TOW #3- Night By Elie Wiesel (IRB post)

This marking period I am reading Night by Elie Wiesel. It is a memoir about Wiesel’s experiences in the Holocaust. So far, I am only halfway through the book. Wiesel, the main character, has left his “normal” life, and has been deported to multiple concentration camps, including Birkenau and Auschwitz. He has been separated from his mother and sister, and he only has his father left as they work in the labor camps. After reading the preface to the book, written by Elie Wiesel himself, I learned that his purpose in writing is to inform people of the horrors through which he lived so similar horrors do not occur in the future. Wiesel writes, “The witness has forced himself to testify. For the youth of today, for the children who will be born tomorrow. He does not want his past to become their future” (xv). Based on this excerpt from the preface, it seems as though Wiesel is writing to inform the children of his experiences. However, the topic of the book, as well as the graphic detail to which he explains events (such as when he writes, “Never shall I forget the small faces of children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky” (34)) does not seem to be appropriate for children to read. Therefore, the audience is the general public, and Wiesel is trying to inform everybody about his previous experiences in order to prevent something so horrendous from happening again. In the beginning of the preface, Wiesel questions why he wrote the book. Based on his response to this question, it is clear that the occasion for which Wiesel is writing the book is because he felt he needed to put into words what happened, since he couldn’t speak and stand up for himself back then, and since he feels God let him survive for some greater purpose. In order to meaningfully achieve his purpose, Wiesel uses the narrative mode of writing in order to make the reader feel as though they are living the events with Wiesel. Additionally, Wiesel uses many metaphors to help describe what it is like to live through the Holocaust, as well as to intensify the monstrosities he lived through (such as by writing “...his aides were veritable monsters” (44)). As a result, Wiesel is able to achieve his purpose of writing to inform people of his past in order to prevent events like the Holocaust from happening in the future.