Jun 10, 2013 01:50 AM
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"Anyone who has seen what they have seen cannot be like the others cannot laugh, love, pray, bargain, suffer, have fun, or forget. Something in them shudders and makes you turn your eyes away. These people have been amputated; they haven’t lost their legs or eyes but their will and their taste for life. The things they have seen will come to the surface again, sooner or later."
When something really tragic happens, it becomes hard to live life in a normal fashion. We are told to forget the past and start the life anew. But it’s easily said than done. How can one forget the past esp. when it’s filled with so many sufferings and so many losses? Where is the scope to hope for the brighter days when you have already seen the darkness that exist in the world? In words of author himself: Having survived the cruelest of war, how does one go on in a hostile and indifferent world?
‘DAY’ by Elie Wiesel covers story of an anonymous character, who is a Holocaust Survivor. He, during his childhood, has seen all that happened in German Concentration Camps to the Jews, during WWII. So dire is the impacts of those days on his mind that nothing seems to help him get rid of the memories of the tragic past that he has had. All the time, memories of those days come to haunt him, offering him nothing but to suffer all the time. With such a burden of memories how can he look forward to a world full of hope? Everything now seem artificial to him. He has girl friend who could be a perfect life partner. But to have a future with her, he first must get over with the burden of despair that his past carries.
"Our Stay their planted time bombs within us. From time to time one of them explodes. And then we are nothing but suffering, shame, and guilt. We feel ashamed and guilty to be alive, to eat as much bread as we want, to wear good, warm socks in the winter."
And then it happens, ‘The Accident’ which could have killed him, right in the middle of road - in Time Square NY – a car hits him. He’s taken to Hospital where in everyone - Doctor and his staff, his friends – tries hard to bring him back from the jaws of death. Will they succeed, esp. when the patient himself has no desire left in him to come back? Will they be able to save his life? Not only from injuries/wounds caused by the accidents but also from the wounds of the past making his life hopeless. What will the Accident lead to : more despair or a ray of hope? Read ‘DAY’ to know it all and for a surprising climax.
‘DAY’ by Elie Wiesel (winner of Nobel Prize for Peace) is the 3rd and final book in the ‘Night Trilogy’ – other two being ‘Night’ and ‘Dawn’. It’s very short book with closed 110 pages length. The story is autobiographical – not sure to what extent – and has its ups and downs. Subject overall is very moving and narrative is deep but simple and keeps moving from one time frame to another as the chapters progresses. Glimpses of the German Concentration Camps are so well described and portrayed through words that you can feel the pain in the words and suffer it a bit with them, as well.
On the positive side, ‘DAY’ has some brilliant thoughts on almost every other page; there is so much to quote from (some of which covered in comment section). Then, there are chapters/incidents that succeed in gripping your interest to the fullest like:
(A) the discussion between the Doctor and the patient (The Protagonist) where Doctor explains to him his theory – of how a patients will helps a doctor during major operations – and put forward to him the question of why he is not helping him, why he doesn’t want to live.
(B) Protagonist’s chance meeting with a girl – another Holocaust Survivor now a wh^^e – and her telling of her own miserable story of those days, which makes him feel his own suffering quite small in comparison.
(C) Short encounter between Protagonist and a stranger on the shore of a sea and his telling the stranger his whole story, which he has kept from all.
(D) Last chapter, introducing the most interesting character of the tale, Gyula, a Hungarian Painter, Protagonist’s friend. As he visits him in Hospital, day after day, he makes a painting of him and tries to sow in him seeds of hope, hope of getting over the past.
"If your suffering splashes others, those around you, those for whom you represent a reason to live, then you must kill it, choke it. If the dead are its source, kill them again, as often as you must to cut out their tongues."
On the negative side however, there is repetitiveness in words in terms of memories of the past that turns up time after time to haunt the Protagonist. There are chapters, wherein within the span of few pages things get a little stagnant and a reader has to put in efforts to go on. Then there is confusion created by the narrative moving in different time frames – as transition is not quite clear – and it becomes hard to understand what is happening is which phase of the Protagonists life.
With the final chapter, however, as Gyula is introduced, and all the missing links begin to fall into their places, clearing all the confusions created in-between to form a sort of suspense in the plot – which a reader hardly suspect and so don’t expect much on those lines. Yes, the final chapter compensates it all in the end. But will every reader have the strength to keep reading till the very last chapter, I hope so – overall length being so short and Elie’s writing so moving. All I can say is that it’s worth putting in a little effort in the middle pages, as it pays of well towards the end, as the story gets interesting and swift in the last chapter.
Expectations set by ‘Dawn’ (my first read of Elie’s work) are so high and ‘Day’ somehow turned to be a mixed bag of ups and downs in comparison to ‘Dawn’. Let’s see how ‘Night’ turns out to be.
One more thing, just like ‘Dawn’ (That inspired me to read other books of the Trilogy) is a very serious kind of read with no humor at all. So lay your hands on it, only if you are a reader of such kind of literature.
P.S. : Quotes in Comment's Section
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PYAR HUMEIN PHIR MILAAEGA.....
