Night and Soup

Is it perverse that all I wanted to eat after reading Night by Elie Wiesel was soup?

• "At about noon, we were brought some soup, one bowl of thick soup for each of us. I was terribly hungry, yet I refused to touch it. I was still the spoiled child of long ago. My father swallowed my ration" (42).
• "Days went by. In the mornings: black coffee. At midday: soup. By the third day, I was eagerly eating any kind of soup... At six o'clock in the afternoon, roll call. Followed by bread with something. At nine o'clock: bedtime" (43).
• "At that moment in time, all that mattered to me was my daily bowl of soup, my crust of stale bread. The bread, the soup -- those were my entire life. I was nothing but a body. Perhaps even less: a famished stomach. The stomach alone was measuring time" (52).
• "In no time, the camp had the look of an abandoned ship. No living soul in the alleys. Next to the kitchen, two cauldrons of hot, steaming soup had been left untended. Two cauldrons of soup! Smack in the middle of the road, two cauldrons of soup with no one to guard them! A royal feast going to waste! Supreme temptation! Hundreds of eyes were looking at them, shining with desire. Two lambs with hundreds of wolves lying in wait for them. Two lambs without a shepherd, free for the taking. But who would dare?" (59)
• "A man appeared, crawling snakelike in the direction of the cauldrons... Lying on the ground near the cauldron, he was trying to lift himself to the cauldron's rim. Either out of weakness or out of fear, he remained there, undoubtedly to muster his strength. At last he succeeded in pulling himself up to the rim. For a second, he seemed to be looking at himself in the soup, looking for his ghostly reflection there. Then, for no apparent reason, he let out a terrible scream, a death rattle such as I had never heard before and, with open mouth, thrust his head toward the still steaming liquid. We jumped at the sound of the shot. Falling to the ground, his face stained by the soup, the man writhed a few seconds at the base of the cauldron, and then he was still" (59-60).
• "Then the entire camp, block after block, filed past the hanged boy and stared at his extinguished eyes, the tongue hanging from his gaping mouth. The Kapos forced everyone to look him squarely in the face. Afterward, we were given permission to go back to our block and have our meal. I remember that on that evening, the soup tasted better than ever..." (63)
• "The evening meal was distributed, an especially thick soup, but nobody touched it. We wanted to wait until after prayer" (66).
• "I did not fast. First of all, to please my father who had forbidden me to do so. And then, there was no longer any reason for me to fast. I no longer accepted God's silence. As I swallowed my ration of soup, I turned that act into a symbol of rebellion, of protest against Him.
  And I nibbled on my crust of bread.
  Deep inside me, I felt a great void opening" (69).
• "Christmas and New Year's we did not work. We were treated to a slightly less transparent soup" (78).
• "I gave him what was left of my soup. But my heart was heavy. I was aware that I was doing it grudgingly. Just like Rabbi Eliahu's son, I had not passed the test" (107).
• "Listen to me, kid. Don't forget that you are in a concentration camp. In this place, it is every man for himself, and you cannot think of others. Not even your father. In this place, there is no such thing as father, brother, friend. Each of us lives and dies alone. Let me give you good advice: stop giving your ration of bread and soup to your old father. You cannot help him anymore. And you are hurting yourself. In fact, you should be getting his rations...
  I listened to him without interrupting. He was right, I though deep down, not daring to admit it to myself. Too late to save your old father... You could have two rations of bread, two rations of soup...
  It was only a fraction for a second, but it left me feeling guilty. I ran to get some soup and brought it to my father" (110)
• "I spent my days in total idleness. With only one desire: to eat. I no longer thought of my father, or my mother.
  From time to time, I would dream. But only about soup, an extra ration of soup" (113).

If you dream of soup, eat a bowl and give thanks.

And maybe write about it, if you're so inclined.