The Night and I.

Take a step forward. One backward.

Realize the enveloping darkness.

 

Within one’s soul, lies the lifeless night…

 

It captures me and I resist.

Resisting with my limbs, body, and mind.

Thrashing at nothing.

---

but the irrevocable pain… 

---

Only the unspeakable loneliness sinks in,

into the heart of the Night.

On my knees

I remember:

the  gentle touch of a mother,

the warm, mellow light of Day,

the playfulness of a child, 

the care,

love…

and feel it slowly corrode away

into the Night, 

deep within,

swallowing me whole and I’m holding on so tight, 

to not let it be stolen by the hands of brutality and remorse,

to resist the urge of death, death near me, death all around me.

To just hold on to what belongs.

---

I let go…

---

and I wander through the Night feeling its claws gnaw against my throat;

choking me and I am gone-

 

and life, life is taken away from them…

 

And the sun still rises from the horizon;

its warmth reaching out, softly caressing the souls of the damned. 

like winter turns to spring, nights turn to days-

“The light, Oh the light.”

The Night dies. 

 

...and what will be left of me?

 

 

 

I was on transit that night when I had finished the book, “Night” by Elie Wiesel, and I lost complete control of the upsurge of emotions that overthrew me. I sat there, on the train, still, just simply contemplating, tears flowing from my eyes. I had built a heart that understood and a mind that allowed me to imagine, but I did not have the capability to truly absorb what had been written and I had to release what I was feeling, which came in the form of this poem. In fact it took me a couple of nights to allow myself to let go from the sheer terror and pain of this book to let my emotions flow onto paper. And hereby I shall explain my own poem, a poem that illustrates the book Night through my eyes and my heart.

 

WRITTEN EXPLANATION

When I first wrote this poem it was as if I was coughing up words onto the paper to simply release some of the emotions that enveloped me through the book “Night”. As I edited this poem I came to realize my theme/message in the form of a question was hidden in the poem, which I deciphered through the use of fonts and placement.

Within one’s soul, lies its own lifeless night…and life, life is taken away from them; what will be left of me?

Although the reign of the Nazi Party had brought upon hell in Eliezer’s life, the largest component of his suffering was what he experienced internally: the loss of faith, loss of his ties with his father, and the loss of his will to live. All these pains of Elie were induced by external factors but belonged within him and in his heart. Therefore, I noted this pain, this inner struggle, as ‘night within one’s soul’. 

“From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me.”(115)

I used the word lifeless in order to encompass the fact that his experience in these concentration camps did end and that his “Night” did come to its conclusion. Through the form of liberation, he was suddenly thrust out of suffering and his terrors were over… this sudden loss of pain and struggle equals the sudden loss of will to survive as that was the only thing that remained after enduring countless sacrifices and tortures. After his life, his liveliness, and his hope was taken away from him, his reason to struggle for survival was taken away as well. To take away his only drive as a human was what taking away suffering meant for Elie. Therefore I used the word lifeless in order to portray the death of night within him leading to him seeing himself as a corpse.

Through Elie’s story, he slowly starts to recognize the loss of humanity in the others around him, such as the incident with the bread on their way to Buchenwald. I used the word life twice to emphasize the fact that people’s literal lives were being taken away, as well as the humanity of the ones that survived the terror. This also connects to the idea of Day, as I chose the word life to portray the warmth of Day which is further explored in the poem.

The final part of this, which takes a form of a question, is what relates Elie’s experience to my own life. In the literal sense, I used this to draw out the pains of Elie as he sees in himself a corpse; where both his Day and Night had died. He had no more hope left to live but his terror ended; leaving him with nothing but emptiness.

“Deep inside me, I felt a great void opening.”(69)

In the sense of the writer, I wrote the line to indicate what we need to leave behind in our lives after knowing what Elie had gone through as these terrors that Elie speaks about have died in my life before I was born. I only know of the light and love that he had fought to achieve. Therefore, the ending question is a question to myself and all the potential readers of this poem: How can I(we) go on to live my life peacefully and nonchalantly when I know that in some parts of this world today, innocent lives face the horrors that Elie had once faced? What am I(we) going to do with what is left of Elie Wiesel and his story? As a reader of this fervent experience, this is the great void that opened in me: The question into the darkness and terrors of one’s life that executed this torture. Tell me, what is the difference between the ones that executed these horrors, the ones that suffered from them, and the ones that read these experiences? We are all human! Therefore I ask myself: what can I do to fight this internal evil that resides within me and in others? This is my underlying ultimate question in the line “what will be left of me?”

The Night and I.

Take a step forward. One backward.

Realize the enveloping darkness.

To begin this poem I used the phrase “The Night and I” to bring forth the memories of Elie’s experience in the camps. He was alone in the camp for survival. He was alone in his struggles to maintain faith, his connection with his father, and his hope for life. Thus it is simply stated, “The Night and I.”

“I was suffocating.”(102)

Elie faced these terrors with his own will and was becoming suffocated by the tortures at the camps. As a reader I was suffocated, not in the pains of Elie, but in the sheer cruelty that humankind has committed and in the realization of these truthful events. It was far too much to process all the pains that he had gone through and recognize them to be history. I feel utterly vexed by the crimes humans are able to commit. It is this vexation that suffocates me as a reader of the poem and as a human that lives after these tragedies. 

“I tried to rid myself of my invisible assassin.”(94)

In the second and third line I wanted to emphasize how this Night was inescapable; no matter where Elie went or what he did in the camps, there seemed to be no end. This can also be held true in human nature; this hatred rooting from prejudice can still be seen anywhere and everywhere in the world today. How can we escape? This is human. This is the world.  

It captures me and I resist.

Resisting with my limbs, body, and mind.

Thrashing at nothing.

This is further establishing the experiences that Elie had gone through, such as the beatings from Idek, the death march to reach Gleiwitz, and the killing of the pipel. And Elie is simply powerless.

“The real answers, Eliezer, you will find only within yourself.”(5)

As these external horrors that sabotaged Elie came from within a human’s inner hate, no physical or external change can produce a better future; it is our inner transformation that we must seek to change what caused these horrors. 

but the irrevocable pain… I let go…

This section I disconnected from the rest of the poem as I found a connection between the two phrases in the beginning and at the end. It was his pain and sufferings that made him let go of his love, his faith, his father, and his humanity. The letting go signifies the death of his Day within him, and it was the pain that led him to this terrible conclusion.

“…I might have found something like: Free at last!…”(112)

As a reader, there came a point where I could not process his story anymore. The pain that Elie’s story had brought upon me became unbearable and I had to put down the book multiple times to contain his stories in my heart. In the end, tears followed my experience with this book, as my heart could not bear the burden of appreciating Elie’s story as a true segment in history. I wanted the freedom of innocence. To be ignorant is, in a way, a gift.

Only the unspeakable loneliness sinks in,

into the heart of the Night.

Through the extreme stress of survival cast upon Elie, he finds himself suddenly alone in his struggle to live. He had lost his connection with his family, his friends, his faith, and ultimately his father. Therefore loneliness sinks in into his heart, which is the Night itself. His inner struggle to oppose what life is, is what causes his pain.

“It no longer mattered.”(113)

Oftentimes I find myself alone in this struggle to live conscientiously as many around me focus on earthly desires to distract them from the truth of life and history. I too wish to be free from these chains of righteousness. I want to rid my heart of the empathy that understands history in a different caliber. I want to no longer matter, as if I did no longer matter, I cannot be wrong in the way I execute my life. But I know that this is a cowardly dream of mine as I must carry on this pain of knowledge to the next generation of humans, to never let hope die away again. And thus I am alive; to fulfill the duty of carrying on Elie’s legacy. 

 

On my knees

I remember:

the gentle touch of a mother,

the warm, mellow light of Day,

the playfulness of a child,

the care,

love…

When I wrote this poem, I did not try to write Elie’s story in a poem form, but rather my own emotions after understanding Elie’s story. This section seldom relates to the actual story of Elie but rather a reference to myself as a reader of Elie’s novel and his story. In this section, I am on my knees figuratively, as I am defeated by his story and the hatred that comes with it. And thus I remember and question…where did motherly love go in his world? Where did the delight of sunshine go in his life? Where was the innocence, the affection for children? Where was love?

I positioned everything that was related to Day on the right and Night on the left, and my underlying message in the center to portray the way Elie lost both sides of his life; his love, the Day, and his terror, the Night. This leads to the corpse like figure Elie becomes at the end of the novel.

and feel it slowly corrode away

into the Night, 

deep within,

swallowing me whole and I’m holding on so tight, 

to not let it be stolen by the hands of brutality and remorse,

to resist the urge of death, death near me, death all around me.

To just hold on to what belongs.

(but the irrevocable pain…I let go…)

and I wander through the Night feeling its claws gnaw against my throat;

choking me and I am gone-

This section of the poem is what I used to portray Elie’s loss of faith, connections with his father, and his hope to live. He again fights back to maintain what belongs in his heart(Day/love) but the irrevocable pain makes him let go and he realizes that he is gone. This is seen in Elie after the death of his father. His humanity is lost when he thinks “Free at last!” and his hope to live is gone as well, as all that remains after the death of his father is his will to eat his daily rations of soup.

“Soon everybody was crying. Groaning. Moaning. Cries of distress hurled into the wind and the snow.”(103)

At this point of the poem, I find myself more so depict the emotions of the events rather than the actual story of Elie. As a reader, at one point of the book I started losing understanding in what actually happened to Elie; it was the emotions of his words, phrases, and sentences that truly stood out to me and engraved itself onto my heart. Therefore this section depicts what I felt when I was reading his story; a gradual transition into a state without hope and only despair for what has yet to come in the novel.

And the sun still rises from the horizon;

its warmth reaching out, softly caressing the souls of the damned. 

like winter turns to spring, nights turn to days-

“The light, Oh the light.”

The Night dies. 

And through despair and hopelessness Elie’s story continues. The sun rising from the horizon is a depiction of an imagery that I had when I read about the liberation of the camp. Its long awaited sunrise touches all that have died and all that have lost their humanity, like Eliezer.

I put quotation marks on the second last line as that line was what came from within my heart when I read the long awaited liberation that took place quite too slow. The Night dies. His terror ends there. “The light, Oh the light.”

I wrote this in order to parallel the very beginning line of this poem, “The Night and I.” In the horrible experiences that Elie went through he lost his Day and was enclosed within his Night. And so when Night dies, what would be left of Elie? What defines him? What does he live for? Who even is he…

 

 

CONCLUSION

It was the despair of losing love and hope within that I experienced, and I hoped to portray the spiritual death of Elie as well as the deep sorrow I felt as a reader in this poem.

“You must resist! Don’t lose faith in yourself!”(102)

These words of Elie’s father had a lasting impact as I read through this book. Yes, it was true that Elie had nothing more to live for and that he completely lost his sense of self. Yes, it is true that I could not handle this fear of human horror. Yes, it is not the concentration camps or the evils around the world that scare me but the evil I see inside, that terrifies me. But it is true. We mustn’t lose faith in ourselves. We must stand strong. We must arm in arm fight each and every one of our evils until they have been conquered. We must become victorious, as if we lose, we shall see the consequences of repeating history. We shan’t forget.

Never.