Twilight by Elie Wiesel

What a scoundrel man is thought Raskolnikov, he can get used to anything!

The 20th century unfolded as a terrible nightmare, it was not the Colonial subject who resisted and there were no longer genocides unleashed upon hiterto unknown worlds, it was Europe itself in struggle with itself. It looked for a soul within its great traditions but found nothing!

Where do we return to after the deadly Holocaust which the Jews refer to as the “Shoah”? We look for our Prophets who heard the word of Hashem, we look for the dead and we look for G_d himself. The question of the existence of G_d is no longer something neatly discussed through reason in the vast opulence of the academia but in the midst of blood and soil and the destruction of peoples.

There is a secret though, the repressed archetypes of ancient Judaism emerge in the madhouse, yes the madhouse! The Prophets are portrayed as one dimensional and delusional but only a madman would believe that it is possible for one man to give up his life up for the people. Only a madman believes that life will work itself out somehow even in the absence of someone dear. Like Pedro who represents the G_d who survived the first wave of brutality but disappeared when another followed. He rescued his people, he gave them hope and courage but who will rescue G_d?

Why must it have to be this way? Can we not remember only the good and not the evil around? No! The author would certainly disagree! The evil cannot be countered with the “good” because evil poses questions for which there is no answer….Have sympathy for G_d!

Then come memories to haunt the living, then here is the Messiah of the wicked trapped in the asylum, infinitely patient and infinitely kind….Maybe the asylums are not “madhouses” but shelters for a dying form of life that are no longer “functional” in modern society. If we read the novel this way, then we realize the refusal to participate or have any idea of life in the 20th century with all its brutality makes one a madman or you could just descend into madness by refusing to give in to the lie they want you to become.

What can we learn from this brutality?

It’s not just the Jews who encountered a genocide but the people in Congo, Rwanda, The Russians, the Armenians and a lot more people still die in the hands of ideologies that have run amok in history. Traditional Philosophy, Religions and Art no longer have answers so we need to look deeper into life and realize that the secret is for somehow we have become responsible for life, not just ours but for all forms of life but we are incapable of handling this burden.

The horror is yet to come when the distinction between the life and “non-life” is blurred. We now know that this is how the dead make their presence felt in our midst now that we have forgotten them…..