The memoir Night was important to both the author, Elie Wiesel, and the world because Wiesel was able to relate his experiences to the rest of the world, while simultaneously giving the world a view of the Holocaust from the inside. He was very brave to write down his experiences so soon after they occurred, when so many would have tried to stay as far away from anything that may remind them of it. He also may have been able to contemplate his religious confusion by working it out on paper, writing down what he was feeling at the time and trying to make sense of it all.
On page 51, he first begins to question God when people started saying the Kaddish. He writes, “For the first time, I felt anger rising within me. Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty… chose to be silent. What was there to thank Him for?” He clarifies his loss of faith on page 63 when he writes, “I was not denying His existence, but I doubted His absolute justice.” Elie continues to question God and His works throughout the rest of the memoir in many paragraphs of questions and accusations. He remains consistent from the beginning after he realized his soul had been burned away. He recognizes God, but no longer trusts in him or prays to him except in times of extreme fear or moments close to death. I’m not sure if he reached any place of comfort within himself after writing his stories and defining his beliefs, but he probably felt relief after getting his story out to the world. This story, in general, is very similar to that of millions of other captives in the Holocaust, and by writing his, he was partially writing theirs, especially because many stories were lost with the people as they died.
The world has a way of denying violence while embracing it. Many still deny that the Holocaust ever happened. Stories like Wiesel’s provide historical and personal evidence about the atrocities that so many experienced. For example, he lists off a string of events in the beginning of the book. They range from the German bombings, news from the Russian front, a Budapest radio announcing that the Fascist party had seized power, German troops entering Hungary by its government’s approval, the expulsion of foreign Jews from Sighet (where Wiesel lived), Germans arresting leaders of the Jewish community, the creation of ghettos, and the law of the yellow star. On page 28, he writes, “The Germans were already in our town, the Fascists were already in power, the verdict was already out—and the Jews of Sighet were still smiling.” This passage reveals that despite such events that were against the Jewish community, the people were still hopeful and clinging to any small amount of good news, such as the Russian front advancing. It seemed that, in this particular town, the community chose to deny the meaning of events until they were crossing the gates of Auschwitz. Wiesel relived every one of these events, including many others, to bring truth to the world, perhaps for the world to learn, always remember, and never repeat what had happened. It’s a shame that such acts of genocide (minus the camps) continue to happen, and that even America was guilty of concentration camps for the Japanese, though the conditions weren’t nearly as horrific.
I think if this book was written as a historical account instead of a memoir, it wouldn’t hit home as much as it does. Because it’s told from a personal perspective, displaying how one’s life could be affected by the decisions made during a war, people can imagine themselves in the same situation, or their family or friends. They can ask themselves what decisions they would have made, see if they’d have lived through it or not. This imagination placed upon the story increases its impact and horror. If it was just a historical account, the reader encounters extreme distance of time and miles. The events of the Holocaust are of little consequence unless the reader is Jewish, gypsy, a little person, or homosexual. It’s just an event in the past. But with a personal account, it becomes personal for the reader.
Night is filled with elements of literary style. He uses scope and intent, larger truth, voice, and style. One could argue that it also has shape and structure because of specific incidents chosen to portray the Holocaust. The readers must realize that every day in the concentration camps were probably the same, and that there would be only a few moments of change throughout the general arc of his time there. But even those events are rather general. As for the others, the memoir spans his experiences with the Holocaust, an event that affected millions of lives, if not much more. It’s an event that maintains importance today because the world continues to witness acts of genocide, though the “Never forget” promise seems to have ensured that the acts of genocide are not committed in concentration camp-like environments. Night is written like an adult reminiscing about the past, but limited to the perspective of Wiesel’s teenaged self. There are few moments of foreshadowing included wherein the adult Wiesel makes a comment, but it’s mostly told in the voice and perspective of a teenager who didn’t and couldn’t know what was really happening around him or what was to come. This places the reader inside Wiesel’s emotions at the time, taking the reader for a ride that makes him or her question everything, as Wiesel had done as well. Wiesel writes about the banality of evil with everyday people causing harm or ignoring events around them, he agonizes over his religion in the face of torture and abandonment, and he provides commentary on the Holocaust and the war itself.
I think in the case of Wiesel, his witnessing of painful events was very much relevant to his memoir. Otherwise readers could argue, “How did you know certain specific events happened to specific people? You weren’t there. You didn’t experience them for yourself.” It establishes trust between Wiesel and the reader to know what he was there and had, in fact, gone through the torture and selection and managed to survive. If not, the level of trust diminishes greatly and creates a distance between the reader and the event instead of placing us inside the narrator as he experiences everything. But Wiesel’s writing is concise and he doesn’t dwell or dawdle on a subject. This style ensures that his writing isn’t overemotional.
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