Night By Elie Wiesel: Literary Analysis

Life isn’t easy for anyone but you have to make sure that you’re okay before you can take care of anyone else. Sometimes we have to look out for ourselves even if it means another person’s suffering. In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, the Jewish people and other minorities are suffering from acts of prejudice achieved by the Nazis of Germany. During the Holocaust, the event in which the story takes place, these religious groups experience cruelty in persecution, starvation, concentration camps, and murder. While in the concentration camps several forced acts of self-preservation took place and this can be seen in characters such as Rabbi Eliahu’s son, the old man in the cattle car’s son, and Eliezer Wiesel.

Rabbi Eliahu was a largely popular religious leader of the Jewish community, but going through hard times has caused his son to become less faithful to his God. During the Jew’s

Drowning in hunger and sickness, the lights of these people’s lives were fading with most already gone. One generous old man on the cattle car had salvaged a crust of bread and “He wanted to raise it to his mouth. But the other [man] threw himself on him. The old man mumbled something, groaned, and died. Nobody cared. His son searched him, took the crust of bread, and began to devour it” (Wiesel 101). His very own son had killed him for a tiny piece of bread. The Jews were so starved and hungry that they were able to kill their own family for food. The old man had tried to communicate but, his son didn’t “recognize [him]… You’re killing your father…[he had] bread… for you too… for you too… “ (Wiesel 101). Going against his father’s wishes, the old man’s son killed his father to gain two small slivers of bread instead of one for him and one for his father. The boy could have helped both of them, but he was selfish and had strong instincts to protect his own life