Night Background

Genre: Memoir/Personal Narrative

Scholars of Night have confronted difficulties in clearly delineating its literary genre. Some consider it as a novel, as it employs a fictional character to depict the events. However, unlike a novel, Night focuses chiefly on Eliezer and doesn’t explore the other characters or is concerned with constructing a convincing fictional story. Some critics call it an autobiography, or as Weissman calls it, a “testimony.” However, characterizing the work chiefly as autobiographical is problematic as Wiesel is strictly not the protagonist. The story is after all narrated by Eliezer, who represents Wiesel. Wiesel himself categorically denied that it is a novel, rather calling it his “deposition,” an exact rendering of facts that happened to him. However, this also is not entirely accurate again as Night is neither a record of facts nor an impartial document. It is instead an attempt to recreate the thoughts and experiences that Wiesel had as a teenager imprisoned at a concentration camp. Ultimately, Night may just be a unique piece of writing that combines memoir with philosophy written in an existentialist manner about the hopelessness of life, the brutality entrenched in man, the ebbing of faith, and the nonexistence of God.