Blog Post #1 Ella

So far in the novel Night, I in relation to the events that have happened, I have felt helpless, angered, and aghast. The first example of this, though not believed by the town at the time, was what was inflicted upon the foreign people of the Jewish race. They were forced to dig huge trenches. When they had finished their work, the men from the Gestapo began theirs. Without passion or haste, they shot their prisoners, who were forced to approach the trench one by one and offer their necks. Infants were tossed into the air and used as targets for the machine guns (Wiesel 6) To me, and hopefully others, this seemed entirely inhumane, like the Gestapo were void and emotionless. Even though the Jewish children were too young to be influenced by their religion, their life was ended before it could truly begin. This to me is especially monstrous and sickening, along with the fact that the parents, while waiting to be executed, might as well have had to watch this happen to their children. As if one time wasn’t enough, I was completely nauseated when nearly the same thing happened a second time as infants were cremated, tossed into the fire with such ease one would think that they were garbage. In the reading so far, the ignorance and indifference of people has amazed me. On the way, we saw some young German girls. The guards began to tease them. The girls giggled. They allowed themselves to be kissed and tickled, bursting with laughter. They all were laughing, joking and passing love notes to one another. At least, during all that time, we endured neither shouting nor blows (46). While these girls are living their best lives, next to them, people are practically being tortured. Even if used to seeing this, how can the girls not object to, or at least pity the prisoners. While ensnared by the guards, they have seemed to have lost their conscious as well as their moral compass. Elie Wiesel’s cadence while writing leaves the right amount of time for the blow of his words, of his memory, to hit and sink in. “Optimism soon revived: The Germans will not come this far. They will stay in Budapest. For strategic reasons for political reasons… In less than three days, German Army vehicles made their appearance on our streets (9). At the beginning of the novel the rhythm of events was a fast tempo, but not necessarily so. By doing that, Elie is able to keep the readers completely captivated, not bogged down in the small details of uneventful days. He has been successful so far in making this novel a masterpiece.