Night: A Memoir by Elie Wiesel (Final Reflections)

Overall I thought that “Night” by Elie Wiesel was a very well written and nicely put together book. The images are very terrifying, and the choice of words used by the author is so effective. There are so many themes in this book such as Wiesel’s struggle to maintain faith in God, inhumanity towards other humans, and the importance of father-son bonds. One of the themes that really stood out to me was inhumanity towards other humans. Wiesel's spiritual struggle owes to his shaken faith not only in God but in everything around him. After experiencing such cruelty, Wiesel can no longer make sense of his world. Wiesel also becomes aware of the cruelty of which he himself is capable. Everything he experiences in the war shows him how horribly people can treat one another—a revelation that troubles him deeply. One quote that stood out was- “Our first impressions of the Germans were most reassuring. . . . Their attitude toward their hosts was distant, but polite.” So many aspects of the Holocaust are incomprehensible, but perhaps the most difficult to understand is how human beings could so slaughter millions of innocent victims. The books left a lot of opening endings. It makes me as the reader want to know what happened afterward. Such as how Wiesel reunited with his family, what he did after the war, and so on. Despite the incomplete ending, I really did enjoy this book. How much these Jews had gone through in these camps just amazes me that there were actually people that had survived.