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bitchy_merlin i've just finished reading Night by Elie Wiesel. I have never hated myself more than I do right now.
oh fuck.
that was real.
I was going to leave well enough alone, but I just couldn't. That book was like a sucker-punch to the jaw, right there, but it was chillingly beautiful. I don't get it. I mean, I really don't. The most horibble stuff goes on in there, things you would never believe anyone to be capable of, and Wiesel just tells it like it is -- no sugarcoating, nothing. It's just the truth, the terrifying, haunting, fucked-up truth, every fucking sentence. It hurts. Reading about his life and what it became, what happened, I had to actually take a pause before continuing, because it was just that intense. It was just that painful and awful, and real. I kept having to stop and think to myself "Sarah, do not alienate yourself from this. It is real, it is the realest real thing; it's his life, and this stuff really did happen."
That's the hardest part, knowing that no, this is not a dream. Yes, this is what happened. No, it is not fiction. It's having to believe that acts of this atrocity could ever be committed, and what's more, committed willingly against a fellow human being, that's what's hard. That's what makes people lose faith in the human race.
I think, I think one of the worst parts is, is that there were people capable of doing this. Condemning people to death, daily, and thinking you're doing the right thing?! How is that fucking possible?
The part in the preface where he talks about his father dying... when I read that at the beginning, I didn't really grasp the magnitude of the scene. I was three quarters through the book when I went back and reread it, and after the short time it took me to read that passage, I was screaming make it stop! Make it stop!
And the thing is, the language in this book is so beautiful, so poetic, that even as I was reading about these horibble (yet true) events: babies getting tossed in a furnace, people killing each other for a piece of bread -- I was marvelling at the elegance with which Wiesel wrote. And it was awful, because reading about events of this magnitude, I should not be thinking about the use of rhetorical devices, but the writing is absolutely stunning. It's lyrical, poetic, and it gets you right where it hurts.
To conclude, that was probably the most vivid thing I have ever read; it was so horrific and incredibly moving that it didn't make me cry -- it made me scream.
Thank you, Elie Wiesel, for living through this so that we do not have to. Thank you for telling us about your life, so that it does not become ours.
I will not forget.
oh fuck.
that was real.
I was going to leave well enough alone, but I just couldn't. That book was like a sucker-punch to the jaw, right there, but it was chillingly beautiful. I don't get it. I mean, I really don't. The most horibble stuff goes on in there, things you would never believe anyone to be capable of, and Wiesel just tells it like it is -- no sugarcoating, nothing. It's just the truth, the terrifying, haunting, fucked-up truth, every fucking sentence. It hurts. Reading about his life and what it became, what happened, I had to actually take a pause before continuing, because it was just that intense. It was just that painful and awful, and real. I kept having to stop and think to myself "Sarah, do not alienate yourself from this. It is real, it is the realest real thing; it's his life, and this stuff really did happen."
That's the hardest part, knowing that no, this is not a dream. Yes, this is what happened. No, it is not fiction. It's having to believe that acts of this atrocity could ever be committed, and what's more, committed willingly against a fellow human being, that's what's hard. That's what makes people lose faith in the human race.
I think, I think one of the worst parts is, is that there were people capable of doing this. Condemning people to death, daily, and thinking you're doing the right thing?! How is that fucking possible?
The part in the preface where he talks about his father dying... when I read that at the beginning, I didn't really grasp the magnitude of the scene. I was three quarters through the book when I went back and reread it, and after the short time it took me to read that passage, I was screaming make it stop! Make it stop!
And the thing is, the language in this book is so beautiful, so poetic, that even as I was reading about these horibble (yet true) events: babies getting tossed in a furnace, people killing each other for a piece of bread -- I was marvelling at the elegance with which Wiesel wrote. And it was awful, because reading about events of this magnitude, I should not be thinking about the use of rhetorical devices, but the writing is absolutely stunning. It's lyrical, poetic, and it gets you right where it hurts.
To conclude, that was probably the most vivid thing I have ever read; it was so horrific and incredibly moving that it didn't make me cry -- it made me scream.
Thank you, Elie Wiesel, for living through this so that we do not have to. Thank you for telling us about your life, so that it does not become ours.
I will not forget.
