The Author's Choice, with the Reality of the Holoclaust

Laopraneechon 1 Krittapas Laopraneechon Mrs. Elphick IB English Literature 15 November 2021

“Night: Elie Wiesel's Memoir and How It Preserved the Jewish Identity.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 25 Aug. 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2014/aug/25/elie-wiesel-night-jewish-identity-amnestyteen-takeover-2014.

The Author’s Choice, with the Reality of the Holocaust As most people have learned about World War II, the historical phenomena taught in most high schools. It came with the image of horrific killings, the Nazi Party, and the image of Brutal genocide among six million Jews: The Holocaust.1 In the past years, groups of Holocaust survivors had called out how the awareness is faded and “shall not be silent”. There is two significant literary work that had a key role in acknowledging the world on these crimes, also, it encouraged writers and cinematographers around the world to establish their work related to the memoir Holocaust.

One is a book written by the holocaust survivor, professor, journalist Elie Wiesel (1927-2016).2

Laopraneechon 2 Another is the movie about German industrialists that saved 1200 Jews during the holocaust “Schindler’s List” directed by Steven Spielberg.

As the book Night and a movie, Schindler’s list is a different literary form, both differently represent an internal expression of the characters and share the narrator’s implicational message based on the same themes of the “Holocaust” in a different lens. In addition, it helps to answer the question “How people change, and the choice people made throughout such tragedy”.

This question dives deeply into the idea of “The Author’s Choice” applied in both works: the choice made by content creators intentionally applied to their work to help support and give the message whether direct or implicational. It also raised up tone to make the reader feel a sense of ‘appreciation’ and value the work. The author’s choice in literary work doesn’t only give differentiation to other work itself, it is an application the author applied to their work to synthesize more emotions than verbally described. The author’s artistic choice is one of them. In Schindler’s list, most of the content in the movie is black and white, which argued to the fact in the 1990’s technological innovations are far ahead. In the movie itself, there are some scenes that are colour. Spielberg’s artistic choice of black and white scenes is mainly to emphasize a powerful message through the color scenes or emphasized colour elements. The examples are “The girl with the red coat” or the scene of “Jewish Shabbat” which will be discussed in the later paragraph. In the book Night, the author Wiesel utilized ‘language choice’ and identified meanings and insights of his thoughts and point of view inside his chosen words. The passage or thought filtering the depth of Wiesel’s mind, he put his impression through his writing. His words don’t extend as long but right on the point indeed nailed the point; he wrote what he felt

Laopraneechon 3 garnered from his own experience in the camp. For an instant, he applied symbolized words in his text. The reader may be noticed in the book that there’s a lot of motifs in the writing such as night, day, dawn, etc. Also, he used varieties of punctuation in his writing, with the goal to express internal meanings and to minimize unnecessary sentences; he used exclamation marks to raise the tone of the speaker without extending to many words, or the used of Semicolon or Italics to indicate depth the word or sentences. By contrast, the movie Schindler’s List, as it a cinematic literature message from visual and verbal based, or any artistic element that the audience received it visually. Nevertheless, despite of the way they represent their message, the main idea is to illustrate the memoir’s historical events and emphasize how tragic situations really are beyond the scope of the audience’s imagination.

Both Night and Schindler’s List were based on the same historical events. How both works share the same ideas of the holocaust while in a different situation based on the protagonist’s viewpoint. Both illustrate the main idea of selection and how people act on them.

In Knight, Wiesel points out their blockälteste; inmates suggest them to “try to move your limbs, give yourself some colour and don’t walk slowly. Run!” (71, Night). Schindler’s list showed the same idea but represented it intuitively. Both works also illustrate ‘the Innocence the Jews’, one of the most powerful messages of the innocence of Jews is shown in one of Schindler’s list scenes is when the girl ‘with the red coat’ walked through and ignored everything besides her.

The colour element contrasted with black and white scene are from Schindler’s bird eye view focused on her. It symbolized “the innocence Jews wept for help”. Red color means to identify and to draw attention to; a problem or issue to be dealt with.3 She ignored people around her being slaughtered: means that there’s ignorance although realized the situation and ‘could help’

Laopraneechon 4 but chose to ignore them. Later in the movie, Schindler found out about the death of the girl with the red coat, symbolizes that it is too late to help: the innocent is being killed. Note that the girl with the red coat is visible from Schindler’s lenses, extracted from Schindler’s mind. Compared to Night, the story clearly represents the innocence of Jews, and ‘how they go through their innocence quickly”, and how they realized the reality without a sense of optimism once they stepped in the concentration camp. Another point that should make a point of is the Jewish tradition that are faded off during the tragedy. It is possible for someone to question their own religion why they ended up in the concentration camp “and shot, like dogs” (24, Night). There are many parts in Night the old Wiesel questioning his faith in God. Schindler’s List also symbolized this idea in the opening scenes of the movie Schindler’s List which are one of several color scenes. It is the scene when the Jew lighting candles celebrating “Shabbat” (benisons as part of Jewish traditions) before the tragedy, the candles continue to run out and the colour is slowly faded off to black and white. The candle is distinguished.

Ebert, Roger. “Schindler's List Movie Review (1993): Roger Ebert.” Movie Review (1993) | Roger Ebert, https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-schindlers-list-1993.

Laopraneechon 5 Although both works is based on the same theme of the tragedy holocaust, the role of both protagonists is totally contradicted; they are placed in a different social stratification. The protagonist in Night: Wiesel had been experienced in a concentration camp as young Jewish child. In the opposite, in Schindler’s list, the protagonist: Oskar Schindler is an industrialist or known as de director, he is also part of the Nazi party. The movie had shown how Schindler had changed through time from focusing on money potentially made by ‘war’ and low-paid Jewish worker; he was a nice person in the lens on Jews. But later, he lost all his workers after they all were slaughtered and sent into the concentration camp. He was unsurprised because it is ‘bad businesses’, but in the later scenes, after he have seen through his eyes how tragic the situation is, plus please Schindler to allow their Jewish parent to work in Schindler’s company believed that “people don’t die here, they say your factory is a haven” (Schindler’s list,1993) The Schindler’s list is activism is developed from there. In addition, a contradiction in of choice being made in both works. The story Night has the necessary choice to stay alive, while the Oskar made a choice to save lives. It is a decision came from an entirely opposite stage, but the similarities are shown how human being made a choice based on their gut of survival, or the sense of human being to help each other. His choice of making a list to keep Jew’s worker; the stacks of the list “is absolute good…The list is life” (Schindler’s List, 1993,). This passage implied to the movie’s name itself: “Schindler’s list”, the list that saves lives.

Both Night and the movie Schindler’s List had shown the choice people can best make and even save other lives. As said, that “Whoever saves one life, save the world entire” (Schindler’s List, 1993,). Extracted from the human gut in a time of crisis based on human beings gives the morality to the audience how we should not be ignorant. Like Wiesel’s purpose

Laopraneechon 6 of his book Night, “Having survive, I needed to give some meaning to my survival” and to be a “witness who believes he has a moral obligation to try to prevent the enemy from enjoying one last victory by allowing his crimes to be erased from human memory” (Preface, Night). Although the tragedy had passed for over seventy years, but it should not be ignored nor forgotten; will always be remembered.

Laopraneechon 7 Annotated Bibliography

Schindler’s List, Directed by Steven Spielberg Universal Pictures, 1993 Wiesel, Elie. Night. New York, Hill and Wong, 1958.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/introduction-to-the-holocaust.1 “Elie Wiesel.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 10 Nov. 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elie_Wiesel.2

“Red-Flag Definition & Meaning.” Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/red-flag.3