Night!

Elie Wiesel's Night astonished me with its amazing story and insight that it truly gave into the Holocaust.

One theme of this book is that even in the most adverse situations if a person has enough courage to stand up to their oppressor they can be a hero. Also I learned that even out of the worst situations amazing people still come forward and change the world, much like Elie Wiesel. The author's style is great for me because he is not too long winded, I mean the author told almost his whole life story in under 200 pages. While reading this book I can feel the setting beginning to form around me and the deep, dark, and depression filled state of mind that takes over me.

The main character Elie Wiesel is very believable because I see young men just like himself everyday. He is normal kind of like all of the people where he is from , except throughout this book I got to go deep inside of his mind and see the darkness and courage that lied there. Dr. Mengele is also another character that comes to mind because of his iron fist rule and no nonsense authority. He reminds of a few coaches I have had throughout my football career and he definitely is essential to the overall plot of the story.

The setting is very different of that from the world that I live in today because I live in the United States of America. The land of the free and home of the brave is all I have known my whole life and what little authority I do have in life only comes from my parents. There is really nothing that I am forced to do unlike the circumstances that Elie Wiesel went through in the concentration camp.

The plot of the book begins with Elie Wiesel living in the town of Sighet with his family and enjoying a very simple life. This is until Moshe the Beadle, a Jew from Sighet, deported in 1942, with whom Elie had once studied the cabbala, comes back and warns the town of the impending dangers of the German army. No one listens and time goes by and after a while the Germans have set of ghettos for the Jews and start deporting them. When Elie and his family arrive at the concentration camp he is separated from his mother and sisters. In order to even stay together Elie and his father must lie about their ages and as they walk into the camp they notice something horrible about a ditch. The camp is so harsh that it has Elie questioning his religion and he becomes more self absorbed the longer he stays.

This book reminds me of the times of slavery in the Americas because African Americans under went some of the same harsh conditions that Jews did during the time of Nazi Germany, and deeply admire both of these races of people for being able to put these times behind them and still succeed.