaust help us to better understand the broad effects of such historical events.

Truthfully, most of the violent horrors described in Night did little to stir me. I had learned of many of the atrocious images of the Holocaust, such as babies being thrown into the air and shot, long ago. While such images are still haunting (though that wording is an understatement), I've read about, seen, and thought about such atrocities many times before reading Night. But I doubt it was Wiesel's intention to bring such images to people's attention. I imagine that, if he wanted to, Wiesel could describe any given horror he witnessed in gruesome language for 100 pages. But Wiesel describes such images briefly, confident that the reader is already familiar with the nature of the crematories, and that longer descriptions wouldn't bring the reader any closer to truly understanding the terrible reality of the camps.

Instead of revealing new aspects of the physical nature of the events described, Wiesel provides glimpses into the minds of those who endured them. As others have mentioned, I, too, found the mindset of the people before they entered the camp to be interesting. It's understandable that everyone would refuse to believe that the situation would possibly be so bad, ignore those who raised concerns, and even feel that certain developments that seemed bad were a sign that their troubles were almost over.

Most interesting to me were the descriptions at the end of the book of people going on their last bits of life. The separation of the mind and the body, an ongoing sensation for Wiesel, becomes even stronger during this time. How else could a starving boy with an injured foot run 42 miles in the snow but to disconnect himself from such a reality? The time after that run, when the survival instinct of the prisoners takes priority over everything else, is when the book reveals most about human behavior in such extreme circumstances. A son kills his father for a bit of bread, people throw dead bodies into the snow to make more room for themselves without pause. Wiesel's momentary, deep down feeling of relief, of freedom, when his father dies because it will allow him to focus solely on his own survival shows just how much the feeling of encroaching death can change someone. The shame and regret with which Wiesel describes that feeling is quite powerful.

The descriptions of a lack of humanity in various authority figures were somewhat less revealing, as I had read some about the issue, and pondered about it a great deal. It's a very important subject that deserves attention, but I don't feel that Night covered it in enough depth to add anything of much significance to the subject. Similarly, the process of Wiesel and others losing faith is an interesting aspect of the mindset of the people involved, but so little of it is described in the book that I didn't feel I gained any new understanding of it. The tenets of the Jewish faith and the history of the Jewish people make this aspect of the camps particularly interesting, but Wiesel only touches on ideas of God's abandonment or mistreatment of the Jews, and does so without much of a conclusion. Some of the bits, such as a feeling that the people were stronger than God, as they had not submitted the hell on Earth He forced them to suffer, were great, but I don't think enough was said about the issue to get me to think about it in a new way.

While I did find Night to be an insightful book, I found the quality of the writing itself to be less noteworthy. In certain parts, it's quite powerful. Wiesel uses short closing sentences to great emotional effect. In others, however, the writing feels scattered and overly simplistic. Were the subject matter not so close to the author's heart, I'm not sure I would enjoy this style of writing too much.

Small criticisms aside, I think that Night's first person perspective offers invaluable insight into an event we must strive to understand as fully as we possibly can.

[Ben]

I just picked up my copy of this. I know, slow reaction time boy. I'll probably get around to it next week.

[The Penguin]

Since this thread came back, I saw on The Colbert Report last night that this is the latest selection for Oprah's book club. Whether that makes you more or less interested it up to you. :p

[Condiment King]

Since this thread came back, I saw on The Colbert Report last night that this is the latest selection for Oprah's book club. Whether that makes you more or less interested it up to you. :p
My Journalism teacher actually told me about it. I thought about entering, but then heard that the trip to Chicago would be in Feburary and you were probably going to have to be on Oprah. I would have wanted to see a Cubs/White Sox game or something.