Family and Adversity It is almost unimaginable the difficulties victims of the holocaust faced in concentration camps. For starters they were abducted from their homes and shipped to concentration camps in tightly packed cattle cars. Once they made it to a camp, a selection process occurred. The males were separated from the females. Then those who were too young or too old to work were sent to the showers. Once the showers were tightly packed, the Nazi’s would turn on the water and drop in canisters of chemicals that would react with the water and release a deadly gas. Within minutes, everyone in the shower would be dead. The bodies would be hauled out and burned. Those who were not selected to die didn’t fair much better. Terrible living …show more content…
The main character of the novel is a thirteen-year-old boy named Eliezer. He and his family were taken from their home and placed in a concentration camp. He was separated from his mother and sisters during the selection once they arrived in the camp. His father was the only family he had left with him to face the inhumane environment of the camp. Many of the prisoners lost the will to live due to the conditions. During the marches between camps some of these broken souls would drop to the side of the road where they were shot and killed by a Nazi guard. Eliezer saw others do this, and soon he was thinking of joining …show more content…
As much as Eliezer tried to deny it, he knew the point was coming where he would have to leave his father behind. Had he not done so, his own life could have come to an end. At one point in the book the prisoners are being marched to another camp. When Rabbi Eliahu starts falling to the back of the procession, his son marched ahead and abandoned his father. Eliezer witnesses the boy trying to rid himself of the burden his father, Rabbi Eliahu, has become. 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. Eliezer’s father, overcome with exhaustion, decided to just sit down next to a pile of snow. The corpses of other men who decided to rest there stuck out of the snow pile. Eliezer tried to get him up but his father refused. Once the guards sent them over to their quarters Eliezer left his father in the snow. He had had to abandon his father like Rabbi Eliahu’s son had done. If he sat down
Over 84 years ago the holocaust had just begun. And it ended about 12 years later. During this period a man with the name of Elie Wiesel had been imprisoned because of his religion. 5 years after his camp, he was staying in was liberated, he wrote a book called Night. For anyone who has ever read Night by Elie Wiesel, you may have picked up on some different reading styles throughout the story such as injections, similes and metaphors, cause and effects statements and uses of foreshadowing that helps to present an impressionistic style that is unique and empowers the comprehensive message in his influence memoir. World War II was a bad time in history, connected with the first war that happened. There were a lot of tragic events in the war. One of the events was the holocaust. During the holocaust not many people knew about it while it was happening. There wasn’t a lot of communication from people inside the camps. The majority of the people that were sent to the camps were jews and other races. They had no idea what was going to happen to them or what they were there for. Some did survive life in the camps,
In the novel “Night” by Elie Wiesel, Elie’s and his father’s connection is not a powerful one. It is more of a flexible connection. At the start, they have a feeling of range between them. Elie researches religious beliefs while his dad tends to town in Sighet. They became nearer when they were compelled to keep everything behind in Sighet. Elie and his dad are transferred to a concentration camp, where they became more reliant for one another. The relationship between Elie and his father becomes interesting, suddenly changing from the day of normalcy in Sighet to the day Elie’s father passes away in a camp far away from home. Elie’s relationship with his father becomes ironic. Elie slowly turns into a father figure, a dependent for his dad.
It is hard to trust in something invisible, especially for a child when he has everything taken away. In the memoir, Night, Elie Wiesel recalls his experiences with his family during World War II. After he first arrives at Auschwitz, Elie Wiesel’s mother and sisters are taken away from him. His father is suddenly all that remains of his family. Elie Wiesel witnesses many other terrible events during his first night at camp; the only thing that keeps him sane is his father. Elie Wiesel’s father even keeps him from possibly killing himself before the Germans could. When Wiesel lives in the concentration camp with his fellow Jews, he begins to question the fairness of God, who he had trusted his entire life. Elie Wiesel loses faith in God, particularly the faith that He would use His divine power to help Wiesel, and begins to rely on his father instead, which gives him more reason to live.
"You're going to go through tough times - that's life. But I say, 'Nothing happens to you, it happens for you.' See the positive in negative events” (Osteen, n.d.). This quote by Joel Osteen is relevant to every person’s life because bad circumstances are imminent. With this to say, people need to see the good in every circumstance rather than focus on the negatives in life. The manner in which a person handles difficult circumstances is contrasted in Elie Wiesel's novel Night and the movie "Life is Beautiful.” Both of these stories follow a father and son as they experience the Nazi’s concentration camps during the Holocaust. While the ambiance is similar in both stories, the manner in which the protagonists define their Holocaust experience
Elie had to give his father his ration of soup and bread so he can eat, because the SS officers weren't giving Elie's father any food, because they said that he will die soon and it'll be a waste of food (Wiesel 108). Elie gave up his food for his father, Elie was now suffering from starvation. Elie's father was sick and weak all he was doing was in cot with Elie watching over him. While Elie was watching over his father he said to himself "I no longer believe that he could still elude death. I'm doing all I can to give him hope, but it's just not there"(Wiesel 108). Elie knew that his father couldn't survive any
Eliezer loses hope, trust, and his beliefs. He begins to rely on himself because he knew that only he can help himself and he could not depend on anyone else. "Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever..."(pg 32). Elie's father was struck, and that was when he realized he was afraid of death, and he felt guilty because he did not help his father.
Elie Wiesel’s book “The Night” is an autobiography of the complete destruction of the Jews, in which he had experienced with his father. Elie Wiesel writes about his disturbing experiences and the how he and his fellow Jews were tortured by the Nazis. Wiesel describes the inequality, brutality, inhumanity and how they were treated worse than any human. The Jews were dehumanised and they were taken their identity from them, this happened when they first arrived at the first camp and they were given all the same clothes, haircuts and tattooing a number on them. The destruction of Eliezer’s town, his family and his faith in god were all taken away from him. This is portrayed throughout the book by using symbols, quotes, images which signify the horrors and devastating experiences the Jews and Eliezer experienced.
In the story night there is a common recurring theme of a father son relationship. It sparks all kind of things like Elie’s will to live, when Rabbi Eliahou is trying to find his son, how Elie is so devoted to keeping his father alive at the end, ect. In Night Elie Wiesel uses foreshadowing, tone, and irony to show how being in these camps can change your views of what you’ll do for others.
In the first chapter of the book, Elie introduces his father and tells that he is not an open person,”My father was a cultured man, rather unsentimental. He rarely displayed his feelings, not even within his family”(Wiesel 4). When they left their home this completely changed.” My father was crying. It was the first time I saw him cry. I had never thought it possible”(Wiesel 19). This shows how fear can cause people to break down and change how Eliezer would have never expected. “He was weeping his body was shaking”(Wiesel 33). In a way, it seems that his father crying and accepting the fact that they may not live past this point made him open up and see that his son was all that he had left.
How can one’s own relationships affect them? To what degree can another person impact one another? These questions are a truly some of the most impactful overarching themes in Elie Wiesel’s book Night. The experiences of a once innocent young boy paint this world. A world of ruined faith, a world of inhuman actions, a world of death and endless night. The accounts of this experience wouldn’t have existed if for not one relationship, a familial tie that many find in their own lives, a father. Without his father there would have not been a Night. This sentiment shared not only by myself but the author Elie themselves. This is one of the key reasons the relationship between Elie and his father was key to the surviving not only his own life but
Some say difficult times can either strengthen or destroy a relationship. The Holocaust is a prime example of a difficult time that tests one's relationships. About six million Jews were killed during the Holocaust, and about one million Jewish prisoners died in Auschwitz, the largest concentration camp of the Holocaust. During this horrific time, families were torn apart by the Nazi regime. Relationships were tested to the breaking point as the Nazis attempted to destroy what was left of the prisoners emotions. Most prisoners lose all faith in God and give up. In his memoir Night, Elie Wiesel, renowned author and Nobel Peace Prize award winner, recounts these horrific events, sharing his story of survival. As Wiesel’s faith diminishes, his relationship with his father becomes even more essential to his survival.
Because of his father’s sharp decline in health, Elie was forced into a position of complete responsibility over his father. During this time, some of Elie’s childlike selfishness is still visible, but Elie finds the strength to care for his father, even if it meant putting his father’s needs above his own. After more than a weak of his father’s struggle with dysentery, Elie wakes up to find that his father had died and had been taken to the creamatorium. Elie does not describe his time in a children’s block after the death of his father, because the shock of losing him meant nothing mattered to Elie any more. When Elie leaves the camp with the liberation, he acquires food poisoning and spends weeks in the hospital. It is here that Elie looks at himself in a mirror for the first time after being removed from his home. “From the depths of the mirror,” he wrote, “a corpse gazed back at
When Elie threatens to kill himself the presence of his dad stopped him from going through with it. “Father, I said. If that is true, then I don’t want to wait. I’ll run into the electrified barbed wire. That would be easier than a slow death in the flames… We continued our march. We were coming closer and closer to the pit, from which an infernal heat was rising. Twenty more steps… I squeezed my father’s hand.” (pg 30-31) Elie squeezing his dad’s hand stops him from wanting to end everything. That is how Elie gets strength from family in a tough situation.
What if you had to live in constant fear because of the inhumanity in humans? In the story Night by Elie Wiesel, he gave the spine-chilling side of his experience of the holocaust. Elie was taken from his home and forced into a concentration camp. For years Elie and his father endured much pain and suffering. The theme of inhumanity in humans is displayed throughout Elie’s memoir.
Elie Wiesel’s Night recounts his horrifying experiences as a Jewish boy under Nazi control, and the effect the Holocaust had, not just for the Jews, but to overall to humanity. The disturbing disregard for human beings, still to this day, induces consternation, and the Nazis’ gruesome actions has scarred mankind eternally. The Jews, as Elie Wiesel describes in Night, had to overcome numerous difficulties: they are forced to abandon their homes, all their personal possessions, and eventually their humanity. The Jews were separated from their families, Such as Elie, who never saw his mother and sister Tzipora again. Elie's suffered in the concentration camp of Auschwitz for 4 years before finally being liberated, having his faith shaken and