An Open Tomb. A Summer Sun.

Let’s start with the genre. Night by Elie Wiesel is a nonfiction, autobiographical memoir about the Holocaust. I have learned about the Holocaust in school but have never actually read a book about the Holocaust (except for The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas which is not based on a true story and written for kids). Why? I’m not entirely sure. Maybe I did not want to always be reminded of this terrible time. But what about the people who can never forget, and who will never not be reminded of this? Reading Night was tough. When you read a fictional story, as I usually do,  you can remind yourself that even at the hardest parts of the book, these are made up characters and this is not real. For Night, you can’t. 

I think it is important to summarize the main idea of the text. Night is about the author’s real experiences in the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Though, I believe that the main idea is much more than his experiences. To summarize the main idea of the text we must look at the controlling and counter ideas from the last act climax. With the help of Professor Kopp I came to a controlling idea: adapting leads to survival.The counter idea: resistance kills.  Beginning on page 104, Elie Wiesel’s dad is dying. He is sick, close to death, and Elie keeps trying to save him from dying by giving him his food. His dad keeps resisting. Elie tries to give him bread, water, and soup. In the process, Elie is slowly killing himself, saving his portions for his father. 

“His last word had been my name. He had called out to me and I had not answered. I did not weep, and it pained me that I could not weep. But I was out of tears. And deep inside me, if I could have searched the recesses of my feeble conscience, I might have found something like: Free at last! . . .” (Wiesel, 112). 

Before I talk about the main idea of this text, I would like to refer back to Rachel’s first blog in which she mentions her idea of the premise of Night. “What would happen if the world remained silent in the face of injustice?” (Little, Blog One). Wow! We can look at this premise and build off of it for the main idea of the text of the controlling and counter ideas. Just how the world stayed silent, Elie stayed silent in the final moments of his dad’s life. Earlier in the text on page 91, Elie writes about a son who wanted to escape his father, Rabbi Eliahu,  in order to free himself from the burden and have a better chance at survival. He then prays that he will never do what Rabbi Eliahu’s son has done to his own father. This is a foreshadowing of what happens on page 112 when Elie’s father dies and he writes “Free at last!” The main idea of the text being: the death of his father made Elie a free man. 

 “Close reading means looking at what is actually on the page, reading the text itself, rather than some idea “behind the text.” It means noticing things in the writing, things in the writing that stand out” (Gallop, 7). Wiesel used many metaphors and similes in Night to help further explain or help readers make a comparison. One part of the text that contains some metaphors, found on page 17, was a surprising detail in the text.  

“Open rooms everywhere. Gaping doors and windows looked out into the void. It all belonged to everyone since it no longer belonged to anyone. It was there for the taking. An open tomb. A summer sun. ” (Wiesel, 17).

At first I had to reread this over again. First, he is describing the vacant town as an open tomb. Right after he is describing it as a summer sun. To me, they are two completely different concepts. An open tomb is something sad and dark. While a summer sun is something that is something happy and bright. But Wiesel was not saying that this time was both sad and dark and happy and bright. Then it clicked. The vacant town was something that was vulnerable for anyone to look into as they passed by and it was something for anyone to take in and “enjoy”. I found this surprising because for a story about the Holocaust, I would not except to come across metaphors such as a “summer sun”. I found myself taking many double takes throughout the book at certain metaphors and language used. Words such as joy, optimism, luck, miracle etc. can be found inside this book. Something that took me by surprise considering the genre and heavy topic.

Now let’s talk about code. I am still trying to grasp the idea of code. So let’s look at proairetic code. Reading using the proairetic code we can predict what is going to happen next using cause and effect. On page 50, we are introduced to Idek, the Kapo, who is described as sometimes going mad. Idek is described as a furious, threatening, and dangerous man. He had attacked both Elie and his father. On page 57, Elie gets a glimpse of Idek and a half naked girl. Elie laughs and Idek catches him looking and laughing. Using the proairetic code, we can assume that with Idek’s temper that this means something bad for Elie. On the following page, Elie is beaten until he passes out. When he awakens, he struggles to stand.