One theme demonstrated in Kurt Vonnegut Jr. short story, “The Lie” is procrastination can lead to worse and more serious situations. Eli, a young boy, is pressured by his parents to get into Whitehill, an all boys school. So when his results come back in the mail that he failed the exam to get in, Eli rips up the notice and throws it away so his parents cannot see he didn’t make it into Whitehill. Eli keeps procrastinating by not telling his parents he failed the test throughout the story and as a result the situation gets worse and more serious when his parents find out the hard way. On the way to Whitehill Eli is still procrastinating on telling his parents about the letter and, because of the untold information, Eli isn’t acting himself, “He noticed that Eli was slumped way down in his seat. ‘Eli!’ he said sharply. ‘Sit up straight!’” Eli feels very bad about failing the exam because Eli is a Remenzel, and all the …show more content…
Eli- “clumsy with horror of what was sure to come, banged a grandmother clock with his elbow.” Eli by far is terrified of his parents finding out he failed the admission test, so scared he knocked into a clock, being clumsy. Clearly, Eli is still procrastinating and later in the text when the headmaster of Whitehill showed up at the scene that is when- “Eli got up abruptly, fled the dining room, fled as much of the nightmare as he could possibly leave behind. He brushed past Doctor Warren rudely, though he knew him well, though Doctor Warren spoke his name.” This is a perfect example of when the time was inching so close to Eli’s parents finding out Eli immediately left the scene at the horror of what was sure to come. This is definitely when the situation that Eli had set up for himself had finally took a turn, his parents were going to have to find out, the bad way, that Eli didn’t make it in the school, from the
Eliezer thinks of his own father and prays, “Oh God, Master of the Universe, give me the strength never to do what Rabbi Eliahu’s son has done” (Wiesel 91). He didn’t want to admit it but he could already feel his father falling behind. He feared that there may come a time when he would have to choose between his father and his own survival, and that was a choice he didn’t want to make. That choice came one night after being transferred by train to another camp. Once off the train they waited in the snow and freezing wind to be shown to their quarters.
Night at the beginning of the novel is described as though Elie was having a difficult time realizing that everything that had happened to
Here he is no longer ignorant to the world around him, here he experienced one of the darkest times in man's history. Elie having been through so much already lost his faith in god. Being treated like cattle every day, seeing hundreds killed and burned in the “chimneys,” and even watching live babies thrown into pits of fire was enough for him to lose his faith, something he had once adored so much. A pivotal moment in the story is the hanging of a young boy. When inmates were suspected of breaking the rules or attempting to start an uprising they were tortured for information and then sentenced to hang at the gallows. During this scene, one of the accused is a thirteen-year-old boy who was described to have the face of an angel. Wiesel brings him up to reinforce that his faith is gone, the death of the boy is the death of God to him, “Behind me I heard a man asking: ‘For God’s sake, where is God?’ And from within me, I heard a voice answer: ‘Where is he? This is where hanging from the gallows…’ That night the soup tasted of corpses.” And after that, we see him slowly begin to change as a person. Throughout the whole journey, Elie was lucky enough to be able to stay with his father. Through the text, one of Elie's main focuses is ensuring that his father is taken care of and no matter what happened they were to remain united. After rumors that the Russians are approaching begin
Elie Wiesel, a Jewish boy, lives in Sighet during World War II with his mother, father, and two sisters, and he is very religious and wanted to study Judaism. However, there were warnings by some people that Jewish people were being deported and killed. Although no one believes these warnings, Elie and his family are taken to a ghetto where they have no food. After being in the ghetto Elie and his father are separated from Elie’s mother and sister because of selection and were placed in cattle cars where they had no room. They are taken to Auschwitz where they suffer from hunger, beatings, and humiliation from the guards which causes Elie’s father to become weak. By now Elie loses his faith in God because of all he has been through. Lastly, Elie’s father dies just before the Jews are liberated and Elie sees his reflection in the mirror but does not recognize himself because he looks like a skeleton.
...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.
Samuels starts out explaining the background of Elie, a child who has a great love for religion. Then, Nazis come and occupy his native town of Sighet. Although held captured and clueless to where they were going, the Jews were indeed optimistic. They had no reason not to be, the Nazis were treating them as they were of importance. However, the optimism was to come to a halt. After arresting the Jewish leader, the Jews were sent to ghettos, then into camps. It wasn't until they reached Auschwitz where Elie for the first time smelt burning flesh. Then the eight words that Elie couldn't forget, "Men to the left! Women to the right!" He was then left with his father, who for the whole trip he would depend on to survive. It was this, in which made him lose his religiousness. In the months to come Elie and his father lived like animals. Tragically, in the end his father past away, and to amazement Elie had not wept. Samuels did an overall remarkable job on this review; however, there were still some parts that could have been improved.
Elie comes face to face with the Angel of Death as he is marched to the edge of a crematorium, but is put in a barracks instead. Elie’s faith briefly faltered at this moment. They are forced to strip down, but to keep their belts and shoes. They run to the barber and get their hair clipped off and any body hair shaved. Many of the Jews rejoice to see the others that have made it.
Towards the end of the book Elie says, “On my return from the bread distribution, I found my father crying like a child” (page 109). Elie most likely felt very insecure and scared because he saw his father crying. As Elie Wiesel points out, “I remained more than an hour leaning over him, looking at him, etching his bloody, broken face into my mind” (page 112). Elie had to live with looking at his father who was broken inside and scarred on the outside, which in could leave a long term stress on the boy because he could never get the picture out of his mind of a loved one being beaten up and scared to die. He was psychologically affected because of what he had experienced. When seeing something like this happen (especially to a family member) could leave people affected for life, leaving them only the picture of their family being broken down into fine powder making them feel that they’re going completely insane.
It also shows extreme resilience when Elie’s father passes away. Elie remains living as he did before, and he does not shed a single tear, showing that he is being resilient (Wiesel 112). For a teenager to be as resilient as Elie is through a time like this is astonishing considering anyone else probably would not have been able to keep going when they had to run past the point of exhaustion and act completely normal at a time when his father passes away. Elie Wiesel wrote the book in a way that it showed just how cruel it was, and it allowed the readers to see that this is a serious thing and that it needs to be made sure that it does not happen again. He wanted readers to take away from it exactly what happened within his story, and be fully aware of what went
Without a doubt, some decisions can affect not only the person making the decision, but also his most beloved ones. Elie truly understands this as he tells himself, “I had no right to let myself die. What would he do without me? I was his sole support” (87). The purpose of Elie’s survival is to provide hope to his father, and to strengthen his desire to live. Indeed, his thoughts are not about his own survival at this point, but instead, to encourage his father to continue living. When one of them gives up, the other has no intention of continuing his life. As Elie’s father falls asleep, Eliezer tells his father, “’We’ll take turns. I’ll watch over you and you’ll watch over me. We won’t let each other fall asleep. We’ll look after each other”’ (89). When father and son rely on one another, it gives them more motivation to pass by the difficult situati...
His father is getting old, and weak, and Elie realizes his father does not have the strength to survive on his own, and it is too late to save him. "It's too late to save your old father, I said to myself..."(pg 105). He felt guilty because he could not help his father, but he knew the only way to live is to watch out for himself. "Here, every man has to fight for himself and not think of anyone else. Even of his father..."(pg 105). He thinks of himself, and
...ow much more independent he has become. His reaction to his father's death also represents this loss of innocence: “I did not weep, and it pained me that I could not weep. But I was out of tears” (Wiesel 112). This scene reveals the fact that Elie has realized that there are many evils in the world. His lack of emotion and tears shows that he understands how bad the Nazis' actions are and how cruel the world can be. This realization ultimately represents his loss of innocence and maturation.
But turns down his relationship with his father over time when he gets hurt or starts to suffer. Like when Elies thought was, “I did not move. What had happened to me? My father had just been struck, before my very eyes, and I had not flickered an eyelid. I had looked on and said nothing”. When his father was hit by the guard he didn’t know what to do and just stayed silent.
...bers that he has a father and he forgot about him in the mob. “I knew he was running out of strength, close to death, and yet I had abandoned him” (p.106). Elie feels guilty for leaving his father when he needed Elie the most. After he wakes up he goes looking for his father. He feels as if he is responsible for taking care of his father. Elie replaces his faith with obligation to his father to help keep him going thought out the holocaust.
Elie is more concerned about his own safety but does everything g to help his father with out endangering himself. In the book Night, he was telling about when the SS guard were trying to throw his father out of the carriage and Elie says" I set to work slapping him as hard as I could.