Blog 8 - Night is Young Adult Nonfiction and a Model for Student Memoirs

Night is Young Adult Nonfiction and a Model for Student Memoirs

     Night is a memoir written by Elie Wiesel of his experiences as a teenager during the holocaust. The novel begins with Elie growing up in Sighet, Transylvania where his father is a prominent Jewish councilman in the community. One area of focus in the opening of the novel is the distant father-son relationship between Elie and his father. Elie questions his father's greater interest in the Jewish community than in his own family. In contrast, Elie's father questions Elie's interest in Kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism, and does not approve of a life dedicated to its study as a career choice. As Adolf Hitler's Nazi military presence threatens Hungary and its territories during WWII, Elie questions his father's decision to keep the family in Sighet. Their father-son relationship then changes when the family is confined to a ghetto, transported to Auschwitz, and then separated. While Elie's mother and sisters are taken elsewhere, fifteen-year-old Elie and his father remain together as they are forced to endure horrifying experiences in concentration camps that try their spiritual, emotional, and physical endurance. As Elie and his father focus on survival, Elie questions his faith in God, in the world, and in his father. Although Night is considered adult nonfiction, as a standalone text it addresses teenage struggle with identity, father-son relationships, and coming of age, which makes the novel ideal for young adult readers and a model for student written memoirs.

     When reading Bucher and Hinton's Young Adult Literature: Exploration, Evaluation, and Appreciation, it is clear that Elie Wiesel's Night would fit in the biography categories of Uncommon Individuals and Young Adults Growing Up. In the category of Uncommon Individual, Bucher and Hinton find that “[y]oung adults tend to enjoy reading about individuals who have overcome hardships and struggles in their own lives or have distinguished themselves through valor, courage, and conviction of beliefs” (255). Bucher and Hinton even mention holocaust survivors or rescuers as an example. Although Elie questions his beliefs throughout his confinement in Auschwitz and Buna, he observes those who retain their faith in the moments when it would be understandable to question it. For example, Elie ruminates: “But now, I no longer pleaded for anything. I was no longer able to lament. On the contrary, I felt very strong. I was the accuser, God the accused. My eyes had opened and I was alone, terribly alone in a world without God, without man. Without love or mercy...In the midst of these men assembled for prayer, I felt like an observer, a stranger” (68 Wiesel). Although Elie questions his faith throughout his experiences during the holocaust, his message to readers is that it is natural to question faith, especially as a youth and under extreme circumstances; however, his message is also that the loss of a belief system is the worst form of abandonment and solitude. Elie's remarkable experiences and questioning of beliefs makes Night worthy of classroom instruction at a high school level.

     Additionally, Night fits in the biography category of Young Adults Growing Up because Elie's coming of age is reflected in his relationship with his father. While Elie accepts his father's decision to remain in their hometown despite the looming Nazi threat, his memoir reflects a teenagers criticism of his father's judgment. Because Elie is beginning to come of age and understands his father's judgment is flawed, Elie suggests taking the family to Palestine and is disheartened by his father's response: “In those days it was still possible to buy emigration certificates to Palestine. I had asked my father to sell everything, to liquidate everything, and to leave. 'I am too old, my son,' he answered. 'Too old to start a new life. Too old to start from scratch in some distant land...'” (9 Wiesel). This is the beginning of the shift in the parent-child relationship. Later, as Elie and his father are forced to endure dehumanizing conditions, Elie and his father rely on each other to survive. For example, Elie must teach his father to march to save his father from beatings as well as care for him when he is ill. This leads Elie to battle the negative thoughts of his father as a liability to Elie's own survival in the camp. While on a death march, Elie discovers that another father-son pair has been separated. The father, Rabbi Eliahu, approaches Elie when he is searching for his son. At the time, Elie states that he had not seen the Rabbi's son. Then, with horror, he realizes that the Rabbi's son left the Rabbi when the Rabbi was falling behind. Elie sees the parallels between his own thoughts about his father and states, “...in spite of myself, a prayer formed inside me, a prayer to this God in whom I no longer believed. 'Oh God, Master of the Universe, give me the strength never to do what Rabbi Eliahu's son has done'” (91). This is a pivotal moment in Elie's development and coming of age. Elie recognizes that he is at risk of losing his faith, his father, and his morals. This realization and the conscious decision to be a better person is a moment that reflects Elie's coming of age, which makes Night an ideal memoir for young adult readers.

     A good, introspective assignment to accompany the reading of Night would be a student written memoir. Typically, when we are almost halfway through the reading Night, I inform the students that they will be writing their own memoirs. This is met with apprehension because Wiesel provides an impressive model. There are several different approaches to writing a brief memoir. One approach, is to assign an emotionally moving memoir. This is just a memoir that has emotional appeal to the reader and that incorporates the use of figurative language a minimum of two times (Wiesel uses quite a bit of figurative language in Night). This is typically limited to two pages, but some of my students have written much more. Another approach is a six word memoir, which originated in Smith Magazine, an online storytelling magazine, and is modeled in I Can't Keep My Own Secrets—Six-Word Memoirs by Teens Famous and Obscure. During the six-word memoir assignment, students write their memoir using six words. Examples of a six-word memoir are “Running from the Law Changed Me” and “I Always Believed in Second Chances.” These six words become the title of the student memoir. Next, students write a longer response expanding their six word memoir. Then, students find a picture or visual that represents their memoir. Students combine the six word memoir, longer written response, and visual for the final one-page assignment. Typically, student responses to both the moving memoir and the six-word memoir have been wonderfully introspective and a favorite assignment.