Customer Reviews

The Accident (Bard Books/Avon # YW202)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As usual, Elie Wiesel has taken the experiences of his life in the concentration camps and instilled those experiences into his main character. As he says in his introduction the story springs from his imagination, "I speak for my protagonist, but he does not speak for me. He has lived through some of my experiences, but I have not lived through his." And those experiences are what motivate and frustrate the main character throughout the course of this novel.

"The Accident" tells the story of Eliezer, a survivor of the death camps, who cannot forget his past. He is constantly haunted by his memories and those who have died, so much so that he cannot even live his life. So when he his hit by a taxi one summer evening, the reader is unsure whether it was on purpose or if it was an accident. As he lies in his hospital bed, not necessarily fighting for his life, his story fluctuates between the past and present, allowing the reader to enter into his suffering and understand his misery.

As always, Wiesel's writing is full of questions. For a Jew who survived the horror of the Holocaust, these questions always include how God could have allowed this to happen. Eliezer is convinced that God uses humans as toys to manipulate and enjoy their sufferings. He is finally brought to terms with his inability to live and what he needs to do in order to leave his past where it belongs and move ahead with his future. "The Accident" is a quick read, full of daunting questions and fearless searching that typifies Wiesel's writings.

The journalist Eliezer, a WWII Nazi concentration camp survivor, steps in front of a cab while crossing the street and the reader is left to speculate whether the occurence was an accident, or attempted suicide. Many who read the novel may comment on the depressing outlook of this survivor from one of the worst atrocities of western civilization. As he describes flashbacks of his experience throughout the nomalcy of his everyday life before the accident, and afterwards while hospitalized, the reader is confronted with the ir-reality that he endures. The weighty psychological effects of the holocost described in the first book of the trilogy "Dawn," where he directly tells the story of being taken into the concentration camps at a young age, follows him ominously. But it would be a great disappointment if this is all the reader examines in the novel, because it is also a story of companionship and romance. The author, while cynical, is also humorous and honest in his view of the world, of God, or the Jewish faith, and the relationship that he gains with his doctor. It is also a touching story about a love relationship. His relationship with Kathleen, dedicated to him - before and after the accident - is a genuine, caring, and witty relationship between two people that endure together through the worst. Anyone who reads it could only hope for something as genuine. The depth of thought and horrorific imagery of a mind that has experienced such atrocities in his youth is evidently what catches the readers attention, and may make for a depressing read, but there is more that this novel has to offer: casual humor, introspection, and insight. An honest story to be appreciated at many levels.

This book is good as it examins theory of god as far as medicine is concerned. It is one of my favorite books by Wiesel, and I've read 24 of them

I do not agree with most of the other reviews.

The greatness in this book lies Elie Weisel's ability to come so close to answering unanswerable questions. He has a perspective that none of us will ever attain. An unspeakable suffering is captured in mere words. Living is the horror, not death. The living mourn the dead; the dead mourn no one.

The main character sees every aspect of life from an unnatural perspective. He cannot love, he sees death in everything, he yearns for silence, he lives in his past. We are jealous of his severance from a pitiful humanity. He is almost a true stoic.

As a technical note: No, as the other reviews stated, the character did not try to commit suicide. Suicide is killing yourself. He was walking a few feet behind his girlfriend, and although, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a car speeding toward him, he did not try to save himself. This is not suicide. It is an indifference toward life. Death was his only chance for freedom. The true accident was that the doctor was able to save him.

There are few books that touch me as much as this one did. Night and Dawn were both extremely powerful, but The Accident truly was the apex of Wiesel's wonderful trilogy.

Survivors of the death camps of World War II were extremely dehumanized, willing to sell their soul and the souls of righteous people, simply for a slice of bread and the opportunity to eat it in peace. While in the camps, their lives are mechanical, they follow orders and simply hope to be alive and have a full stomach at the end of the day.
After liberation, much of the uncaring attitude remains; they go through life wanting to love, needing to love yet they exhibit a coldness when presented with the opportunity. There is an underlying death wish; to have life ended so they can join their predecessors that they watched them pass by into the place of killing.
Eliezer is a survivor of the death camps and the story opens with him being hit by a taxi and severely injured, at first it is unlikely that he will live. When he shows promise, he is placed in a body cast and begins to heal. This flashes him back to his past relationships with Karen, where the affair could hardly be prefaced with the word "love" and with Sarah, a woman he met in Paris after the war. When Eliezer encounters Sarah in a cafe, she offers to have sex with him and they go to her apartment. Once there, everything is mechanical and Sarah recounts her experience of being a prostitute for the German camp guards when she was 12.
Since Wiesel is a survivor of the death camps, what he describes is a realistic transformation into the after-camp personalities of the survivors. Their personalities are those of people whose bright lives have been burned away, replaced by something of an automaton-like existence. It is clear that Eliezer being hit by the taxi was not an accident, but the expression of an only slightly suppressed death wish. This is a powerful story of the aftermath of what is no doubt the most extreme of traumatic stress.

The Accident was a well-written book. It showed a life that I don't hear much about, life after the Holocaust. I didn't realize what happened to the survivors and how their lives were changed forever. This book was a little confusing at first but it all made sense in the end and was great. It was a sad story but a story that people need to hear to fully understand the effect the Holocaust had on people. I am glad I read this book.

Having read "Night," I found "The Accident" meaningful in the sense that it presents hope in spite of one's history. In the face of cynicism, the character in the book struggled between life and death, love and indifference. I definitely do not regret taking up this book in my Philosophy class.

It is not often that a book this small can have such an impact on me... this book is absolutely wonderful for anyone who's ever experienced grief or been tired of life... the whole trilogy was amazingly powerful, but this book I can relate to most of all.

This book was a little bit confusing to follow. I understood that he was a holocaust survivor, and it was sad what he went through. I didn't like how the author left it up too us when he got hit by the taxi. Did he do it on purpose or was it just an accident?

This book did give me a better prespective on what life was like for the survivors and how much suffering they went though after the holocaust. I thought this book was ok.