Night (Memoir)

Night

By Elie Weisel

This book is a memoir about Elie's (Eliezer's) experienceduring the Holocaust. The first time I read this book was in high school, and its probably one of the most memorable heartbreaking books I have ever read. Of course, the Holocaust occured during WWII and was the mass genocide of the Jewish and other races of people who were not considered "pure" white. This is a really touchy subject, but can be used as literature for Middle Schools. I also think it is one of the most eye opening books I have ever read. I would consider this a chapter book for older middle school grade levels and high school, due to the graphic nature of the book and the details described within. Not only does the book speak of unimaginable torture, murder, emaciation, but it has groesome details of the ongoings of concentration camps, like Auschwitz.

The book is older, published in 1960, but I feel is a glimpse into the horror that was the Holocaust. I can remember reading this, and crying at the details like the loss of his mother and sister, only having coffee to eat or drink in the last few weeks at the camp before they were freed by the soldiers, and details about them lining people up and shotting them to save on bullets. The book is a memoir because. as teh book states, it is "a historical account or biography written from personal experience(Galda, 2010)."This book was the account of Elie Weisel, who was only 12 when the Holocaust began.

There are no illustrations, but on teh cover of the book, and it is hard to determine the media and technique, it looks like it may use paint of some type, because the blue uses brush strokes. It looks like it uses outline style, because as the book states "it emphasizes line and often reducesfeatures to simpliefied shapes (Gald,2010)." The colors used are blue and black, and look like a boy standing amidst barbed wire.

The setting is Nazi concentration camps, one being the infamous Auschwitz. The plot would be the experience that he had, the awful near death experience, during WWII, and Hitler's Nazi reign. One of the themes was his loss in faith, in God, in humanity, but mostly God. Aanother theme was death and cruelty, and I also believe another theme was identity...he struggled to be identified as anything more than the number they branded him with. The accuracy of the text, is by all accounts his experiences, so I feel that they are pretty accurate. This was a historical, well documented event, and it is true to the occurances depicted.

Some activites to use for memoirs, maybe not this particular one, are to first have students main charcters or events. Have them choose an event, and have them do a descriptive bubble chart about key details on the person or event. So let's say they picked MLK. They could add details like he was a doctor, he made speeeches, fought for equality, etc. All in a bubble chart, that they later could write an essay using the details in their chart. Another idea is for the students is to have children write their own memoirs about a specific event. This would be their own account of what happened when they went to a theme park, saw a space shuttle go off, went on a class field trip, or whatever prompt can be given, but it would have to be done as their accounts of the events that went on.

Resources:

Galda, L., Cullinan, B. E., & Sipe, L. R. (2010). Literature and the child (7th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworths, Inc.

Wiesel, E. (1960). Night. New York. Hill and Wang.