“Suffering pulls us farther away from other human beings. It builds a wall made of cries and contempt to separate us.”
How does one continue living a normal day-to-day existence after seeing the worst of humanity? Elie Wiesel is a Holocaust survivor and explores this idea in a novel called Day. In Day, a man is in the hospital after getting hit by a taxi. Even his doctor notices he doesn’t fight for his life like most patients. Trying to understand why, the doctor gets close to finding out about the ghosts that haunt his patient, but can’t truly understand. The man had seen horrors in concentration camps and the dead were always with him.
Day is the third book in the Night Trilogy by Wiesel. The first book, Night, is about his own experiences during the Holocaust. Dawn and Day are fiction novels that explore the themes of how people can move on with their lives after such events. I only recently found out about the last two books and am really glad I did. They are books that are good to read, but hard on the heart and soul.
While the man is in the hospital, he has to decide how he is truly going to live when he gets out. He has been suffering with the memories of the dead and feels like he can’t truly love others. However, his girlfriend and friend visit him often and show him that they care. He doesn’t know if he should let go of the ghosts and open up to love – or if he even can.
Day is a moving novel of how a soul can be deeply affected by witnessing evil. There is sadness to it that can only be understood to a certain level. I think the entire trilogy does a good job of letting readers into the heart and soul of a Holocaust survivor. It is a must-read for adults and mature high school students could learn a lot from it, too.