Evacuation of Trauma in Wiesel's Night
Date
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Department of English
Abstract
This auto-biographical account of Elie Wiesel, Night, published in 1958 (and this translated edition 2006) was just after The Second World War and the Holocaust. The Second World War and the Holocaust caused innumerable deaths with terror. So, postwar writings were mainly affected by the warfare and its destruction which caused trauma in the authors. This also affected Elie Wiesel who himself was the Holocaust survivor. So, his writings were mainly about the experience of the concentration camp during the Holocaust. Those experiences of inhuman torture and the deaths of others in his eyes caused trauma in him during and after his revelation from the concentration camps and Night is highly affected with it. In Night, the author has tried to act out the trauma of the Holocaust which he faced after the sufferings in the concentration camps. Night is the evacuation of trauma of the author. In dealing with the trauma, 'acting out' and 'working through' both forms are implied. Acting out of trauma is a tendency to relive the past that intrude the present existence as in flashback; or in nightmare; or in words that are compulsively repeated, to exist in the present as if the victims were still fully in the past, with no distance from it. So 'acting out' is more retrospective whereas 'working through' is more curative that suggests or sees some positive ways under the dark part trying to justify oneself being a quality of betterment and just in comparison to the evil factors. Wiesel seems to act out trauma in the beginning phase but later he works through the trauma that the Holocaust was a great black spot in human history. The German rulers who ran the Holocaust are inhuman beings.