Last year we read 'Night' in my english class. As a project we were given prompts, I'm bored so I'm posting them up here. Enjoy--or not, it doesn't matter much to me, this isn't really a story.
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PROMPT #12: "You are an American soldier liberating a concentration camp. Describe in first person what the setting looks like, what feelings you are experiencing, what you are seeing, etc. Use all five of your senses."
Relief washed over me as my fellow soldiers finally apprehended the German leader of this concentration camp. The joy of victory within me hollows out and dies as I glance at the newly liberated prisoners. Among the prisoners there were no shouts for joy. Looking from one face to another, I see nothing. Few reacted at all. The ones that did were overwhelmed and tears of joy, of relief, streamed down their faces. The rest seemed to be in shock, and despite their expressionless faces, their thoughts were easily read. They were all thinking along the lines of this one question: After so long, after this long period of inhuman suffering, is it really over, just like that?
My heart clenched, but I kept myself from turning away. Their gazes sent chills down my spine, and I resisted the urge to wrinkle my nose as the stench of corpses invaded my senses. This was real. The hundreds of bodies found earlier were real. It was wrong. On so many levels, it was evil. But it was all real.
The next days were spent giving medical exams and finding persoanl information from the ex-prisoners. Unconsciously, I picked at my nails trying to avoid the innocent gaze of the wide eyes before me. A young boy, probably no older than nine sat across from me, his dark eyes ogled curiously at me. He was alone. His parents had been sent into the gas chambers a few days earlier, and he had no syblings. Shifting in my seat, I struggled to find an answer for the boy's unspoken question.
What do I do now?
My shoulders start to shake and an unknown feeling rises in me. I try in vain to squash it down. I have no right to feel this way when I have suffered nothing. I have to do my job. I have to pick up the pieces.
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PROMPT #13: "If you were a non-Jewish citizen living under Nazi rule during WWII, how do you think you would have reacted to the Nazi treatment of Jews and other persecuted groups? Would you have risked your life to hide someone? To run messages for them? To rise up against the Nazis? Explain."
'Ignorance is bliss,' they say. But I'm not so sure. No, I refuse to believe what I'm feeling is bliss. My friends and neighbors have left long ago. All that's left is empty homes and broken possessions.
The town is torn. Some people want to strike out at the Nazis for their crimes. But most, like my father, think it's best to leave things be, unless it affects us directly. And despite the disaggreement, there is no conflict here. Everything still goes like normal.
I'm a good girl. I listen to my father and keep clear of the soldiers that pass through town every month with their prisoners. With my neighbors. Is the emptiness I feel from the loss of my friends really bliss? And the pity and hate and anger that overwhelms my being when I watch the prisoners pass by, if that is what bliss feels like, I'd rather live in conflict.
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PROMPT #10: "Choose one scene from the novel and write it from Elie's father's point of view."
Empty. I was completely devoid of any emotion. I didn't even have the strength to turn away from it. There was my son, right before me, being whipped for some reason unknown to me. I watched as my Eliezer flickered in and out of consciousness as his body lay, beaten and bloodly, in front of everyone.
I saw his pain, but I felt no remorse. 'I am his father. He is my son.' For a while, it seems I have had to repeat that in my mind in order to get myself to behave like the father I was. But it is not the same, my son understood just as well that I am not the confident man I once was.
Hours later, I lie in bed. I was not haunted by the scene made earlier today, and I could not bring myself to find a reason for why I can no longer care. It didn't matter anyway. I am a shell. Living by day, dying at night. Completely hollow, and I have no wish to fill the void.
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PROMPT #9: "Write a narrative in which you describe what happens to Elie's sisters and mother after they separate from Elie and his father."
I stroked my daughers' hair repeatedly. It was more to keep them from seeing my fear than it was to calm them. He abandoned us. Tears stung the back of my eyelids. There were so many chances for us to escape, but he remained submissive. He has condemned my girls and I to death.
I silently cursed my husband for his stuborness. My lips trembled. My son . . . for the life of my husband, I wish for my son to make it. Silent sobs wracked my shoulders as we were forced into a cramped room, awaiting our fate.
Dropping to my knees, I encased my girls within my arms. My girls . . . my poor, baby girls. Gas was released into the chamber, our fates were sealed. I feel my daughters grow limp, and ignoring the bodies falling around me, my trembling voice whispers a soft lullaby that I always sing my girls to sleep with.
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Prompt #8 I won't post. (It was just to pick 5 songs that describe certain characters/events in the story.)
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Prompt #11 I won't post. (It was to describe one life lesson that I've learned from reading the novel.)
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Prompt #17 I won't post. (It was asking whether or not I think that Elie and his family could have escaped their fate.)
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Prompt #19 I won't post. (It says to pick a part of the story and write my thoughts/questions/concerns/predictions.)
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If anybody's interested in those last four prompts I'll put them up here, but I doubt anyone will. I hope someone liked them. (Most of them were written quickly and I never bothered to edit them.)