The life of any man without dignity or value is lived in darkness, even when the sun shines brilliantly upon him. Night is a novel describing the life of such man. Elie Wiesel, a miraculous survivor of the Holocaust, illustrated his encounters with his father in the concentration camps along with millions of other Jews. Taken away from his normal life in Sighet, Wiesel and his father was forced to first the Auswitchz camp, then the Buchenwald camp until his final release. Firstly published five decades ago, Wiesel’s purpose in crafting Night never changed throughout the copies in thirty languages. Transcending the barrier of linguistics, Wiesel genuinely retold his accounts in the Holocaust, hoping to put an end to such tragedies. Night created a drastic emotional impact on me from its religious and personal themes along with brutal subject matter. Without any dramatization, Elie Wiesel was successful in delivering a short, powerful and honest autobiographic work of his life in the horrors of the Holocaust.

Having lived a tranquil and content life in Sighet, Romania, Wiesel devoted his life towards educational studies and religious practices. It was the spring of 1944 when the Austro-Hungarian police tore through his town, forcing all members into ghettos. Organized, the citizens were then sorted into trains, heading for Auschwitz concentration camp. That was when the candid narrative of Wiesel and his father’s desperate struggle for survival began. Alongside the physical emaciation from lack of nutrition and unfitting shelters, the threat of possible death tormented Wiesel incredibly. The author’s use of simple, yet very emotionally influential diction, expressed the raw sentiment from Wiesel and his father in response to the brutality in the camps. Physically deteriorated, Wiesel’s spiritual dependence on God gradually diminished as he even questioned his existence. More contrast between Wiesel’s transformations before, during and after the Holocaust would, in my opinion, enrich the story in a more intellectual manner. For example, the subject of religion could be investigated to showcase Wiesel’s changes of faith in Christianity in relation to his physical state. Exposed to the utmost evil of man, Wiesel’s riveting journey in the Holocaust began.

Elie Wiesel’s purpose in crafting Night could be summarized in one of his most pensive remarks: “to forget a Holocaust is to kill twice”. Without reflection or moral judgement on the Holocaust, such anthropogenic disasters are therefore inevitably going to repeat. Something that I found interesting was that, Night not only examined the conditions of the Jewish victims but unbiasedly investigated what the cruelty meant for Wiesel in a personal perspective. During the Holocaust, Wiesel watched as hundreds of Jews burn in the crematorium. Wiesel’s instincts for liberty and for food selfishly dominated grief for his people. Emotional aspects in the story added moral ethnicity to emphasize the author’s purpose. In relation, in the modern media, violence and gore are becoming more conventionalized in movies, television and even videogames. The audience’s minds are slowly morphed to see violence or suffering as the norm or perhaps enjoyable. The violence of crematoriums in a movie may be stylistically filmed to be exciting, but opposite to the tragic death of the Jewish victims. Alternatively, Night captured the genuine account of the victims, exposing the truth behind the cruelty. I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand, a quote by Confucius which depicts Wiesel’s purpose in writing Night; to engage the reader into the demonic world of Night to lest we forget.

Voltaire, a famous French philosopher said three centuries ago; “injustice in the end produces independence.” Twenty five decades later, injustice occurred. In Night, Wiesel’s family, religion, and culture were all stripped from him, exposing his bare human instincts. Upon arrival, the sense of cultural unity was palpable in Auswitchz for the Jews, in hopes of survival. However, as the days passed, Wiesel and his father soon realised in order to avoid death, each man could only trust him or herself. Deeply influenced by Christianity, Wiesel constantly prayed to his God for the turmoil in the camp to end. Without any result, Wiesel was finally aware that he was alone and vulnerable to the terrors of the Holocaust. Despite firsthand shock, Wiesel became more emotionally stable and grew in acceptance for the situation. In the generic human life, there are and always will be obstacles to overcome and problems to solve. Alike the experience of Night, which to an extreme, was a challenge for Wiesel and the Jewish race to endure. I believe that beneath the prominent theme of genocide prevention, the author highlighted his virtues of independence which lead him to survival. To be prepared, individualistic and self-aware, in my opinion is the best possible way to never allow events such as the Holocaust from ever occurring again. Elie Wiesel is a survivor of the Holocaust, one who saw his true self when millions of others had forgotten the meaning of life.

Elie Wiesel simply did not write his testimonies in Night, he brought the reader into the world of his unforgettable nightmare. With the entirety of the story based around inhumanities with philosophies surrounding them, Night could only be appreciated by those who can absorb the content. Wiesel made his story easy to comprehend, but difficult to digest due to detailed descriptions of massacre and slavery. Consequently, I would recommend this book to exclusively those who are critical thinkers and willing to investigate such controversial subject matter. In my opinion, Night excellently achieved its goal of depicting a pious teen turned callous individual in order to antagonize the overall motives and idea of the Holocaust. Night is Elie Wiesel’s magnum opus. We may not want to remember the Holocaust, but we must. It is because our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them. And a Jewish flame in the darkest of Night will never fade as long as those who perished are not forgotten.