Night

The spare, almost skeletal quality of Elie Wiesel's prose parallels the depletion of the body, which overrules other needs and thoughts in a constant demand for nourishment. He recalls, "I was a body. Perhaps less than that even: a starved stomach. The stomach alone was aware of the passage of time." In flashes of memory as keen and fleeting as strobe-lit tableaus, the book depicts a few hand-holds of optimism for young Wiesel: friendly Jews playing in the orchestra, dreams of a free Jewish state in Israel, a secretive Jewess working in the warehouse whom Wiesel later recognizes in the Paris Metro. The fragility of his upbeat mood falls victim to Franek, who demands the gold crown from Elie's mouth. Waves of brutality sweep over earlier moments of camaraderie and swamp the respites of friendship and work with constant fear of beatings and victimization, which fall as haphazardly on the innocent as foretold in the biblical "rain on the just" that Christ cites in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:45). Wiesel's skillful style pares to a thin, lethal edge the collective hellishness of Buna and his own precarious hold on life. Tearing at his sanity is the fear that his compassion will capsize, leaving him to drown in his animal nature, sacrificing principles and even devotion to his father for the sake of survival.