Night By Elie Wiesel Night Summary

Wiesel’s approach in writing a literary work is to present the role of a prophet through a character who challenges madness. Historically, “the Hebrew prophets got this sort of treatment from the defenders of the status quo, Jesus of Nazareth got it from the Romans, Archbishop Romero got it from the military, and six million Jews got it from the Nazis” (Brown 180). In each case, fear is the prevailing motif that ultimately led to evil. This is the mystical madness that Wiesel tries to insert into his writing since it gives answers to questions about life and faith. However, Wiesel’s madmen provide different views about one’s purpose in life in this mystical, maddening world and taking them seriously leads to a more serious question: “What if

They all share the notion of madness like many of his stories. Night is an autobiographical account of the author documenting his Holocaust experience at the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. The story begins with descriptions of Moshe the Beadle who is loved by the village people of Sighet despite all the negative characteristics that most people associate with madmen. He is described “as awkward as a clown. He made people smile, with his waiflike timidity … dreaming eyes, their gaze lost in the distance. He spoke little. He used to sing, or, rather, to chant” (Night 3). The chanting or humming to oneself is perceived by many as a sign of madness. The attitude of the village people changes when Moshe miraculously returns after being taken to an extermination camp. He returns to tell his people what he saw and warns them to flee. What Moshe mentioned is unfathomable when he said that the “train with the deportees had crossed the Hungarian border and, once in Polish territory, had been taken over by the Gestapo … They were forced to dig huge trenches. When they had finished their work, the men from the Gestapo … without passion or haste, they shot their prisoners” (Night 6). Moshe later also said that Gestapo tossed babies in the air and used them as practicing targets for machine guns. This horrible experience changed him drastically, but the village people did not believe him. In this way, he resembles a Holocaust survivor who tells his story of the Holocaust and is rebuked by Holocaust deniers. People of Sighet pity him and laugh at him, thinking he was gone mad. At this point, Moshe becomes very isolated from his community. As a result, weary of speaking, he keeps silent most of the time. He became a wandering Jew in the village with his eyes “cast down, avoiding people’s gaze” (Night 8). His final appearance in Night was when the Germans stormed Sighet and arrested all the Jews. He