*This is an essay I had to do for my Advanced Composition class in college. I just want your guys views on it.
Who You Were, Who You Are, and Who You Will Be
“The Watch” by Elie Wiesel is a story about a Jewish Holocaust survivor who has to make a decision about digging up his past and bringing back the pain of what he has lost, or leaving the watch buried as a form of revenge. The main character in the story digs up the watch, which is a strong symbol about his past and what had happened to him during the war. The character almost takes the watch with him, bringing along the painful memories that accompany it, but in the end eventually puts it back in the hole and reburies it. The author expresses his theme: should a person let his past control him or embrace what had happened and teach future generations about it so that it won’t be repeated, by using the watch as the main symbol through showing what the character once was, what he is now, and how taking the watch with him or leaving it will ultimately change his future.
Wiesel uses the watch as strong link to the main character’s past. From the very beginning of the story the watch points out the fact that the watch was very important, “For my bar mitzvah, I remember, I had received a magnificent gold watch” (52). This statement really shows the importance of the watch to him when he was a child, because a bar mitzvah, for a Jewish boy like him, is a sign of entering manhood. To the character when he was thirteen-years-old, this was more than just a simple gold watch given to him as a present, but a sign that he was getting older and becoming a man. But so soon after the character received his gift, his symbol of manhood, he is forced to give it up burying it so that the Nazis would take it and so that he could retrieve it later when all is safe again for him. In this statement, “And so I decided to bury it in a dark, deep hole, three paces away from the fence, under a poplar tree whose thick strong foliage seemed to provide a reasonably secure shelter” (53), Wiesel again reinforces the fact that the watch is important to this character. The boy shows how much care he takes when burying his watch, remembering the number of paces from the fence and picking the strongest looking tree he could find. When the story advances twenty years and the boy is a man who had experienced things no one should have to, he returns for his watch which he buried so many years ago. He has come back in the middle of the night to reclaim a symbol that will connect him to his past. When the author writes this, “I remember the first gift, also the last, I ever received from my parents” (53), he reveals the yearning the character has for his past. The character had lost so much after the holocaust, including his parents, that he feels that he needs to come back and take back what he was forced to give up.
Next, the author uses the watch’s appearance as a symbol of who the main character is now. After twenty years, the watch has become not only a link to the character’s past, but a symbol of who he is today. The author describes the watch as, “Covered with dirt and rust, crawling with worms, it is unrecognizable, revolting.” (54). This physical description of the watch is also a physical description of what the man has become on the inside after the war. His soul is beaten and bruised, barely recognizable from the boy he was when he buried the watch. Some support that the other gives to is when he writes, “the watch too lived through war and holocaust, the kind reserved for watches perhaps. In its way, it too is a survivor, a ghost infested with humiliating sores and obsolete memories” (54). The character even admits to himself that the watch symbolizes what he is now. He is implying that they are only a faded image of what they once were. The man, once a young boy, but now only a pale shadow of himself, haunted by the memories of what happened to him, and the watch, once gold and working, but now tarnished and covered in dirt.
Lastly, Wiesel uses the decisions that the main character has to make about the watch to show what he might become in the future. In the story the character has to make a decision: take the watch with him and allow the past to forever scar him on the inside or rebury it, letting whoever uncovers it again to know that he was there and this is what happened to me. The author spends time showing the raging debate occurring in the main characters mind. When he says, “I touch it, I caress it” (54), he tells the reader how the watch is slowly taking over him. He also says, “While this thing, this nameless, lifeless thing had survived for the sole purpose of welcoming me on my return and providing an epilogue to my childhood” (53), which shows how the character is going to let his past control him. It tells the reader that if this man takes the watch, not only will he have a constant reminder of what he wants was, but he will always have a constant reminder or what he wants was, and who he had lost, and all that he suffered, and like a poison, slowly killing him a little on the inside. Just when the reader thinks he has chosen his path, seeds of misfortune begin to enter the main characters mind, quickly blooming. It is apparent in this statement made by the author, “Halfway down the street I am overcome by violent remorse: I have committed my first theft” (55). The author shows in this sentence how the character slowly comes to realize that by taking the watch, he’s taking a chance to leave a symbol behind that could inform future generations of what was taken from him. The author goes on to say, “Or that somehow I wanted to transform my watch into an instrument of delayed vengeance: one day, a child would play in the garden, dig near the tree and stumble upon a metal box” (55). It is revealed, that instead of letting the watch control him, that the main character had decided to leave it in hopes that a future generation would find it and learn of his plight. It was his way of saying, “I was here and this is what happened to me.”
In the end the character had decided it is better not to let his past control him, but rather embracing what had happened to him, and teaching those who might find the watch later what had happened in hopes that this would never happen again. Through using the watch as a symbol of the character, it shows the reader who the main character was, who he is now, and who he will become in the future.
Works Cited
Wiesel, Elie. “The Watch.” Literature Across Cultures.5th ed. Gillespie, Sheena, Tony Pipolo, and Terezihna Fonseco. (indention) New York: Pearson Longman, 2008. 52-55. Print.
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