Customer Reviews

Day: A Novel

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Wiesel's "Night" was a searing and honest account of enduring the concentration camps of World War II. It told of a young boy's will to survive, and the shame that came with that loss of innocence. "Dawn" was the next step, with a young man fighting for the survival of the Jews in Palestine, in the Holocaust's aftermath. It chronicled his ethical struggles in using violence to purchase freedom and life.

"Day" is the third step in this trilogy, and once again Wiesel writes with stark yet evocative sentences. This time, the young man is a little older and he is struggling with the acceptance of love with a wonderful woman. His struggle is accentuated by his time in a hospital bed, after taking a step onto a New York City street and being struck by a taxi. He thinks back through his sufferings, his relationships, his guilt, and his questions. This is the perfect time for us to see Wiesel's character come to grips with life, not glossing over the horrific things but moving beyond himself into a deeper care for others.

But that is not the case. Wiesel's character takes another wrong step, blaming God for every ill done by mankind, projecting man's weaknesses upon the God he had grown up learning about. What about the good he sees in others, though? What about the innocence and self-sacrifice? Should these, by the same measure, be credited to the Devil from the same Bible?

Wiesel's characters are rooted in the realities of the world, among the good and evil deeds done by people of all ages. He shows great care and compassion for his fellow human beings, and deservedly has won a Nobel Peace Prize for his writing. Sadly, though, I see no maturation in this chronology of storytelling. The characters are still wallowing in their shame, their past. Still blinded by despair. Still imprisoned by self-centeredness masquerading as survival instinct. Even when our main character makes a final selfless decision, it's only based on lies. I had hoped for something transcendent from one who has faced such suffering. Many other Holocaust survivors have come to terms with the world around them and given us examples of how to move beyond--people such as Corrie Ten Boom, in "The Hiding Place," and even Death, as a fictional character, in "The Book Thief. I only wish Wiesel could have better applied his great empathy and experience.

This book was originally entitled "The Accident" because it involves its main character's 10-week ordeal of attempting to recover after being hit by a taxi cab in New York City. The protagonist, Eliezer, battles death and life for 10 weeks.

Elie Wiesel describes the protagonist of this novel as the survivor who endured the world's worst war to be so emotionally scarred that he thinks "wouldn't suicide be as great a temptation as love or faith?" In the preface, he mentions how children of WW II were discovered in holes and other hiding places, and whose emancipation was not a moment of magnificence. Rather, their freedom from hiding ensued into a forced starvation and eventual death - as their minds or bodies cared not to live, although offered the opportunity for such.

Pessimism about life abounds. "Maybe God is dead, but man is alive . . . " his friend lectures him. But, he also understands that God must be alive as his grandmother sagely told him "God needs love, not understanding." And, so he tries to believe.

But, such beliefs are accompanied by torments. Like an LSD-plagued person of the 1970's, he is reminded too often of what he endured in the Holocaust to feel free and alive. When recovering, the doctor wants him to fight death - usually something which can be conjured by fear. This survivor, the doctor learns, is afraid of nothing. He has seen too much. A survivor has witnessed more than he wants others to know. Like a military veteran, Wiesel for years said nothing of the hardships - then he began to write about the same. Thank God.

And, while alive the protagonist must ask why fate has delivered him to life and survival while parents and millions received much less. He surmises that "fate offered him life and maybe happiness." But, the memories continue to haunt him. He glares out almost devoid of connection to present day mind. He does not feel happy. He wants to be lucid. But, "lucidity is fate's victory, not man's."

And, despite his haunting past, others had it worse. One is named Sarah - a girl who also survived the Holocaust, but unlike he, she was deprived all concepts of decency and her childhood with one action - sending her into prostitution of the German soldiers who liked 12-year old girls. As a boy of similar age, the protagonist assumingly starved and survived the horror. As a girl, Sarah starved and survived a most despicable horror. He calls her a saint - to which she retorts with disdain.

Although this novel does not deal directly with the Holocaust, it touches upon how the Holocaust affects lives years, even decades later.

As the healing progresses, he realizes that his life is full of pain. But, "suffering is given to the living, not the dead." Hence, suffering is not a bad thing, it is just something which comes with the gift of life.

Full of great metaphors, esteemed witticisms, and almost-prophetic sayings akin to Asia's Confucius, this book delivers much in its 128 pages.

The books Dawn(Second book in trilogy of Night) and Day(Third book in trilogy of Night) are written by Elie Wiesel and they are both about life after the holocaust which was the worst thing that could ever happen in my opinion.

Dawn is the second book in the trilogy Night by Elie Wiesel. Elisha is the main character in this book and he is actually living as a terrorist in British-controlled Palistine. The scary part is that he is ordered to kill an English officer. He can't choose between horrors of the past and dilemmas is the present. You have to read to find out what he does because I don't want to give it away.

The book Day is the last book about the Holocaust by Elie Wiesel and it is a very strong ending to the three books I think. One of the main questions that Elie asks himself throughout the book is "Is it ever possible for Holocaust survivors to create new lives for themselves without remembering their old ones?" and I personaly think that it is a great question to ask yourself because it might be possible to but it is probably really hard to do that if you want to forget your past but remember people in it.

All three of the books should give you an idea of how lucky you are to live in this time period and give you a strong idea of what life used to be like and what life is like for Holocaust survivors now.

Bought this for my husband. He has read all of Wiesel's books. They are all gut wrenchingly real. You will enjoy this book. A definite read!

I disagree with the other comments. Of course, this may not be for everyone. It was full of self and ramblings. I, however, felt very much connected to this story. Especially with all its confusion. I think that was the point. He wrote this story so beautifully, I couldn't put it down.

This book is a must for those who have read Night and Dawn. Night and Dawn were both extremely powerful, but Day truly was the highlight of Wiesel's wonderful trilogy. A must for everyone of all faiths.

Day is superior to both Night and Dawn, the first two books in Elie Wiesel's Night trilogy. However, six aspects of Day really bug me:

First, Day's plot lacks cohesion and is out of chronological order, unlike Night and Dawn. The heart of a novel should either consist of either solid storytelling and an advancing plot or delicately crafted interwoven stories. In Day, it is instead largely a jumble of disparate memories - typically of women in steamy situations. This is not conducive to seamless communication.

Second, Wiesel originally wrote The Accident separately from Dawn and Night. As such, it is the least connected to the other two books. He decided at some point to change the title to Day, tack it on to his first two books, and call the resulting mumbo-jumbo a "trilogy." This is sloppy, self-centered, and ultimately irritating because now students at my school are required to read all three volumes.

Third, my same old complaint about Wiesel's writing holds true in Day: too much crying! I find it absurd how many times people cry in the Night trilogy - readers of Night and Dawn (as many of you readers this review are) can attest to this. Rather than making his readers more sympathetic to the feelings of his characters, Wiesel conditions them to indifference with this blatant overuse of sadness.

Fourth, Wiesel's comparisons in Day are too often uncreative at best, stale at worst. Too often he compares one woman to another, typically his mother or grandmother. Comparing one woman to another does nothing. These comparisons would be acceptable once or twice, but, one's patience wears thin after reading paragraph after paragraph of them. Wiesel should keep in mind that he is writing to other people who did not grow up with these women. Much more interesting and effective would be to compare the women to romantic inanimate objects such as the sun, the moon, or a budding rose.

Fifth, Wiesel shies away from many chances to show us a lurking literary prowess throughout Day. These opportunities crop up whenever somebody "talked for hours." It's hard to imagine that these terse, two-dimensional characters are really capable of speaking for hours without seeing the monologue on paper. Why does Wiesel hold these soliloquies back from us?

Sixth, and last, Wiesel doesn't vary his sentence structure enough, in Day or either of the other books in his Night trilogy. This is a run-of-the-mill high school error, and I'm surprised that neither he, nor Oprah, nor the legions of devoted oprah&wiesel fans pick up on this. His short, choppy sentences should be reserved those rare pulse-pounding moments, but Wiesel uses them everywhere.

I will quote from the text to illustrate my points:

Kathleen's face was twisted with pain. She looked like a sorceress who has lost her true face from having put on too many masks. A great fire burned around her. Suddenly she cried out and began to sob. My mother, I had never seen my mother cry. (p.74)

Kathleen. Tears were coming to her eyes. My mother didn't cry. At least not when other people were there. She only offered her tears to God.
Kathleen looked a little like my mother; she had her high forehead, and her chin had the same pure lines. But Kathleen wasn't dead. And she was crying. (p.89)

These selections are the concluding paragraphs of two back-to-back chapters. And yet they say the same thing. That's not any kind of plot advancement that I've ever heard of. I hung my head upon reading the following, though I agree with it:

Nothing is more sacred than life, or healthier, or greater, or more noble. To refuse life is a sin; it's stupid and mad. You have to accept life, cherish it, love it, fight for it as if it were a treasure, a woman, a secret happiness. (p.67)

This "profound" realization flies in the face of what the narrator previously thought - that life wasn't worth fighting for. However, I knew that "life is all we have" before I even knew who Wiesel was. I know we humans must simultaneously struggle for our lives while still finding time to cherish them. I don't need an emotionally-estranged Holocaust-survivor narrator to take me by the hand and lead me through the way he discovered that truth, which is essentially the only task that Day accomplishes for society. Day certainly doesn't make one happier, unless one derives pleasure from knowing one can write better than a Nobel Peace Prize winner. I cannot speak for how this book affects other readers, however. Perhaps this book will save someone from suicide someday?

I will make you suffer though one more irresistible passage before I quit:

In the beginning she didn't cry. We were on the same level. We dealt with each other like equals. We were free. Each one free from himself and free from the other. When I didn't feel like keeping a date, I didn't. She did the same. And neither of us was angry or even hurt. When I didn't talk for a whole night, she didn't try to make me explain. The familiar question asked by lovers, "What are you thinking about?" didn't enter our conversations. Hardness had become our religion. Nothing was said that wasn't essential. We tried to convince each other that we could live, hope, and despair, alone. Each kiss could have been the last. At any moment the temple could have collapsed. The future didn't exist since it was useless. At night we made love silently, almost like our own witnesses. A stranger watching us in the street could easily have taken us for enemies. Rightly so, perhaps. True enemies aren't always the ones who hate each other. (p.90)

I prefer that my novels not read like Chicken Soup for the Soul.

Gyula arrives near the end of the book, providing the comic relief and fog-cutting outsider's insight that the rest of Wiesel's Night trilogy needed so desperately to keep from being the bore that it was. In Gyula's laughing light and portrait-mirror, the narrator sees himself for who he truly has become and discovers that he needs to change his outlook. Day was a more satisfying novel than either Night or Dawn in part due to this resolution and promised change in attitude.

I have concluded my reading of the Night trilogy, and of Wiesel, for good. I can't wait to discuss this trilogy in English class - fur will fly, for sure, as most readers of Wiesel whom I've met become insta-fans. I will conclude by saying this - if you enjoyed Night and Dawn, then Day will be right up your alley.

There is not much to this novel but it's effective when you finish it. When I was done the book i thought what really happend what was the point of the book and I came to a cunclusion it's about life and to see how a memory will haunt you the rest of your life and it show us if we can forgive god and to see if we belive in god. Not much ahppend through out the book I enjoyed the holicost flashback. Overall it's not as good as night and I havent read dawn yet so ic an not say but it's enjoyable.