Night: A Memoir by Elie Wiesel (1st post)

In 1941, Eliezer Wiesel, the narrator, is a twelve-year-old boy living in the Transylvanian town of Sighet (then recently annexed to Hungary, now part of Romania). Night is the story of a young boy, Eliezer, who, like all Jews at the time were required to live in small ghettos, crowded together into narrow streets behind barbed-wire fences. From reading just the first section of the book, I thought it opened up very powerful, well written, and painfully told. And it knew it would be even more powerful and painfully told later on. Throughout the section, there are several possible themes such as Wiesel's loss of innocence, his confrontation with evil, inhumanity towards other humans, and his questioning of God's existence. The story of Moshe the Beadle, which is how Night opens, is one of the most painful examples of the Jews' refusal to believe the depth of Nazi evil. Eliezer relates that many Jews do not believe that Hitler really intends to hurt them, even though he can recall the times when the Nazis made life in Hungary extremely unbearable for the Jews. Wiesel is very descriptive when describes what the camps were like. He describes painfully in details the cruelty the Jews are treated during their deportation. I like how his descriptive writing really gives a lot images that really show you what the camps were like.
Wiesel's relationship with his father were one of the themes that stood out the most for me in the first section. He writes about their mutually supportive relationship, Wiesel’s growing feeling how his father is like a burden to him, and he talks about the guilt about having that feeling. In his memoir, Wiesel’s also questions God's existence, which is another theme. At the start of the story, he is a devoted Jew from a devoted community. He studies Jewish tradition faithfully and believes faithfully in God. When the Jews are deported, they continue to express their trust that God will save them from the Nazis. : “Oh God, Lord of the Universe, take pity upon us….” (Wiesel 28) I really like this quote because it really shows how much he believed and trusted in God and how much he wanted to leave that camp. However, his faith in god eventually begins to fade because of his horrific experiences in camp. The first part of the book really opened up with a lot of themes and characterization. And his use of imagery is what really kept more interested and wanting to read more.