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FINE / WIESEL’S LITERARY LEGACY
63
Buchenwald and sets ou t the next day to find him, it is with ambiv
alent feelings. His fa the r has become*a “dead weight,” an obstacle
to his own struggle for survival. After his fa the r dies, the youth
experiences a sense o f relief. He cannot weep and from the
dep ths o f his weakened conscience, he feels “something like —
free at last!” T he pro tec to r has been transfo rm ed into a betrayer
and must live with tha t guilt for the rest o f his life. The son cannot
even respond to his fa the r’s last words — an u tterance o f his
name, “Eliezer” — twice evoked before the dying man is perm a
nently silenced by the club o f an SS guard in the squalid barracks
f Buchenwald.
URTHER DEVELOPMENT
Wiesel turns from the autobiographical mode to the fictive in
awn
(1960) and
The Accident
(1961)
[LeJour
o r
“Day”
in French],
he two succeeding novels which form a trilogy along with
Night.
Both protagonists in these books are survivors tormen ted by the
olitude o f post-Holocaust existence. Elisha, the victim-turned-
xecutioner o f
Dawn,
and the nameless n a r ra to r o f
The Accident
ho attempts suicide are Lazarus-like figures who have emerged
rom the grave bu t are not yet resurrected . Alienated, psychically
umbed, filled with self-hatred, they yearn to jo in the dead with
hom they identify. T he ir voices have been smothered by Holo
aust flames and they have been transform ed into living ghosts
ho can barely whisper. They are still too close to the past to be
ble to speak o f it.
I f the survivor-protagonists are not yet capable o f assuming the
ole o f witness, the theme nevertheless presents itself th rough the
ather-son motif. Whe ther consciously o r unconsciously, in
Dawn
iesel has created fictional characters who relive the ambiguities
f the father-son relationship
in Night.
I f Eliezer feels responsible
or having let his fa ther die, then for having “stolen life” from him
y surviving in his place, Elisha actually become the m u rd e re r o f a
a ther figure, thus carrying the son’s unconscious dea th wishes
nd guilt feelings to the extreme.
Elisha leaves his cell-like room in Paris to jo in the Jewish resist
nce movement in Palestine fighting to establish a Jewish home
and. When assigned to kill John Dawson, a British officer held
ostage in retaliation for the British cap tu re o f a Jewish leader,
lisha struggles against this awesome task — the authority o f