Night by Elie Wiesel

Author: Elie Wiesel

Title: Night

Genre: Fictional Autobiography 

Bibliographic Data in MLA format: Wiesel, Elie. Night. Thorndike Press, 2020.

Recommended Grade Level(s): 10-12

Number of Pages: 144

*Brief, concise plot description (no more than one paragraph): 

This story is a somewhat autobiography of the author where the protagonist, Elie, is living during the start of the Holocaust. He is a young man who is taken by the Germans to a concentration camp and it forced to live out the horrors of the time while trying to survive. He witnesses a lot of death, including that of his family and friends, and though he is eventually freed, he has gone through such horror and trauma that this book was written to depict it all. 

Possible Teaching Concerns (may refer back to the text(s) used in class): 

The Holocaust is a very graphic and horrifying topic, as the abuse and slaughter of man in genocide is the main topic. While this book does depict some of the gruel, it does a good job of conveying the awfulness of the situation but doing so in a way that is mostly appropriate for younger readers. While teaching, however, I would not show pictures of corpses or some of the other awful footage from the time. 

Personal Reaction to/and/or Evaluation of novel: 

I personally thought this novel was a difficult read, but an important one. As someone who read The Diary of Anne Frank in middle school, I thought a new perspective from someone in the camps was valuable and an important part of history. While reading about his suffering was hard to do and definitely cast a new perspective on what I have only heard about in history lessons, I think that this is a story that deserves to be told for generations to come. 

Canonical work with which to juxtapose this novel & a brief (one paragraph) description of the rationale to connect the 2 works: 

Two poems referenced in class, "No Man is an Island" and "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night," connect well with this literature, and another one of my choosing is the poem "First They Came" by Pastor Martin NiemÖller. 

I have chosen this trio of poems because the first two share a common theme of overcoming suffering, death, and pain. Those who endured the Holocaust and those who suffer from being related to those who were murdered in it are met with a great challenge of having to live life during the aftermath. As this is an experience so terrible only those who witnessed it can really imagine it, grieving and reliving the pain can be an isolating experience. These poems truly grasp the message of unity and suffering and fighting to survive, just as Elie had in this book and after he was freed.