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A review by calarco
Night by Elie Wiesel
5.0
Starting as a twisting knot in the gut, this narrative blooms into an all-encompassing dread that lingers long after you put down the book.
I initially read this book when I was 13 years old, about the same age as Elie Weisel when he opens his account in 1941. It left me sad and angry that people could so systematically be dehumanized in every sense of the word. By that age, I already knew that there were dangers from which parents could not protect children, but this novel opened my mind to potential realities where a whole society could pervert justice and allow for so many souls to be dismissed and destroyed. As an adult, I re-read this novel and feel all these same feelings, but now with an understanding of how complacency and apathy allow for such atrocities to occur.
Now, I am also familiar with Giorgio Agamben's concept of "homo sacer," or an individual who has been set apart from common society, who is "hallowed" or "cursed," and as such may be killed by anyone without judicial or moral consequence. A person devoid of personhood. Even today when you read through the news and see the belittling, scapegoating, and othering of minority groups by groups clinging to power, you can see the beginnings of a fragile society dipping into murky waters. But that is why people resist.
Ultimately, there a number of important Holocaust narratives that account human horrors and share paramount truths. Elie Wiesel survives and recounts a truly ugly experience. His memories with his father are especially moving. Eliezer undeniably suffers, but he also rawly reveals the inner-ugliness left by the dehumanization process. His personal account of agony is fully fleshed out in every way, and I suspect that is why it remains so relevant to this day.
The part of this description that has stayed with me through these years, is how the oppressed in the concentration camps were more likely to snap at and fight among each other, rather than rally against the oppressors who institute and regulate this new unjust order. This peculiar facet of human nature that may lie at the truth of why people lean towards complacency, is certainly something that deserves to be further explored.
As the New York Times accounted this is, "a slim volume of terrifying power."
I initially read this book when I was 13 years old, about the same age as Elie Weisel when he opens his account in 1941. It left me sad and angry that people could so systematically be dehumanized in every sense of the word. By that age, I already knew that there were dangers from which parents could not protect children, but this novel opened my mind to potential realities where a whole society could pervert justice and allow for so many souls to be dismissed and destroyed. As an adult, I re-read this novel and feel all these same feelings, but now with an understanding of how complacency and apathy allow for such atrocities to occur.
Now, I am also familiar with Giorgio Agamben's concept of "homo sacer," or an individual who has been set apart from common society, who is "hallowed" or "cursed," and as such may be killed by anyone without judicial or moral consequence. A person devoid of personhood. Even today when you read through the news and see the belittling, scapegoating, and othering of minority groups by groups clinging to power, you can see the beginnings of a fragile society dipping into murky waters. But that is why people resist.
Ultimately, there a number of important Holocaust narratives that account human horrors and share paramount truths. Elie Wiesel survives and recounts a truly ugly experience. His memories with his father are especially moving. Eliezer undeniably suffers, but he also rawly reveals the inner-ugliness left by the dehumanization process. His personal account of agony is fully fleshed out in every way, and I suspect that is why it remains so relevant to this day.
The part of this description that has stayed with me through these years, is how the oppressed in the concentration camps were more likely to snap at and fight among each other, rather than rally against the oppressors who institute and regulate this new unjust order. This peculiar facet of human nature that may lie at the truth of why people lean towards complacency, is certainly something that deserves to be further explored.
As the New York Times accounted this is, "a slim volume of terrifying power."