Night without Light: A Doubt of God

After reading Night of Elie Wiesel, we might find it short and also explicit in writing. Nonetheless it is much more difficult to fathom the whole spirit in the work than we think. Although Night is not necessarily a memoir, I still treat the work as one, since the every aspect we can see in the book makes itself a similarity of the works in the memoir genre. To the greatest extent, Eliezer, the protagonist, is the representative of the author Elie Wiesel himself. Indeed what happened to Eliezer is almost exactly what happened to Wiesel during the tragedy. Nevertheless Wiesel varies minor parts so as to space a distance between him and the protagonist. Undoubtedly, what he has suffered during the genocide is too horrifying to be imagined by those who have never ever undergone, not to mention that he, as the Holocaust survivor, is to remind and write about his story. Therefore he makes this distance to keep himself away somewhat from the traumata and pangs of writing the memoir.

When the memoir begins, Eliezer, a Jewish teenager, is ripped by Nazis from his hometown of Sighet in Hungarian Transylvania. On his way to ‘Night’, Eliezer starts to doubt his faith in a benevolent God. He wonders why God never intervenes to save the innocent people who are ‘selected’ by Nazis to be killed immediately. Particularly in one scene where, at Buna, the Gestapo hangs a young boy, a man then asks, “Where is God?” The only answer is nothing but silence. We, as readers, may think of a well-known story from the Hebrew Bible – the Binding of Isaac (Genesis 22). In the Akedah, Abraham sacrifices his only son, Isaac, to prove his faith to God who does not send an angel to save Isaac until Abraham lifts a knife to kill his son. Totally unlike the God in the Akedah, the God in Night always shows his silence and allows Nazis to shed innocent blood. From now on, Eliezer is losing his belief in God and struggles to retain his faith in Him.

As I’ve mentioned earlier, the short-volume work is never easy to discern its deepest thought. It raises many huge questions, the likes of skepticism about God and inhumanity towards humanity. The writer never depicts any hint to cast a meaningful answer towards those big questions and the readers seek for any hint of light. However neither Eliezer nor Wiesel has light during Holocaust (may be still none aftermath). At this point, I think that searching for the answer is no longer desperate. Instead, I believe that Wiesel expects his readers to remember not only the historical event but the emotional truth about the Holocaust bringing endless ‘nights’ to experienced individuals. Remembering is the urgent task which helps us tackle the problems and alerts us to change unrighteousness and unfairness. Now that night is without light, we are charged to shed light.