Holocaust Survivors: Alive or Undead?

Survive a disaster and all is good... right? Wrong. As the protagonist in Day by Ellie Wielsel testify, escaping inevitable death does not mean the end of suffering. And with the Holocaust being one of the worst calamities one could survive, the subsequent tormenting ones mind is subjected to following the event would be excruciatingly painful. Here, Ellie Wiesel is trying to dispel the notion that somehow the holocaust ended when it ended. That it is not simply an event that can be given a time frame, but a horror that will continually live on with those connected to it.

Day is the story of a man dead to the world,  a man who has yet to come to terms with having survived. For him, even the simplest of tasks become related to that which he wishes to forget. When he eats his mind wanders to a time where eating was part of survival and not pleasure. This occurs when he attempts to enjoy a burger but is trifled by this though: “Once I had seen a man eating with great appetite a slice of meat without bread.” Here he is referring to a starving man eating human flesh.

For our troubles protagonist, thought itself is painful, every thought inducing action like a bullet penetrating his troubled soul. Even movies with complicated plots are agonizing to him, and he does all he can to avoid them. “Something without philosophy, without metaphysics” “It’s too hot for intellectual exercises,” Our protagonist desperately urges as he attempts to convince his girlfriend on which movie to see. He then attempts to convince her to see a mindless Brazilian murder flick: “I’d love to see how the commit murders in Brazil,” making up any possible lie to avoid a complicated movie. But why should he care? It is just a movie after all.

But for him, the character of the plot makes all the difference. For if the plot is simple and mindless, he will be able to sink himself into the world of the movie and wrap his conscious around the protagonists simple problems, avoiding his own drastic predicaments. However if he sees a thought inducing movie, his mind is forced to think, and when he thinks he thinks of the holocaust, of the horrors he has seen. For him, what movie he sees makes all the difference.

For him the challenge in the novel: Day will be to come to terms with his past, to accept his present and to not fear the future. Something that comes off as simple to the majority but near impossible for a select few.