![]() I know Elie Wiesel milling around with his family and hanging out with friends and acquaintances was not what this book was about, but I kind of wish the first chapter was a little longer so we could have gotten a better sense of the dynamic between him, his parents, and his sisters. We know what he does in the horribly brutal situations he is thrown into, but we don’t get a very good idea of what he was like before all that happened. Other than his intense commitment to his faith, Wiesel portrayed his adolescent self as kind of a blank slate. I also would have liked to have learned more about Wiesel’s life as a relatively ordinary teenager before his life was torn apart by the Nazis and what his family dynamic is like. It made me feel a little disconnected at times, despite the book being undeniably powerful. Since the book is extremely short (Elie Wiesel’s original version was much, much longer, and as an aspiring writer I can imagine how difficult it must of been for him to cut so much out!) events move very quickly, and I felt that made it a little hard for me to follow the different camps Wiesel was sent to and the narrative’s transitions. ![]() As impossible as this seems, Elie Wiesel even incorporates a little bit of mordant humor into the narrative. To me the fact that he survived at all proves he had more courage than most people will ever have. He wasn’t generally extremely brave or selfless, he was just a kid in a terrifying situation. This is a hard thing for anyone to admit, but it shows that he was very in tune with the darkness that existed within him. Elie can’t even place trust in some of the people he’s in the same boat with, and he tries to protect his father despite his urge to protect only himself. Some of the prisoners in the concentration camps savagely abuse and exploit fellow victims, out of desperation or opportunism or maybe even a little of both. The book wastes no time getting to the point where the author as his family are taken from their Romanian village and deported and it does a good job of portraying different facets of human nature and the different people he meets throughout the horror who make a lifelong impression on him. It’s obviously very dark, but Elie Wiesel is an excellent writer who delivers his story in a straightforward, unsentimental way. Night is a true-life account of the main character’s experiences as a concentration camp survivor, and the loss of almost his whole family. ![]() However, it should come as no shock to anybody that it’s probably not a great book to read when you’re feeling depressed. I’m glad I tried again as an adult, because Night is just as good as everybody says it is, and it’s probably a book everybody should read. I started reading this book several times as an immature teenager and then put it down because I couldn’t get into it.
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