The purpose of this research paper is to present an in-depth study of the works of Elie Wiesel. Wiesel's canon includes several novels which have been hailed as an extraordinary journey into the depths of the experience of man, a writer who is concerned with the universal questions of life and death, and of God and man. In his fiction, which is all of it more or less autobiographical, Wiesel challenges the reader to come with him on an epic journey which is both devastating and profound. His own miraculous survival of the death camps in World War II and his vision make his issues similar to those voiced in the Book of Job. Why is it, he asks, that man suffers? This research paper will examine several of Wiesel's novels, using the Book of Job for comparison, and will thus explore the levels of hope and despair which are continually brought to the readers' attention through the spiritual quest on which Wiesel's narrators are struggling. Wiesel's themes of ancient and difficult questions are combined with some of the most dramatic and pressing problems of the modern age, making his work both astounding and insightful. He writes of the problems as old as mankind with the depth and brilliance of a distinctly modern man. A. J. Heschel has said of Wiesel that he "does not describe; he casts a spell. His imagination is in a state of trance. His words are a voice crying in the hideousness of our time."
Elie Wiesel was born in Hungary in 1928 and deported to Auschwitz when he was still a youngster. After the holocaust, he was brought to Paris, where he lived and worked as a writer and a Journalist. He has received many honors for his work as a writer, including the Jewish Heritage Award and the Prix Rivarol. Besides his fiction, he has published a nonfiction work dealing with Soviet Jewry entitled The Jews of Silence. For the purposes of this in-depth study, the following novels will be discussed: Night (1960), Dawn (1961), The...