SOURCE: Estess, Ted L. “Choosing Life: An Interpretation of Elie Wiesel's The Oath.” Soundings 61, no. 1 (spring 1978): 67-86.

In the following essay, Estess provides a thematic and stylistic analysis of The Oath, viewing the novel as Wiesel's most satisfying novel to date.

In a recent lecture Elie Wiesel remarked that the task of the artist is “to ask questions. That is what he must do and all he can do. For he, too, has no answers.”¹ Consonant with this artistic self-understanding, Wiesel's literature sets forth the fundamental questions of human existence in the starkest of terms. Life or death, hope or despair, love or hate, involvement or indifference, community or isolation, God or man—Wiesel often positions his characters before these alternatives and confronts them with the Biblical injunction, “Choose you this day. …”²

Wiesel's literature does not always, indeed, typically it does not, render unambiguous decisions or answers. There...