“Day”

I’m officially finished with Elie Wiesel’s trilogy. The question I’m still left with after finishing “Day” is, can someone who suffers so much ever find peace in this lifetime? Or is suffering the only way he/she’ll ever be able to live?

Kathleen, the main character’s lover (the most accurate description of her role in his life) pretends to understand his suffering. When they first meet, she whisks him away up to her room after spending hours walking in silence. She begs him to tell her more of his life and who he is. With every story that reveals more and more of his unhappy life, she greedily soaks it up and begs for more. “But Kathleen was drinking in every one of my words as if she wanted to punish herself for not having suffered before. From time to time she insisted in the same eager voice that sounded so much like the old prostitute’s, ‘More…More…’ (pg. 42) Then later on in life when she does experience suffering, she becomes a broken remnant of herself. “She had changed. Kathleen was no longer free. She only imitated the other. Her marriage had destroyed her inside. She had lost all interest in life.” (pg. 91)

The main character and the prostitute Sarah evoke the image that by living in the past, you can avoid being hurt in the present. Sarah had become a sexual plaything used by the German soldiers in concentration camps. Because of her young age, she quickly became a favorite among the men and was abused over and over again. After the liberation of concentration camps, she continued to mindlessly give herself up to men. When the main character calls her a saint, she yells as him and recalls her previous sins to him screaming over and over again that she is not a saint and that he is mad for suggesting such a thing. But indeed her suffering must cause him to think back to his first conversation with Kathleen when she says “Only saints suffer a lot.” (pg. 40) and in turn calls him a saint.

Gyula, the main character’s closest friend, seems to be the only person who truly understands his predicament. The conditions of their friendship were severely drawn out. “We encouraged each other to stick it out, not to make compromises, not to come to terms with life, not to accept easy victories. Our conversation always sounded like banter. We detested sentimentality. We avoided people who took themselves seriously and particularly those who asked others to do so. We didn’t spare each other. Thus our friendship was healthy, simple, and mature.” (pgs. 100-101). Gyula refuses to listen to the main character’s reasons for why he has been in an accident and why he is lying in the hospital. He has no need for the words the main character wishes to speak; he is determined to “…discover everything for myself.” (pg. 102). “I was proud. Proud of him, of myself, of our friendship. Of the tough laws we had made for it. They protected us against the successes and the certainties of the weak. True exchanges take place where simple words are called for, where we set out to state the problem of the immortality of the soul in shockingly banal sentences.” (pg. 102) This is a huge part in why I think Gyula was so ready and able to hurt him in the end.

While our main character was laid up in the hospital, Gyula visited every afternoon. He insisted on painting his portrait and made him promise not to die until the painting was finished. The day that he is to be released, Gyula unveils his finished project. It was a dark reflection of the main character. Everywhere it was black with bits of gray, but his eyes were red. “They belonged to a man who had seen God commit the most unforgivable crime: to kill without a reason.” (pg. 106) After the painting has been revealed, Gyula tells him that he must whip his past back to where it belongs, in the past with the dead. The dead must stop bothering the living from truly living, it is no longer their place. In the end moments, the main character has one last conversation with his grandmother, promising not to miss the train. Gyula must know what his friend’s thoughts are for without warning he torches the painting and leaves, the ashes forgotten on the ground.

I wonder if the main character left the hospital the next day and truly started living his life with Kathleen or if he continued to live life as an empty shell of himself.