Night By Elie Wiesel

The importance of the novel Night is something that cannot be debated. It tells the harrowing story of a boy who has lived through and seen some of the worst parts of the holocaust. When he isn’t believed at first and taken for a lunatic the book has a very boy who cried wolf vibe to it, though the reader knows better. The vicious truth is that the Holocaust was evil and brutal in more ways than anyone can truly imagine that wasn’t there. The recounting feels like a memoir through emotional truth telling, depictions of violence, deposition and, and testimony.  Many of these things happened to author Elie Wiesel who himself witnessed much of the same things he depicts in the novel. The abandoning of all hope his loss in faith and his recounting through the Eliezer’s eyes of the violence and turning on one another as a means of survival is a tragic truth that fills some of the most horrific parts of the Holocaust that maybe aren’t spoken of as much.

To teach the holocaust is our duty as instructors, and this novel does an incredible job of recounting and telling of the horrors in a way that most students can easily understand vocabulary wise as well as em-pathetically as well. Teaching an entire unit around this novel coupled with the background and history of the Holocaust itself would be nothing short of powerful and in many cases life and perspective changing. Learning about the Holocaust is heart wrenching enough as it is but getting a firsthand type retelling such as Wiesel does in his novel will do a service to the students putting them right in the thick of the violence and anguish those who were forced into concentration camps felt. This novel is something I plan on adding to my plans for teaching in the future.