SOURCE: Lazarus, Joyce. “Elie Wiesel's La Nuit and L'Oublié: In Pursuit of Silence.” Essays in French Literature, no. 28 (November 1991): 87-94.

In the following essay, Lazarus underscores the role of silence as a predominant metaphor and structural device in Night and The Forgotten.

One of the striking characteristics of the writings of Elie Wiesel is his ambivalent attitude toward language, and the predominant role of silence in his works. For Wiesel, despite his more than thirty books on this subject, the experience of the Holocaust is still inexpressible and beyond language. “Words have lost their innocence and their power”¹ since the Holocaust. Since language was used to implement the Final Solution, words can never again be completely trusted. Yet in his commitment to truth, to bear witness to the millions of victims of the Holocaust, Wiesel finds that language, however imperfect it is, is man's only available tool. Through...