When I read this short book, I was in an anxious mood, for I would move off to college the next day. I was very full of my own thoughts, very concerned with how things would turn out for me. This book gave me pause, and turned my mind toward darker topics. .
Night started out so happily, that I knew it had to take a turn for the worse. As if the cover, portraying a desolate youth surrounded by harsh barbed wire, weren't enough, I'd heard from several sources that this thin volume pertained to the Holocaust. I'd seen pictures of heaps of skeletal figures, with shaven heads, and been told horrible stories of the hardships of the Jews. Since early elementary school, we were told of the Holocaust, so I thought this would be old news for me. I'd seen documentaries of concentration camps, interviews of survivors, read all sorts of short stories on Nazi brutality. With all this previous knowledge, Night still surprised me.
Elie Weisel's flat portrayal of the facts was coldly shocking. He didn't analyze the inhumanity of the acts he was forced to endure. He didn't try to make me feel his emotions. The reactions were solely up to the reader. To read of how he lost touch with his god is perhaps the hardest hitting aspect. Elie could no longer draw strength from his family, and then he renounced his god. This personal strength and self-reliance deeply affected me. I don't know if we all have this solid inner core to stand on, but I'd like to think so.
