Blog Post #2 -Carter

Blog Post #2 Carter

Night pgs 47-84

Night is and has been a very emotionally hard book to read, but this section is (If you can believe it) more intense than the other chapters/sections so far. Although the story is unfortunately all true, I have found myself lately appreciating (even more) the fact that I have food, a house, a loving and caring family, and a country that I feel safe in. In this section, Elie, his father and some other inmates are moved to “Buna”. It is a new camp and they quickly realize there will be more camps to follow. The “Veteran Inmates” are very menacing and I think even though they were really there that they symbolize the immense fear and trapped feeling that Elie experiences. One question that I have is why the veterans do not warn the new prisoners of the dangers that the veterans have faced already. I think it would help all of them get through the camps together if they were to share tricks and support each other, then they could fight the detachment that the nazis are trying to force upon them. For example: on page 50, a veteran is talking to Elie about the workplace “Only Idek, the Kapo, occasionally has fits of madness, and then you'd better stay out of his way. "You are lucky, little fellow," said Hans, smiling. "You fell into a good Kommando..."”, this is one of the only times a veteran warns Elie about any dangers.

In this section Elie loses all of his faith on page 65 “But the third rope was still moving: the child, too light, was still breathing. And so he remained for more than half an hour, lingering between life and death, writhing before our eyes. And we were forced to look at him at close range. He was still alive when I passed him. His tongue was still red, his eyes not yet extinguished.

Behind me, I heard the same man asking:

"For God's sake, where is God?"

And from within me, I heard a voice answer:

"Where He is? This is where—hanging here from this gallows..."

That night, the soup tasted of corpses”. I empathize with Elie here. I think the theme for these sections is Loss of Faith. Even though these chapters were sad I think it really made me think about what I have and how grateful and lucky I am.      -Carter