Night Post

Night by Elie Wiesel is a novel that every student should read. It is an autobiographical account of the events leading up to, during, and after the holocaust. It is a powerful story that every student needs to experience. It touches on important themes and ideas that many students don’t experience in books today. When I read the novel my sophomore year of high school, I learned a lot from what Wiesel had to say. The experiences that he went through were unimaginable and inhumane and no one should have to go through that. It touches on a piece of history that many people do not know a lot about.

The holocaust is a time in history that is shrouded in mystery. It is only from personal account stories that students can learn the truth. Just like with The Diary of Anne Frank, Elie Wiesel’s story tells of what he went through and for some it can be hard to fathom. With reading this novel, my class also watched a documentary of when Wiesel visited the death camp that he had be jailed at during the war. He told of what happened to his family, his friends, and himself.

There are many ways to teach this novel, whether by itself, exploring it as an autobiographical text, in comparison to other holocaust survivor stories, in contrast to the aggressor’s point of view, or as a historical unit within social studies, but the list goes on and on. When I was taught this book, it was during a war unit, and we had read All Quiet on the Western Front before we read Night. It was interesting to see how the stories compared to one another.

All in all, this book needs to be taught. Students need to know the survivors’ stories and they need to know the historical background behind it.