The Fight for Night

An interesting phenomenon happened today at school.

I had given the students options to read about the Montgomery boycotts, Vietnam, Farewell to Manzanar, Night, or an immigration story from the Dominican Republic. Most of the students in the class read Night. When it came time to choose which one they wanted to be in groups for literature circles, there was fighting as to who was to report out on Night. Everyone was yelling out how they wanted to cover the concentration camps!

When a colleague first told me she was teaching Night, I commented, “Don’t you get depressed rereading, living through that book again?” She commented how the students kind of really got into the morbid, dark side of the suffering.

I am too haunted by the suffering. I pulled an image from the camps, but have decided not to post it because it is too horrifying to constantly look at on here. The night I posted the sounding the shofar image, I had a dream that I was taken off to the camps.

I always talk to people about how we cannot be ostriches, hiding our heads in the sand. I think everyone should read Night, know about Darfur, and experience life in the inner-city.

Yet, I realize, there is part of me that also is drawn to the depressed side of suffering. Perhaps it is shared suffering that relieves it. Or perhaps it is a masochistic side that enjoys it. I wonder what it would be like to just be diluted with bliss.