NIGHT by Elie Wiesal, a book review. part 1..by Robert Fullarton

NIGHT by Elie Wiesal, a book review. part 1

on human suffering and faith.- by Robert Fullarton

I recently read Night by Eli Wiesal, a renowned Noble prize winning author of more than forty books. It touches on the well-known familiar story of the holocaust and ancient history of the Jewish people, the diaspora and the devastation caused indirectly through Jewish assimilation in Europe.

Wiesal however is more keen to emphasise the philosophical implications and the personal events, with the aftermath that has come to both his life and the world at large. His preconceptions on life have been separated and shattered like the hopes that he and the people of Sighet in Romania gave that “things could not possibly get any worse” or stoop any lower.

Each man and woman’s worst fears were confirmed, it was and has been another collective, truly refined display of human nature without prohibition, deterrence of will and force. It is the examination of what human beings possess given significant room and excuse to commit what man is capable of perpetrating on a massive and previously unknown scale.

Wiesal the optimistic and intelligent youth, the student of the Talmud, the reader of the Kabballah, the dutiful son and seeker of God in contemplation comes out of the book having been hardened, de-sensitized and made cynical after all that has happened and can possibly happen in the worst of all possible situations. To be honest however it must be stated that both Wiesal, his family and even the villagers of Sighet were warned and had opportunities to avoid what was coming and escape the “night” that would fall upon them. One man had prophetically escaped a death camp and came to tell them all what was coming their way -which gives it a distinctly contemporaneous feel to our generation and to those past where an eerie warning goes unheard and where a dreadful disaster comes upon a scoffing and incredulous people- with biblical like proportions and with typical ignorance this man was laughed at, for he could see what they could not, for he knew what was coming in the future and that the fires of persecution to the north were coming south, when Hungary actively involved itself in the persecution and the rounding up of Jewish people into hands of the WaffenSS.

Wiesal waits for the “rescuer” or the “deliverer” in the classical sense of the meaning, but the deliverer does not come, at least in the sense that Wiesal had assumed for and hoped in. His expectations are flattened and all that he has been taught and has valued is set aside as a void of meaning engulfs him from within.

He declares both God and man to be dead, as he recollects the very paces he took with his father through the selection process, between life and death, between camp labour and a burning pit. His descriptions of the camp are almost otherworldly, filled with judgments, hellish moments, here men act with a demonic passion for the system of brutality that can be in the hearts of men. Who can Wiesal trust and love in this world of betrayal, murder, survival, brute force and labour?

Truly his "night" is compared to that of what was called a dark night of the soul as St. John on the cross once termed it, or is it a realisation of what can happen and inevitably will happen in the wild house, that is mankind, perhaps if man is left to his desires he will inevitably destroy himself (to be ripped in two) or be subdued by the forces of evil that are bent on falsehood and destruction. Was Wiesal's world an idealistic shelter which kept him from the horrible reality that exists in its terrible manifestation. Perhaps one can argue that Wiesal was shocked and disturbed from within, after what had happened as his expectations were so high and so great that the experiences were beyond anything he could give understanding, reason, clarity or justification to. Wiesal's books are his long witheld expression, his breath that came after the trauma. Wiesal however could not see a reason or a redeeming factor or even a principle behind all that had happened and that is why he had declared "God and man to be dead." In part he is a spokesman for those many other people, both men and women who overtime, fell away from faith in God. In this book it is ever more poignant because he envelops the theme of the “chosen people” and he is just a 15 year old boy whose innocence has been stolen so soon in calamity that he cannot understand, nor does he even have ample time to think it over and so he comes to bewail for his people and think to himself in one powerful scene “where is God?” when a young boy with the “face of an angel”, hangs upon the gallows, with his face baring no suffering but silence and even peace. Then strangely there comes the thought in his head “he is there upon the gallows”, with the boy, (this infamous line is one of the most moving in the whole book). This book asks the honest questions each generation should ask (particularly those who want to ask why a good God would allow so much suffering to exist to those who are innocent of such circumstances).

This is the toughest inquiry for the believer and the non-believer alike, but it is nonetheless a truth and a fully rounded truth that needs to be addressed and which I would like to address further with this book review in the next part

NOTES:

 Does not man have a lot to answer for...and examine the way man treats man..its a pretty terrible legacy..one in which we all have a possible impetus to do bad. That's reality.