Customer Reviews

The Judges

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

 

 

In Elie Wiesel's novel, "The Judges," five airline travelers are flying en route from New York to Tel Aviv. They are forced to land in Connecticut because of a severe snowstorm. An apparently hospitable individual invites them to stay in his cabin until the storm subsides. What the five passengers do not know is that their apparently kind-hearted host has a hidden agenda that is anything but benign.

The travelers, four men and a woman, have secrets and worries that plague them. One of them is terminally ill, another seeks to regain memories of his earlier life, and a third carries a letter that may have serious political ramifications. The host, who calls himself "The Judge," starts to play a malevolent game with his guests. He cruelly informs them that after they reveal the intimate details of their lives, the least worthy among them will die. Also in the cabin is the Hunchback, the Judge's servant, who is a severely deformed man that the Judge took in when no one else would care for him. The Hunchback has secret thoughts of his own that he keeps carefully hidden.

This slim novel (approximately 200 pages long) is filled with convoluted philosophical musings. The travelers engage in verbal sparring matches with one another and with the Judge. Unfortunately, none of the characters come to life, and it is unclear what the Judge, the Hunchback and the travelers are supposed to represent. What is Wiesel trying to say about the significance of an individual's life? I was unable to detect a coherent message in this novel. After having read Wiesel's touching and deeply meaningful works on the Holocaust, I was surprised by how unmoved "The Judges" left me.

first of all, i am not a kid, i am simply a person without a bunch of time floating around to fill out all that crap simply to write a review. second, this book was utterly facsinating and i was genuinly disappointed when i came to its end. i love how real elie wiesel makes his characters and really enoyed getting to know the five passengers as well as the judge and his little hunchback. a great read for anyone not afraid to think.

Through numerous novels, Elie Wiesel has proven himself to be a master storyteller. He is able to intermingle the fictional world with the all too real memories of the Holocaust that haunt almost every piece of writing he produces. While "The Judges" has an intriguing premise, it is not among his better works.

When a plane en route to Tel Aviv is forced down by a snow storm, five random passengers find themselves offered refuge in a nearby house. What at first appears to be a safe haven quickly turns into a nightmare when the host, who simply refers to himself as the Judge, tells them of the 'game' at hand. All five of those present will be judged and the one who is the least worthy among them must pay the ultimate sacrifice. The five strangers have trouble believing the Judge at first, simply thinking his pronouncement a farce, but when they discover that they are locked within the room, they quickly realize the seriousness of their predicament. They must try to work together to fight their way out, or decide who should be the sacrificial lamb for the others.

"The Judges" has many characteristics that trademark a Wiesel novel. There is the shift in narrative between various characters, and between past and present times. Yet unlike his other works, the narratives here have little cohesiveness - there is no thread that ties them all together and even though the five characters are forced to spend one night together under one roof, that is all that unites them. There may be commonalities among their pasts and their reasons for wishing to remain alive, but beyond that, this story is about disconnect. The ending is far too rushed for the story that is offered and the conclusion to the host's 'game' is trite and predictable. With that being said, "The Judges" is still a fine read, thanks in large part to Wiesel's intellect and his poetic use of language.

There are points when you read an author's book and you have to ask yourself if they were always this terrible and you just didn't realize it. I have in the past called Elie Wiesel one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century and I have been eager to buy and read all of his books. When I was taking a Holocaust class, his writings provided a welcome relief to much of the writings, possibly because he could go through Auschwitz and still find reasons for optimism. Yet this book makes me wonder if he was always so saccharine and superficial.

The book gives you the artificial setting of people delayed by a winter storm. Their plane lands in Connecticut and they find themselves being hosted by a man who calls himself The Judge complete with a hunchback sidekick. They all have pasts and they are all being interrogated as soon as they get in the door. I am not sure if Wiesel knows that he's using the overly exploited Gothic tropes but I was expecting everyone to realize that the plane had crashed and they were all dead. He even name checks No Exit.

The book is not supposed to be realistic but is it supposed to be so irritating? In a surreal philosophical novel, you should not be thinking "well why don't they just band together and tell the Judge character to shut up?" Everything coming out of the Judge's mouth is either self-aggrandizing or delusional and the fact that the characters go along with him is never fully explained. We are just supposed to assume that we are in a philosophical novel and that's what people do.

Still, this wouldn't be such a dreary novel if these characters weren't so flat and uninteresting. You have the guy calling himself a Playboy who stepped out of a trashy 70s book, a woman who is having an affair and a Talmud teacher who just throws Kabalistic ideas into the proceeding for no other reason than to impress the reader with something.

I have liked other Elie Wiesel books, but this one is an exercise in tedium.

The plot seemed so real. While reading the book, my dad had told me my aunt had once had to stay overnight at someone's home because of a simlar event like the one in the book, the book kinda hit close to home. I never had read any of Elie Wiesel's books before, but checked the book out of the library after reading the inside cover and deciding that the plot would be interesting and make a good story. However, I was disappointed. I really felt that Wiesel could have expanded a lot more on the plot. I didn't feel like I knew the charcters well enough. I didn't understand why the ending ended the way it did. It wasn't the best book I read, but it wasn't the worst.

Mr. Wiesel is pretty good at developing characters, however he doesn't pay attention to the reality of details. It is not just implausible for the characters to end up at the cabin it is virtually impossible. The events getting the characters to the cabin is simply not realistic. It would have been a better story and a more reasonable if "Q" (Star Trek) had showed up and transported them there.

I am a cowgirl from Arizona and I would have put up with the Judges nonsense for about 15 minutes max. Then I would have acted. Mr. Wiesel spend why too much time on thought and not enough on action. Whatever.