The Gates of the Forest: A Novel

Eli Wiesel's The Gates in the Forest is a classic work of Eastern European fiction divided into several vignettes extending from the WWII Hungarian frontier through to 1960's Brooklyn, New York. It's an amazing combination of post-modern Yiddish fairy tale, Rabbinical dialogue, and East European/Russian existentialist journey in search of God and meaning in a world of bewildering cruelty and religious fanaticism. Gregor is a Jewish teenager hiding from authorities in a forest cave during the early days of Hitler's "Final Solution." His parents have been deported to the death camps and Gregor spends each lonely day hiding out and contemplating the coming of the Messiah and the existence of a Jewish God in a world determined to eradicate His Chosen People. He is joined by a mysterious Jewish mystic named Gavriel who fearlessly laughs at the face of tragedy and announces that the Messiah is not coming because he is already here. Gregor's sense of identity becomes tied to Gavriel who eventually exposes himself to the authorities so Gregor can escape. Gregor spends the rest of the book in search of Gavriel whom he believes has answers to Gregor's deepest questions about the meaning of God. In the second vignette, Gregor is sheltered in a village by Maria, a kindly Hungarian woman who was his childhood nursemaid. This portion has a farcical element that is quite different from the rest of the book (Wiesel undoubtedly meant to ridicule the superstitious prejudices of the hypocritical "Christian" anti-Semites of his pre-war life). Disguised as a deaf mute, Gregor becomes privy to the village's darkest secrets. He is thrust into a Passion Play and forced to play the part of Judas, a role Maria fears will expose his Jewish identity. The villagers go into a rage during the Passion Play and nearly kill Gregor, especially after he is "miraculously healed" of his deaf-muteness and proceeds to confess his Jewish identity. Gregor escapes and ends up in the forest with a group of Jewish partisans. He falls in love with a female partisan named Clara and they marry after the war. Clara will spend the rest of her life trying to reconcile her lost love for Leib, one of the partisan leaders captured and killed while helping Gregor find Gavriel. This produces an estrangement between Gregor and Clara in the book's last vignette, decades after the war, where Gregor, a secular journalist living in Brooklyn, NY, is still searching for Gavriel and the meaning of it all. This novel is intense and breaks several rules of literary decorum as we find the protagonist, Gregor, waging existential battles inside his head that leak out into his relationships with everyone around him. The result is a sometimes hazy border between Gregor's inner and outer life. He is a tormented, guilt-ridden fellow. But Eli Wiesel's brilliant prose carries us through. Eli Wiesel, the literary world's most famous Holocaust survivor and a Nobel Peace Prize winner, has the bona fides and gravitas to write this story. He raises questions about the meaning of God that undoubtedly are the same ones Wiesel has asked since his own liberation from Buchenwald. Gregor is Eli Wiesel and vice-versa. And Gregor's arguments about God mirror Eli Wiesel's own struggles with his Maker. But issues are never resolved here. Unlike other similar themed books such as Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, which found nobility in suffering; or Steiner's The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H., in which Hitler himself answers the existential questions that plague many Holocaust survivors; The Gates of the Forest has no answers. Eli Wiesel's characters find meaning in almost everything EXCEPT God (although only Gregor -- and maybe Clara -- seem to give up on Him). Gregor finds his purpose in asking questions for which he expects no answers -- a sad but cynical exercise in hopelessness. It's a beautifully crafted story but its beauty hides a hopeless heart. Gregor's suffering doesn't justify his incessant adolescent arguing about the existence of God. Nor does Eli Wiesel's. In fact, it mocks those who refuse to blame God for mankind's incessant evil. Only the self-righteous blame God for the evil lurking in the human heart. But Gregor prefers to wallow in a world without answers. He views his people as basically good and blames God for their suffering. This is a view Eli Wiesel carried for much of his life. Yet it's in the acknowledgement of personal sinfulness and the dependence on a righteous God for Atonement and Redemption that man finds peace. This idea lingers in the novel's background but Eli Wiesel avoids it. The joyful Hasidic Rebbe at the end of the book is presented as a religious rube whom Gregor hopes to convert to his own cynical worldview with his questions. But instead he is thoroughly rebuked by a stranger who resembles Gavriel in every way but one: he refuses to laugh. Eli Wiesel passed away recently, I sincerely hope he found his own peace with God. Nonetheless, as a brilliant existential novel, an important philosophical exercise about the meaning of God and an example of beautiful Holocaust literature from one of the 20th Century's generation's greatest writers, this book is recommended.And may all those who seek the Lord find Him in the miracle of Atonement and Redemption.

Indescribable. Elie hits it out of the park.

Not exactly as advertised. The cover was worn and there was underlining in the book

this is a story about a hearing child who pretended he was deaf. our real deaf son was interested in this story. easy to find on Amazon and price was right.

Great

JUST STARTED THIS BOOK. THE TROUBle WITH THese BOOKS is that everyone wants to borrow them so have to wait my turn.

Great book!

Excellent story by a brilliant writer.