Feelings Evoked: Voices in Elie Wiesel's 'Night' Essay Example

Through the course of Night by Elie Wiesel, one clearly notices that the events happening in the book greatly affect the reader on an emotional level. Above all that, though, it is the voices coming up throughout the book that make the reader truly think about, and eventually feel, what the characters are feeling at that specific moment. These voices influence and completely change how we perceive the book in such a way that without them, we wouldn't be able to fully understand the story and it would just feel like another written record of the Holocaust to us. Among the many voices used in the book, there are three that stood out the most to me as a reader; the voices of Moshe the Beadle, the Rabbi's son, and Juliek the violinist.

Although Moshe the Beadle was only mentioned in the book for a short while, he served as an important part in the whole development of the book. He provides a sense of foreshadowing when he urges the Jews to listen to him as he warns them about what is being done to their own people. He is desperate to tell them everything, let them know of their horrid fate, yet no one wants to believe him, let alone listen to him or care about what he has to say, as shown when he hopelessly says, "Jews, listen to me. It's all I ask of you. I don't want money or pity. Only listen to me" (Wiesel, 1960, p.5). This is when the reader really starts to feel empathy towards this character. We imagine how frustrating it must be to try to spread a message that no one wants to listen to, how overcome with urgency and desperation he must be. His situation makes us think to ourselves, "It's starting already. This is the beginning of everything." It adds up to the disbelief in cases like these, where someone might claim to have seen nearly impossible things and warns everybody, no one believes them, and then they see with their own eyes what that person was talking about. It's hopeless, really, and we feel sadness and pity for Moshe due to this.