Elie Wiesel's Night

8 Pages 1892 Words

te experience with the Final Solution,
historical experience...failed them as explanation."

The Jews of Sighet cannot believe Moshe's stories because nothing in their
experience has prepared them for the knowledge that the very fact of their
existence is punishable by death. His warnings go unheeded, even after
the Fascists come to power in Hungary, even after German troops appear
in Sighet, even after two Jewish ghettoes are created, then rapidly
liquidated,
right up until the moment the last group of Jews from Sighet arrives at
Birkenau. It is only as they disembark from the train, aware of the smell
of burning flesh, that they recognize the consequences of their disbelief;
faith in Moshe's stories might have given them the impetus to flee, to
hide, or to resist before it was too late.

Night has been described as a "negative Bildungsroman," a coming-of-age
story in which, rather than finding his identity as a young hero would
typically do, Eliezer progressively loses his identity throughout the course
of the narrative. This identity-disintegration is experienced individually
and collectively and symbolized in the early parts of the text by the loss
of possessions. After the Jews of Sighet learn that they are to be deported,
they abandon religious objects in the backyard of Eliezer's family. Later,
while they are waiting to be deported, they are forced to relie...