Elie Wiesel's Night: Bridging the Gap

Elie Wiesel has written multiple volumes dealing with his account of the horrors of the Holocaust as well as his thoughts afterwards. One of these accounts, Night, details his life in a ghetto, his deportation to and his life in Auschwitz-Birkenau, and his place in the death march to Buchenwald. Wiesel's use of language is his attempt to, in his own words, make no become yes. He tries to bring the reader into the world of the concentration camps so he or she can better understand what had happened, and he succeeds to some extent.

There are many feelings that can be conveyed through written language: anger, happiness, sadness, etc. What about other more complex feelings? Elie Wiesel (2004) says in his article "Why I Write: Making No Become Yes," "This was concentration camp language. It negated all other language and took its place. Rather than a link, it became a wall. Could it be surmounted? Could the reader be brought to the other side?" (p. 39). This wall that Wiesel explains is present in other situations when writers feel the need to write about suffering. How can they hope to relate accurately what they experienced without softening reality? Wiesel notices that perhaps there is no sufficient language to tell his story, and it is from this realization that Night gets its power. "Not far from us, flames, huge flames, were rising from a ditch. Something was being burned there. A truck drew close and unloaded its hold: small children. Babies! Yes, I did see this, with my own eyes...children thrown into flames" (Wiesel, 2006, p. 32). In this passage, there is no extraordinary use of language, there is nothing new. It is, in fact, a simple passage. Its raw and simplistic nature gives it that extra impact and helps Wiesel to bridge that gap between himself, the survivor, and the reader, the outsider. In other words, Wiesel forges a connection between experience and education not by using more words, but less. Words like "thrown" convey that feeling that the children were not regarded as human beings, merely an object that needed to be cleaned up. In such a small passage, Wiesel is able to teach the reader about how the Nazis thought, as well as what it was like to see such horrors.

Most of Night is powerfully written and its stories are hauntingly revolting, but still there are some sections that, for some reason, rise above the rest. One of these passages comes when Wiesel and his comrades have been aboard a cattle car for days headed for Auschwitz. A woman goes mad and the passengers have had enough, so "she received several blows to the head, blows that could have been lethal. Her son was clinging desperately to her, not uttering a word...Crouching in a corner, her blank gaze on some faraway place, she no longer saw us" (p. 26). As a writer, Wiesel had choices to make. He had to choose between stories, deciding which were the most powerful. This particular memory of his is one of the most terrifying in Night. Wiesel shows the reader how the Nazis were able to turn the passengers of that car on each other. The passengers were not instructed to hurt that woman- they acted of their own free will. The situation they were placed in, the conditions they were enduring, and the fear they were all experiencing exploded in this single act of violence. Wiesel also decided to include the woman's son, hanging on his mother while she was being beaten. This image invokes an extremely powerful feeling of despair and hopelessness, again allowing the reader to empathize with what Wiesel felt in that car.

Perhaps the most terrible phrase in Night is a humble three words long: "Free at last" (p. 112). In this three simple words, Elie Wiesel reaches out to the reader from the top of the wall, lending his hand. In context, Wiesel's father had just been taken to the crematorium, and being so desensitized and dehumanized, "free at last" is the phrase that he thinks. Free from having to feed his father, to help him, to encourage him. Wiesel could have easily left this passage out; it would have certainly spared him the pain of admitting to the world that he was relieved that his father had died. It is because he chose to include it, however, that his book has helped readers in understanding the Holocaust a little more.

Another interesting note about Night is that Wiesel rarely tries to offer insight or explanation. That is all left to the reader. He assumes, as he dictates in "Making No Become Yes," the view of a witness. Throughout Night the reader is exposed to terrible scenes: hangings, beatings, and mass killings. The power of the book, and the power of author, lies in Wiesel's decision to remain a witness and to allow the reader to draw his or her own conclusion.

Elie Wiesel, through use of word choice, anecdote choice, and point of view, has helped the readers of Night to understand more about the Holocaust. Of course, one can never understand the tragedies that happened to the victims during those years, no matter how fantastic of a writer a witness may be. It is important to remember that history has the undying tendency to repeat itself. Understanding the past through accounts like Night is the best way to counteract this habit, and hopefully to break the cycle.

References

Wiesel, E. (2006). Night. (M. Wiesel, Trans.). New York: Hill and Wang. (Original work published in 1958).

Wiesel, E. (2004). Why I write: Making no become yes. In L. Z. Bloom (Ed.), The essay connection: Readings for writers (pp. 38-42). Boston: Houghton Mifflin.