During his time in the concentration camps, Elie Wiesel’s conscience suffered from extensive dehumanization. He addresses his mind as being nothing but “feeble” after enduring the dreadful horrors that had happened. The abuse that he had to endure led to significant decomposition of his conscience. As his father is dying on his deathbed, the corrupted mindset within Elie convinces him that it would be good riddance for his father to perish, so he wouldn’t have to sacrifice every time his father was in need. The “recesses” inside of his conscience formed the plot that his survival is the reason that the family bond between him and his father must be shattered. Furthermore, being “free at last” may be the one thing Elie had left inside of him
Irish Playwright, George Bernard Shaw, once said, “The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity.” Inhumanity is mankind’s worse attribute. Every so often, ordinary humans are driven to the point were they have no choice but to think of themselves. One of the most famous example used today is the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night demonstrates how fear is a debilitating force that causes people to lose sight of who they once were. After being forced into concentration camps, Elie was rudely awakened into reality. Traumatizing incidents such as Nazi persecution or even the mistreatment among fellow prisoners pushed Elie to realize the cruelty around him; Or even the wickedness Elie himself is capable of doing. This resulted in the loss of faith, innocence, and the close bonds with others.
Elie’s loss of innocence and childhood lifestyle is very pronounced within the book, Night. This book, written by the main character, Elie Wiesel, tells the readers about the experiences of Mr. Wiesel during the Holocaust. The book starts off by describing Elie’s life in his hometown, Sighet, with his family and friends. As fascism takes over Hungary, Elie and his family are sent north, to Auschwitz concentration camp. Elie stays with his father and speaks of his life during this time. Later, after many stories of the horrors and dehumanizing acts of the camp, Elie and his father make the treacherous march towards Gliewitz. Then they are hauled to Buchenwald by way of cattle cars in extremely deplorable conditions, even by Holocaust standards. The book ends as Elie’s father is now dead and the American army has liberated them. As Elie is recovering in the hospital he gazes at himself in a mirror, he subtly notes he much he has changed. In Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie loses his innocence and demeanour because he was traumatized by what he saw in the camps, his loss of faith in a God who stood idly by while his people suffered, and becoming selfish as he is forced to become selfish in the death camps to survive.
Six million Jews died during World War II by the Nazi army under Hitler who wanted to exterminate all Jews. In Night, Elie Wiesel, the author, recalls his horrifying journey through Auschwitz in the concentration camp. This memoir is based off of Elie’s first-hand experience in the camp as a fifteen year old boy from Sighet survives and lives to tell his story. The theme of this memoir is man's inhumanity to man. The cruel events that occurred to Elie and others during the Holocaust turned families and others against each other as they struggled to survive Hitler's and the Nazi Army’s inhumane treatment.
In his memoir, Night, author Elie Wiesel describes the horrors he experienced during the Holocaust. One prominent theme throughout the work is the evolution of human relationships within the camp, specifically between fathers and sons. While they are marching between camps, Elie speaks briefly with Rabbi Eliahu, who lost sight of his son on the long journey. Elie says he has not seen the rabbi’s son, but after Rabbi Eliahu leaves, he remembers seeing the son. He realizes that the rabbi’s son did not lose track of his father but instead purposefully ran ahead thinking it would increase his chances of survival. Elie, who has abandoned nearly all of his faith in God, cannot help but pray, saying, “ ‘ Oh God, Master of the Universe, give me the strength never to do what Rabbi Eliahu’s son has done’ ” (Wiesel 91). In this moment, his most fervent hope is that he will remain loyal to his father and not let his selfishness overcome his dedication to his father. However, he is soon no longer able to maintain this hope.
So as the morning Sun rose. The light beamed on Christopher's face. The warmth of the sun welcomed him to a new day and woke up in a small house in Los Angeles. Christopher is a tall, male, that loves technology and video games. He stretched and went to the restroom it was 9 o'clock and he was thankful it was spring break and didn’t have to go to school. Christopher made his way to the kitchen trying not wake up his parents and made himself breakfast. He served himself cereal Honey Bunches of Oats to be exact with almond milk. Then he took a shower and watched some YouTube videos before doing his homework.
Speeches are given for a purpose. Whether it is for persuasion, or education, or even entertainment, they all target certain parts of people’s minds. This speech, The Perils of Indifference, was given by Elie Wiesel with intention to persuade his audience that indifference is the downfall of humanity, and also to educate his audience about his conclusions about the Holocaust and the corresponding events. He was very successful in achieving those goals. Not only was the audience enlightened, but also President Bill Clinton, and the First Lady, Hillary Clinton, themselves were deeply touched by Wiesel’s words.
Before Elie Wiesel and his father are deported, they do not have a significant relationship. They simply acknowledge each other’s existence and that is all. Wiesel recalls how his father rarely shows emotion while he was living in Sighet, Transylvania. When they are deported, Wiesel is not sure what to expect. He explains, “My hand shifted on my father’s arm. I had one thought-not to lose him. Not to be left alone” (Wiesel 27). Once he and his father arrive at Auschwitz, the boy who has never felt a close connection with his father abruptly realizes that he cannot lose him, no matter what. This realization is something that will impact Wiesel for the rest of his time at the camp.
...ith his near-death experiences that cause him trauma. As he and his father invert roles, and Elie becomes the bread-winning patriarch of the bunch, obligated to tending and making sure his father is fed properly, Elie’s loss of innocence and childhood evaporate with his restoration of faith in humanity. He learns that among the prisoners, fending for their own individual weight is the only way to survive. Separate from Elie and his father’s relationship throughout, fathers and sons collide, and friends betray other friends. But Elie’s own weight comes from his father, and yet when he refuses to betray him also, Elie’s own bravery reveals itself, making him the key survivor out of all of them. While he chooses to battle out his conscience to decipher these decisions to survive for his family or for he himself, he gains courage, and the courage to oblige to his faith.
This is Wiesel’s “dark time of life” and through his journey into night he can’t see the “light” at the end of the tunnel, only continuous dread and darkness. Night is a memoir that is written in the style of a bildungsroman, a loss of innocence and a sad coming of age. This memoir reveals how Eliezer (Elie Wiesel) gradually loses faith and relationships with both his father (dad), and his Father (God). Sickened by the torment he must endure, Wiesel questions if God really exists, “Why, but why should I bless him? Because he, in his great might, had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many other factories of death?
Following their liberation 1945, thousands of Jewish prisoners were released into the world. Unfortunately, many suffer from Holocaust Syndrome, which plagues them with feelings of guilt for surviving, while many of their friends and family did not. In chapter nine of Night, Elie shows evidence of this syndrome through his guilt, lack of motivation, and thoughts of death. To begin, Elie’s first sign of Survivor’s Syndrome is his guilt of surviving while the rest of his family did not. His father’s death haunts him and marks a significant turning point in this novel. He wrote, “Since my father’s death, nothing mattered to me anymore” (Wiesel 113). The death of his father took the greatest toll on Elie because they had suffered through such a
In the final moments of Night, Elie has been broken down to only the most basic ideas of humanity; survival in it of itself has become the only thing left for him to cling to. After the chain of unfortunate events that led to his newfound solitude after his father’s abrupt death, Elie “thought only to eat. [He] thought not of [his] father, or [his] mother” (113). He was consumed with the ideas of survival, so he repeatedly only expressed his ideas of gluttony rather than taking the time to consider what happened to his family. The stress of survival allocated all of Elie’s energy to that cause alone. Other humanistic feelings like remorse, love, and faith were outcast when they seemed completely unimportant to his now sole goal of survival. The fading of his emotions was not sudden mishap though; he had been worn away with time. Faith was one of the most prominent key elements in Elie’s will to continue, but it faded through constant. During the hanging of a young boy Elie heard a man call to the crowd pleading, “Where is merciful God, where is He?” (64). It snapped Elie’s resolve. From this point on, he brought up and questioned his faith on a regular basis. Afterwards, most other traits disappeared like steam after a fire is extinguished. Alone in the wet embers the will to survive kept burning throughout the heart ache. When all else is lost, humans try to survive for no reason other than to survive, and Wiesel did survive. He survived with mental scars that persisted the ten long years of his silence. Even now after his suffering has, Elie continues to constantly repeat the word never throughout his writing. To write his memoir he was forced to reopen the lacerations the strains of survival left inside his brain. He strongly proclaims, “Never shall I forget that night...Never shall I forget the smoke...Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the
In the memoir Night, Elie Wiesel shows readers how threatening and dangerous life can be as a Jew in concentration camps when Hitler was reigning over parts of Europe, such as Germany. Born into a semi-normal life, Wiesel, was just a typical Jewish boy who was focusing on his religious studies and education. Years later, Hitler demanded that all Jews must be deported to concentration camps. There, Wiesel becomes separated from other members of his family, leaving him with no one else but his father. Wiesel experiences many near-death situations and learns the importance of survival within the concentration camps. Though some may believe that it was best to be altruistic in the concentration camps, I believe that it is best to be selfish in
Having an opinion and or a belief is better than not having one at all. A great man such as Elie Wiesel would agree to that statement. He believes standing up for what is right by showing compassion for a fellow human being than for letting good men do nothing while evil triumphs. The message he passes was how indifference is showing the other man he is nothing. He attempts to grasp the audience by personal experiences and historic failures, we need to learn from and also to grow to be the compassionate human being we all are.
”Lie down on it! On your belly! I obeyed. I no longer felt anything except the lashes of the whip. One! Two! He took time between the lashes. Ten eleven! Twenty-three. Twenty four, twenty five! It was over. I had not realized it, but I fainted” (Wiesel 58). It was hard to imagine that a human being just like Elie Wiesel would be treating others so cruelly. There are many acts that Elie has been through with his father and his fellow inmates. Experiencing inhumanity can affect others in a variety of ways. When faced with extreme inhumanity, The people responded by becoming incredulous, losing their faith, and becoming inhumane themselves.
In Elie Wiesel’s Night destruction proves consistent in Elie’s and his father’s journey. The destruction for them begins with the destruction of the Jew’s businesses and homes in Sighet. “One day I was able to get up, after gathering all my strength. I wanted to see myself in the mirror hanging on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as he gazed at me, has never left me” (Wiesel 115). The physical destruction of Elie and his body, makes him feel as though he has already died. This destruction makes it more available for him to grow from his experience and share his experiences with others, but that initial shock of his physical and spiritual death and rebirth, startles Elie.