Rachel Little (AB)

Introduction

Books are never read in isolation. The way people read is influenced by a multitude of factors: books they have read in the past, the genre they are reading, their internalized cultural codes and roles they play within the narrative. While practicing the art of close reading, I had to reflect on the baggage that I carry with me into every narrative. The first challenge was taking inventory of every book I have ever read and reflecting on the stories that influenced me the most. The next challenge was to work with my classmates to practice close reading Giovani’s Room by James Baldwin. I had to push past my normal reading habits of only focusing on plot, or memetic register, and dig deeper into all three registers After the whole-class practice run with Giovanni’s Room, it was my turn to work with my reading group and practice the methods for ourselves. I wanted to push myself to read something heavier than my normal novels. I chose the book Night by Elie Wiesel to be my book for this journey. I knew the topic would be heavy and thematic while the writing might be poetic and dip into the synthetic register.

Night is an autobiography of Elie Wiesel’s life translated by his wife Marion Wiesel. Wiesel describes the challenges he faced as a young boy starting in 1944. His Jewish family was taken from their home town in Transylvania and forced into concentration camps. Elie and his father suffer many atrocities and witnessed horrific scenes that made them question their faith throughout their time in Auschwitz and other camps.

Part One: Read for

I have read Holocaust literature in the past, both historical fiction and memoirs. The books that stay with me the longest are the memoirs. The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom, has a place of honor on my bookshelf as a very influential book to my life. Corrie Ten Boom was a Christian woman from Holland who helped hide Jewish people in her house above her family’s watchmaking shop. Before reading the book, I expected heart-wrenching testimonies, but I did not expect Elie Wiesel’s poignant storytelling abilities. Initially, my “reading for” was to learn more about the Holocaust from Elie Wiesel’s point of view. I am familiar with the Old Testament of the Christian Bible and thus had a basic understanding of the first five books of Jewish Torah. It wasn’t until I had read all the way through Night and returned to the front of the book to read the forward that I came to understand what I was truly reading for. The forward was written by Francois Mauriac, a French writer who was one interviewed by a young Elie Wiesel, and his perspective of the book made me realize how much my Christian upbringing and views influence my reading and reading-for throughout Night. After Mauriac heard Elie Wiesel tell the story of his life, he thought to himself, “Did I speak to him of that other Jew, this crucified brother who perhaps resembled him and whose cross conquered the world? Did I explain to him that what had been a stumbling block for his faith had become a cornerstone for mine?” (xxi).

Before reading this book, I knew the narrative would grapple with “the absolute evils of man” as stated in the summary on the back of the book. “… the discovery of a demented and glacial universe where where to be inhuman was human” (Wiesel ix). Immediately, I thought the premise would be, “What would happen if humans stop acting humanely?”

The Nazis were not just try to eradicate Jewish people,“…they decided to leave behind a world in ruins in which Jews would never to have existed”(Wiesel vii). Stripped of their heritage and traditions.Their traditional hairstyles cut from their heads. Being forced to abandon their religious dietary restrictions while surviving on measly scraps. Having their very names taken away and replaced with tattooed numbers. Bodies stripped bare and left to wait in cold unforgiving lines.

“In a few seconds, we had ceased to be men.”
(Wiesel 37)

Did Elie and his father lose their humanity or did their tragedies bring their humanity to the surface? In one section of the book, we see both sides of the argument. First Elie says, “I shall never forget the gratitude that shone in his eyes when he swallowed this beverage. The gratitudes of a wounded animal. With these few mouthfuls of hot water, I had probably given him more satisfaction than during my entire childhood” (Wiesel 106-107). He is pointing out the animalistic base instincts that his father is exhibiting to survive by any means. Even while they are being stripped down to their base instincts, Elie still shows humanity by saying “I gave him what was left of my soup” (Wiesel 107). Then he admits his human faults, “But my heart was heavy. I was aware that I was doing it grudgingly. Just like Rabbi Eliahu’s Son, I had not passed the test” (Wiesel 107). Elie’s father is allowing the circumstances to make him less than human, just an eating, breathing, submissive machine. However, the circumstances are putting Elie in a position where he has to decide whether to help his father to the detriment of himself. My groupmate Jay put it this way in her blog ‘Who Knows upon What Soil They Fed Their Thirsty Roots?”, “When we lose everything – hope, family, rationality – all that remains are our barest of functions”.

“In one terrifying moment of lucidity, I thought of us as damned souls wandering through the void, souls condemned to wander through space until the end of time, seeking redemption, seeking oblivion, without any hope of finding either”.
(Wiesel 36)

While humanity may be a central component of the book, it is not the sole controlling idea. It took me until I read Elie Wiesel’s Nobel prize acceptance speech in the back of the book for a different premise to emerge in my mind. The ideas of acting humanely vs inhumanely were too broad. People can act like humans and still mistreat their fellow man. Most people would think that there are two options in life: choosing humanity or choosing inhumanity. But that is a fallacy that leaves out one important third option… choosing to do nothing.

“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere”.
(Wiesel 118)

I think that I found my new and improved premise. What would happen if the world remained silent in the face of injustice? I felt this premise was a three layered idea. In the largest scope, many people ignored the atrocities that Aldolf Hitler was inflicting on the Jewish people. Second, this premise might explain why Elie Wiesel felt compelled to share his experiences with the world. Wiesel says in his preface, “…to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time” (xv). And the third reason for this premise is a personal moment in Elie’s life that occurs in the last act’s climax.

Robert Mckee’s book Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting. In chapter 6, “Structure and Meaning,” Mckee explains that controlling ideas are

“…a story’s root or central idea….composed from these two elements, Values plus Cause,” and that it “expresses the core meaning of the story”.
(Mckee 116)

The value is the positive or negative charge that enters the character’s life in the last act’s climax. The cause is the reason that the protagonist’s life has changed to the value. Throughout the book, there are several instances of sons losing their fathers. The first instance was Bela Katz who was a strong man forced to exterminate people in the concentration camp furnaces. The audience learns a chilling story on page 35, where Bela was made to throw his own father in the furnace. The second story was on page 91, when Rabbi Eliahu’s son abandoned him during a death march because he couldn’t keep up the grueling pace. On page 101, when they were in railcars awaiting transfer, Elie witnesses a son, Meir, attacks his father for a measly piece of bread. These stories all come together as Elie fights an internal battle about protecting or abandoning his father. Elie relied on his father through all of the hardships that they faced together.

“To break rank, to let myself slide to the side of the road… My father’s presence was the only thing that stopped me…I had no right to let myself die. What would he do without me? I was his sole support.”
(Wiesel 86-87)

Originally, I thought that Elie was being sentimental and that he felt his father was a valid reason to stay alive. But then I noticed the bitterness in what Elie was saying. Did he really see his father as a reason to stay alive or a burden? Elie didn’t want to die because he felt a responsibility to protect his father. Leading up to the climax, Elie sees his father’s health decline. I believe that Elie resented the weakness that he was seeing in his father, saying,“He had become childlike: Weak, frightened, vulnerable” (Wiesel, 105). There is a role reversal. Elie is forced to become the protector and provider, while his father becomes the dependant. Elie was conflicted between not wanting to lose his father vs. wanting to be rid of the responsibility of being the stronger family member.

“If only I didn’t save him! If only I were relieved of this responsibility, I could use all my strength to fight for my own survival, to take care only of myself… Instantly, I felt ashamed, ashamed of myself forever”.
(Wiesel, 106)

The first controlling idea gleaned from the last act’s climax could be: abandoning burdensome responsibilities leads to self-preservation. The counter idea would then be: embracing responsibilities leads to death. These are opposing values of holding on vs letting go of responsibility and the cause can either lead to life or ruin.

My first attempt at controlling and counter ideas came from a recurring idea that I saw throughout the story. True controlling and counter ideas should come from the last act’s climax. In Night, Elie and his father relied heavily on each other for moral support and a will to survive. Wiesel describes this as, “The old, familiar fear: not to lose him” (109). The last act’s climax occurs after Elie and his father had suffered humiliation, starvation, and brutal beatings. Towards the end of the story, Elie’s father’s health is deteriorating. As I mentioned before, I believe that Elie resented his father for his weakness. In the last moments of his life, the father calls out for his son. Elie remained in his cot for fear that his father’s cries would result in having them both punished by the SS.

“I was afraid. Afraid of the blows. That was why I remained deaf to his cries. Instead of sacrificing my miserable life and rushing to his side, taking his hand, reassuring him, showing him that he was not abandoned, that I was near him, that I felt his sorrow, instead of all that, I remained flat on my back, asking God to make me father stop calling my name, to make him stop crying. So afraid was I to incur the wrath of the SS”
(Wiesel xi)

This leads me to find a new controlling idea. Staying silent to someone’s suffering leads to safety. And thus the counter idea could be that helping someone in their suffering leads to danger.

Wow. That’s a bummer. I wrote this initial controlling idea from my perspective of the events. However, I need to write the controlling ideas from Elie’s perspective. He would never phrase it like that. He might feel that “Other people slow you down”. Just like when the prisoners were forced to run on muddy dirt roads from one concentration camp to another and Elie’s father literally did slow him down. The counter idea is that helping someone may lead to help in return.

Do all the small moments of selflessness mean anything when they all accumulate to Ellie’s final refusal to comfort his father in the last moments of the man’s life? Do all those small moments still have intrinsic value or are they overshadowed by Ellie’s one moment of selfishness? Are we defined by our many little actions or the action that means the most? I for one, do not think that Ellie is a bad person. He had one moment in the whole book where he put his own safety over the comfort of his own father. He had to live with this decision for the rest of his life. I believe that is partly why he wrote this book, as a way to finally speak-up after a time when he felt he had to stay silent.

“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)

This section of the book’s value chart shows the positive and negative charges from the novel. The last act’s climax ends on a negative note and the entire book also ends with a negative charge.

Part Two: Form and Genre

Some might describe Night by Elie Wiesel as a nonfiction, autobiographical memoir about the Holocaust. One might ask, is it a true story? It is the author, Elie Weisel’s telling of a story about a boy named Eliezer Weisel in the year 1944. It is an amalgamation of Elie’s perception of events that happened to Eliezer, the character that he wants to present to the world, the information that he wants to tell the world, and told in the way that he wants to tell it.

While close reading Night, I found myself really enjoying scouring the book for semic codes. The repetitions of words, phrases and ideas are like bread crumbs left for the reader to pick up and find the path to more complex codes. The semic code is one of the five codes (semic, proairetic and hermeneutic codes, symbolic, cultural) discussed in chapter six of Kaja Silverman’s book The Subject of Semiotics.As I mentioned, my “reading for” during this book was to look for biblical references. Where is God in all of this? Everytime I noticed a biblical allusion, I made a note in the margins. Around page 20, a pattern emerged that felt familiar, although I couldn’t immediately put my finger on it. “Intent on preparing our backpacks, on baking breads and cakes, no longer thinking about anything” (18). The hungarian police rounded them up to send to ghettos, the Jewish families packed whatever they could for the unknown trials ahead. The Wiesels arrived at a ghetto in a village their uncle was forced to abandon. Upon entering the uncle’s recently vacated house, Elie noticed, “A platter of dough waiting to be baked” (20). It was the bread on the table that stuck out to me the most. This scene is reminiscent of their ancestors, the Hebrew, making their exodus from Egypt. Both groups of people packing all their belongings in such a hurry they barely had time to bake their bread properly. The Hebrews were forced to flee their homes in Egypt to escape slavery and oppression to find their Promised Land. The Hungarian Jews were forced to flee their homes to face oppression and extermination. In the Jewsih tradition, they still eat flat unleavened bread during the Passover meal in memory of leaving their houses before the bread had time to rise.

Bread is an important motif from the Bible. After the Hebrews left Egypt, they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years and during that God sent a flaky substance from the sky called manna. They were told to go out every morning and collect the flakes off the ground and if they followed the instruction they would be provided for. Elijah was a prophet for the book of 1 Kings who warned the king about an impending drought. Elijah followed God’s specific directions and ravens bearing bread and meat were sent by God to provide for him during the drought. Bread, in the Old Testament, represents provision and survival that only God can provide. Could the same be said in Night?

In the Night, bread is also a semic code for survival but not as God’s perversion, per say, but in a basic instinct for survival. On page 101, there is a horrific scene where the Jewish prisoners were forced into railcars to travel between concentration camps. Inside the train cattle car, the prisoners were forced to fight over crumbs of bread. Sons were attacking fathers out of sheer desperation for survival.

“Bread, soup – these were my whole life. I was a body. Perhaps less than that even: a starved stomach. The stomach alone was aware of the passage of time.”
(Wiesel 52)

This book is full heart breaking imagery. One thing that struck me as interesting was the juxtaposition of seemingly happy words during somber sections of the text. My group member Alexa pointed out in her blog “An Open Tomb. A Summer Sun.” that the unexpected use of words like joy, optimism, luck, miracle, etc. often caught our attention as being odd. The example that stuck out to me the most was on page 90. After endless hours of running in military formation, Elie and his father finally settle down for the night in a snow-covered corner of a freezing barn. They both know that sleeping in such harsh conditions is dangerous and decide to take turns dozing off. At one point, Elie wakes his father from a nap, and “Then he smiled. I shall always remember that smile. What world did it come from?”. Amid so much macabre discussion of death and giving up on life, Elie’s father smiles into his son’s face. Even the very next sentence says, “Heavy snow continues to fall over the corpses” adds to the grim truth of the situation (Wiesel 90). I can’t think of more of a juxtaposition between waking up happy to be alive then, in the next moment, watching the frozen bodies of those who will never wake.

After such a sad narrative, I shouldn’t have been surprised that the ending of the book was equally as s bleak. After being liberated, Elie thinks to himself, “From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me” (Wiesel 115). He has no hope for the future. No gratitude for surviving. However, I will admit that I expected Elie to show some joy at being set free and having his misery ended. This expectation was probably naive and the root of my expectation comes from my “reading for”. Other holohcaust literature that I have come in contact with usually end with the idea that they survived their ordeal to be able to share their story with the world. Elie does not feel anything of the sort. He feels quite the opposite actually.

“A miracle? Certainly not. If heaven could perform a miracle for me, why not others more deserving than myself?”
(Wiesel viii)

Part Three: Intertextual Codes

“‘Listen to me, kid. Don’t forget that you are in a concentration camp. In this place, it is every man for himself, and you cannot think of others. Not even your father. In this place, there is no such thing as father, brother, friend. Each of us lives and dies alone. Let me give you good advice: stop giving your rations of bread and soup to your old. You cannot help him anymore. And you are hurting yourself. In fact, you should be getting his rations…’” (Weisel 110-111).

This advice was given to Elie by the Blockalteste or concentration camp barrack supervisor. Elie is being given a choice. This choice is being influenced by the memories with his father from before The Occupation and those forged by the suffering they faced together, as well as, the faith and traditions they left behind and still carry with them.

One thing that made this narrative fundamentally different from the other books I have read from the Holocaust genre deals with the thematic register. Corrie Ten Boom says in her book, The Hiding Place, “This is what the past is for! Every experience God gives us, every person He puts in our lives is the perfect preparation for the future that only He can see.” She keeps her faith through all the hardship she faced. Corrie Ten Boom’s mentality that it is all part of God’s plan is fundamentally different from Elie Wiesel’s.

“Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever…Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my god and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes” (Weisel 34)

This conflict of opinion is part of a Job complex. Job is a character from the Bible, he was a wealthy, generous and upright man who trusted God. Despite his goodness, he lost everything: his children, livestock and possessions. He lamented and questioned God, but ultimately he stayed firm in his faith and he was blessed with more than he had before. There is a common belief that if you are a good person then good things happen. When you go to heaven you’ll be blessed. Yes, it’s all for the best. Conversely, If you are bad, bad things happen.

Being raised in the Jewish faith, Elie Wiesel was ingrained with a set of cultural codes. In the beginning of the Book Elie had great interest in studying religious texts. He blind faith did withstand the atrocities he faced. Despite knowing the story of Job, Elie relates to Job’s suffering, but does not believe he can uphold Job’s standards.

“Some of the men spoke of God: his mysterious ways, the sins of the Jewish people, and the redemption to come. As for me, I had ceased to pray. I concurred with Job! I was not denying His existence, but I doubted His absolute justice”
(Wiesel 45)

Elie is not quite declaring that “God is dead”, likes Nietzsche, but he is certainly at a crossroad. He has a whole set of religious and cultural values that grew up with but he is finding that they no longer fit in the world he lives in. On one hand, he was told all his life to honor his father. On the other hand, it is a common cultural code that parents should never have to see their children die. Elie know the story of Job’s great anguish. In the face of hardship, still keep the faith or loose faith and risk being condemned. Elie needed to decide whether to blindly follow his cultural codes in a dangerous situation vs. giving up the cultural code to save himself. If he gives up his religious cultural codes, is he risking his eternal souls for safety on Earth? Or is it better to suffer on Earth in the hopes of a great heavenly reward? This presents a network of controlling values. In a network of controlling values there is a problem that exists in the world. The context is the reason is why the problem existence and the purpose is the reason why people subscribe to.

Networks help readers to look at symbolic codes. For example this network deals with “faith vs no faith” and “the random vs the preordained”.

Part Four: Rhetoric of Narrative

As the actual reader I project my thoughts, feelings and views onto the text. I bring my rhetorical stance. We read what we want to read and convince ourselves that it is just as we say it is. Readers have a set of controlling values and the text has a set of controlling values. The gap between the two sets of values often determines how likely the reader is to submit or resist. Good writers are aware of the gap and design a specific role for the reader to play. A good writer is like a puppet master, they create a narrator and addressees that interact with one another. James Seitz A Rhetoric of Reading describes the relationship by saying, “All readings are themselves narratives, consisting of characters (that is, virtual readers) who work to persuade the reader that the text should be read in the light of a particular value or set of values” (152). The light in which we view these sets of values creates different audiences. Every story has an actual audience who are real people with a variety or backgrounds and the author has not real control over. Within the text, there are narrative audiences who aren’t real people but rather like rhetorical roles the reader can step into. And then there is an authorial audience who is aware of all the audiences and can make decisions about whether to resit or submit to certain roles. A capable reader can see the interactions play out. The more you participate in the authorial audience the more access to the narrative audience.

In order to find the audiences, I decided to look at the author’s purpose for writing the narrative. Elie Wiesel muses on this topic in his preface. He is very unsure about his actual reason for writing Night.

“In retrospect I must confess that I do not know, or no longer know, what I wanted to achieve with my words. I only know that without this testimony, my life as a writer or my life, period would not have become what it is: that of a witness who believes he has a moral obligation to try to prevent the enemy from enjoying one last victory by allowing his crimes to be erased from human memory.”
(Wiesel viii)

Wiesel’s use of the word “witness” struck me as intriguing. “Witness” as a noun means a person that saw an event. But the act of bearing witness means telling about an experience. The term witness has associations with giving testimonies in the courtroom and also sharing faith testimonies. In a way Elie is doing all three; he is the observer of atrocities, the bearer of bad news, and attesting his loss of faith.

The relationship between the author and narrator is interesting in autobiographical texts. James Phelan in his book, Living to Tell about It: A Rhetoric and Ethics of Character Narration, describes this relation by saying, “In nonfictional narrative, the extent to which the narrative act is doubled in this was will depend on the extent to which the author signals her difference from or similarity to the “I” who tells the story” (Phelan 18). Elie Wiesel was about thirty when he published his original French version and in his late seventies when the newer translation version of Night was published. However, the story is narrated by a sixteen year old, Eliezer Wiesel, with his fresh as a newborn fawn view of the world. Furthermore, “…the author’s treatment of the narrator and the authorial audience will indicate something of his or her ethical commitment toward the telling, the told and the audience” (Phelan 20-21). The narrator’s role as a witness implies that he plans to tell the truth to the best of his ability. Whether the audience chooses to interpret the narrative as truth is where the distinction between the different audiences emerges.

Wiesel’s use of the word “witness” opened up this idea to me that the relationship between the audiences and narrator is rather like a courthouse drama. Eliezer Wiesel steps up to the stand to present his case. He presents his testimony; his perception of his experiences. He does not ask to be believed. He asks to be listened to. “The witness has forced himself to testify. For the youth of today, for the children who will be born tomorrow. He does not want the past to become their future”. Just as Moishe the Beadle bore witness at the beginning of the Occupation, to what was happening outside of their district, and no one would heed his warning. Moishe pleaded outside the synagogues, “‘Jews, listen to me! That’s all I ask of you. No money. No pity. Just listen to me!”. Elie stayed by his side despite not believing a word Moishe said and “Once, I asked him the question: ‘Why do you want people to believe you so much? In your place I would not care whether they believe me or not…” (Wiesel 7). The boy who said he did not care whether he was believed is not the same man who is presenting his story to the nations. Does Elie still truly not care or is it a deflecting tactic. Elie pouring his heart out on the pages of Night is like a confession. A confession implies guilt.

The authorial and narrative audiences play jury members. Much like a real jury, there is a spectrum of submission and resistance to the testimony being presented. To find the narrative audience, one must ask oneself who must I become to understand this narrative? Wiesel expects his narrative audience to be so innocent and naive that they will take anything as fact. They believe the story to be too terrible to be anything but true. They may believe him but they will never understand.

“Could men and women who consider it normal to assist the weak, to heal the sick, to protect small children, and to respect the wisdom of their elders understand what happened there? Would they be able to comprehend how, within that cursed universe, the masters tortured the weak and massacred the children, the sick, and the old?”
(Wiesel ix-x)

Weisel doesn’t think anyone can truly understand what he has been through unless they were survivors too. This leads to the ideal narrative audience. In his article “Truth In Fiction: A Reexamination of Audiences,” Peter Rabinowitz describes the ideal narrative audience as the audience who “believes the narrator, accepts his judgment, sympathizes with his plight, laughs at his jokes even when they are bad” (134). When describing the ideal narrative audience, it is often said that they understand the narrator better than he knows himself. And I thought, who better than his own wife to represent the ideal audience. Wiesel’s first version of this book was written in Yidish. “Writing in my mother tongue — at that point close to extinction — I would pause at every sentence, and start over and over again.”, Elie wrote his story in a language that many would not understand (ix). However there was one person who did understand, “… many of my other works have been translated by Marion, my wife, who knows my voice and how to transmit it better than anyone else” (xiii). As a holcaust survivor herself, she still lived through those dark times. As his wife, she would have understood the things about Elie’s personal life, upbringing and the pieces of him he didn’t write on paper.

The authorial audience is like the jury’s deliberation. The authorial audience sees all the facts, all the key players and decides the verdict. They understand the historical events surrounding Elie’s story. On page eleven of the book, Elie’s father can’t see the harm in wearing the Star of David pinned to their clothes and says, “The yellow star? So what? It’s not lethal…”(Wiesel 11). An authorial audience can see the irony and significance of this statement. The authorial audiences are the innocent or guilty verdict. Is Elie telling the truth? Do we the jury find this man to be guilty of abandoning his father, rejecting his God and breaking his cultural codes; charging him with the penalty of having his sins read over and over again so long as his book exists? Or, do we the jury find him innocent; a man who was a victim of unspeakable acts, who did what he could to survive? Was the book published to prove his innocence and pacify his personal guilt or to punish himself? Groupmate Venesa put it this way in her blog “Into That Night” that the narrator “… is asking us to look at this situation in two ways: One, he wants us to look at this text from the innocence of himself and his family…The second way he wants us to look at this is to understand where they came from and the way they had to adapt to their situation”.

Wiesel is aware that attitudes have changed toward the topic of the Holocaust. The generations that were closer to the tragic event chose not to relive their experiences. Subsequent generations’ attitudes have changed, “This may be because the public knows that the number of survivors is shrinking daily, and is fascinated by the idea of sharing memories that will soon be lost. For in the end, it is all about memory, its sources and its magnitude, and, of course, its consequences” (xv). This group is the actual audience. The actual audience is made up of real people with a variety of background knowledge and are thus the hardest group to pinpoint. The actual audience changes over the years as well. The actual audience in 1945 would find it easier to join the authorial audience than the actual audience from 2020.

Reflection:

When I signed-up for a course called “How Writers Read”, I thought to myself I’m excited about the reading part but I hope there is not too much writing. I’m not exactly sure what I expected this class ro be but it certainly exceeded my expectations. This process inverted my perceptions of myself as a reader and a writer. I thought the world was divided into two kinds of people: the readers and the writers. I believed that some people had a predilection for one over the other. Some people speak and others listen. I viewed myself as solely a reader. Before this class, I thought pretty highly of myself as a reader. I read almost every day, I try to read a variety of genres, I usually just sit back and enjoy the plot, but I occasionally can make myself think about themes. I couldn’t see why writers as a group might read any differently than other groups of humans. I didn’t know writers read, but I was willing to try. Jane Gallop says in her article about close reading, “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” (7). The first barrier to my being able to close read efficiently may seem inconsequential, but it revealed itself to be more significant that I originally thought. I was told that for this course I would have to annotate in my books. I internally cringed at the thought of putting my pencil to the pristine pages of a novel. To me, it feels sacrilegious to write in books.

When I wrote about this feeling of sacrilege in my first blog, my professor immediately inquired as to why I felt that way. My response was that books were meant to be shared and I didn’t want my notes to influence anyone else’s reading experience. However, that was not entirely true. It wasn’t that I cared if my writing influenced anyone, it was the worry that my writing would not influence anyone. I didn’t feel my writing was worth the ink, worth the marring of the margins, or worth reading. I was afraid to make my mark. I was afraid to expose myself to the world.

To my utter surprise, when I actually put my pencil to the paper, I enjoyed the private conversation between myself and the author. My professor says that writing in the book is a way to talk back to the book. It was my way of letting the author know I see what you did there and I understood your joke.

I was submitting to a narrative. The premise is: What would happen if a person refused to put their ideas on paper? I decided to change the premise to a positive charge: What would happen if a person allowed themselves to write back to the world?

If this journey taught me anything it is these essential questions: What role am I playing in this narrative? Will I submit or resist? And whatever I choose, I need to be willing to write in the book and leave my mark on the narrative.

Works Cited

Gallop, Jane. “The Ethics of Reading: Close Encounters.” Journal of Curriculum Theorizing (Fall, 2000): 7-17.

McKee, Robert. “Structure and Meaning.” Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting. New York: Regan, 1997. 110-131.

Phelan, James. “Introduction.” Living to Tell About It: A Rhetoric and Ethics of Character Narration. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005.

Seitz, James E. “A Rhetoric of Reading.” Rebirth of Rhetoric: Essays in Language, Culture, and Education. By Richard Andrews. London: Routledge, 1992. 141-55.

Silverman, Kaja. The Subject of Semiotics. New York: Oxford UP, 1983.

Wiesel, E. (2006). Night (1137842447 857167831 M. Wiesel, Trans.). New York, NY: Hill and Wang.

Night Blogs

Blog 1: “And the World Remained Silent” by Rachel Little

Blog 2: “An Open Tomb. A Summer Sun.” by Alexa DePalma

Blog 3:“Who Knows upon What Soil They Fed Their Thirsty Roots?” by Jay Napoliello

Blog 4: “Into That Night” by Venesa Porter

Book one: Night

Blog 1: And the World Remained Silent

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