SOURCE: Brown, Robert McAfee. “The Power of the Tale.” Christian Century 48, no. 20 (3-10 June 1981): 649-52.

In the following essay, Brown suggests ways for readers to approach Wiesel's The Testament.

If Elie Wiesel wanted to communicate through systematic reflection, he would write systematic reflections. He doesn't. He tells tales. And although the corpus of his writings includes three books of essays and an account of a visit to Russia along with all the novels, the retellings of biblical and Hasidic tales, the dialogues, the verse and the drama, it is story that is his major medium of communication.

The cruelest blow a reader could inflict on a teller of tales would be to reduce his tales to a series of systematic reflections, betraying him with the words, “Now this is what he really meant.” The greatest tribute one could pay would be to start talking (or writing) about a...