“Even in darkness, it is possible to create light”(Wiesel). In Night, a memoir by Elie Wiesel, the author, as a young boy who profoundly believed in his religion, experiences the life of a prisoner in the Holocaust. He struggles to stay with his father while trying to survive. Through his experience, he witnesses the changes in his people as they fight each other for themselves. He himself also notices the change within himself. In Night, it is discovered that atrocities and cruel treatment can make decent people into brutes. Elie himself also shows signs of becoming a brute for his survival, but escapes this fate, which is shown through his interactions with his father. Firstly, Elie’s moral side overcoming the temptation to being a brute However, despite these thoughts, he still decided to support his father, which helps him detour away from the path to being a brute. First of all, this is shown when Elie’s father asked him for coffee, and Elie goes to get him some. “Like a wild beast, I cleared a way for myself to the coffee cauldron. And I managed to carry back a cupful. I had a sip. The rest was for him”(77). This quote reveals how Elie, despite thinking about abandoning his father before, helped his father even though he didn’t need to. The simile, “like a wild beast” describes how Elie was desperate to get coffee for his father and he wanted to help his father as quickly as he could. The word “for him” also implies that Elie wasn’t a brute because he was thinking about his father, not only himself. Elie sacrificed his own needs for his father by giving him the rest of the coffee. His desperation of wanting to help his father shows that he is not a brute. In addition, after the head of the block tells Elie to abandon his father, Elie thinks, “It’s too late to save your old father, I said to myself. You ought to be having two rations of bread, two rations of soup…. Only a fraction of a second, but I felt guilty. I ran to find a little soup to give my father”(80). In the beginning of the quote, Elie was tempted to desert his father and steal his father’s assets for himself. The word “I said to myself” shows that Elie’s mind was trying to convince him to abandon his father. If he had listened to these temptations, he would’ve become a brute. However, Elie’s true self stops him from following these cruel thought and Elie felt guilty instead. The words “I felt guilty” implies that Elie still has moral feelings. Instead of brushing this feeling off, he decides to face this feeling and want to help his father more by finding him
When they first arrived at the camp, his father asked their Blockalteste where the toilets were. “Then as if waking from a deep sleep, he slapped my father with such force that he fell down and then crawled back to his place on all fours. I stood petrified. What had happened to me? My father had just been struck in front of me, and I had not even blinked...Only yesterday, I would have dug my nails into this criminal’s flesh.”(Wiesel,39) This shows that Elie would have beaten the guard had he been allowed to. This next quote shows Elie much later, near Buchenwald in a cattle car, cramped and starving. His father’s corpse has just been thrown off the train “And deep inside me, if I could have searched the recesses of my feeble conscience, I might have found something like:Free at last!...”(Wiesel,112) This shows Elie thinking that if he searched inside himself for remorse, he would have found something that said he was free from a
..., which made him more upset because it was his own father. Also, he speaks about reaching down into his inner conscious to find out why he really was not as upset and he would have been if it were the first week in the camp. Elie believes that if he reached into his thoughts he would have come up with something like: “Free at last!...”(112).
...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.
Also, he remained calm when his father was harassed by the guards. In the book, Elie said “Then I had to go to sleep”(Wiesel 112) and after his father’s death, the thing he said wasn’t about his sadness. It was about his freedom. He said, “Free at last”(Wiesel 112). Elie is not the old Elie anymore.
Every man, woman, and child has his or her breaking point, no matter how hard they try to hold it back. In Night by Elie Wiesel the main theme of the entire book is the human living condition. The quality of human life is overwhelming because humans have the potential to make amazing discoveries that help all humans. Elie Wiesel endures some of the most cruel living conditions known to mankind. This essay describes the themes of faith, survival, and conformity in Night by Elie Wiesel.
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.
When spending time as a prisoner, many things come to mind. How to achieve survival, when is the next shipment of food coming, why is the only person who will keep their promise the man holding me behind bars? In Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie is taken from his hometown and placed in Auschwitz to do hard labour until he is transferred to the Buna prison camp. While in Buna, Elie works until the end of WWII. During the time Night takes place, Elie is 15 years of age, a 10th grader. When put in Auschwitz, Elie has only his father even though on arrival, he was also with his mother and two sisters. During this “[s]lim novel of terrifying power” (New York Times 2008) Elie has his coming of age moment along with some questions and a very powerful statement that “[n]ever shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself [sic].”. (Wiesel 34). Elie
First and foremost, Elie begins to question himself and his morals as a person. He acknowledges that the way he was behaving wasn’t like his normal self. “What had happened to me? My father had just been struck, in front of me, and I had not even blinked. I had watched and kept silent. Only yesterday, I would have dug my nails into this criminal's flesh. Had I changed that much? So fast? Remorse began to gnaw at me. All I could think was: I shall never forgive them for this.” (39) Elie seems to have become numb to the violence going on around him at this point. Elie watched his father get hit for simply asking where the restrooms were located, yet he stayed silent to protect his own skin. He loses his faith in himself and his will to stand up for what is right.
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.
Elie Wiesel writes about his personal experience of the Holocaust in his memoir, Night. He is a Jewish man who is sent to a concentration camp, controlled by an infamous dictator, Hitler. Elie is stripped away everything that belongs to him. All that he has worked for in his life is taken away from him instantly. He is even separated from his mother and sister. On the other side of this he is fortunate to survive and tell his story. He describes the immense cruel treatment that he receives from the Nazis. Even after all of the brutal treatment and atrocities he experiences he does not hate the world and everything in it, along with not becoming a brute.
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.
Many themes exist in Night, Elie Wiesel’s nightmarish story of his Holocaust experience. From normal life in a small town to physical abuse in concentration camps, Night chronicles the journey of Wiesel’s teenage years. Neither Wiesel nor any of the Jews in Sighet could have imagined the horrors that would befall them as their lived changed under the Nazi regime. The Jews all lived peaceful, civilized lives before German occupation. Eliezer Wiesel was concerned with mysticism and his father was “more involved with the welfare of others than with that of his own kin” (4). This would change in the coming weeks, as Jews are segregated, sent to camps, and both physically and emotionally abused. These changes and abuse would dehumanize men and cause them to revert to basic instincts. Wiesel and his peers devolve from civilized human beings to savage animals during the course of Night.
Night by Elie Wiesel is a very sad book. The struggle that Eliezer endured is similar to one that we all face. Eliezer’s was during the holocaust. Ours can be during any period of life. If we set our priorities in our hearts, nothing can change them except ourselves. Night is a prime example of this inner struggle and the backwards progress that is possible with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It teaches that the mind truly is “over all.” As Frankl wrote, “Man’s inner strength may raise him above his outward fate,” no matter what the circumstance.
This new behavior lead him to develop new character traits. While Ellie was in the concentration camp he became angry at many things, for example “I would have dug my nails into the criminals flesh” (Wisel 39). Elie shows extreme anger when the Nazi officials are beating Elie’s father. Elie was angry because the Nazi soldiers were not treating them nicely and putting them in poor conditions. Elie is usually not a person for anger but he shows this when his family members are being hurt. Elie wants to stand up for what is right and for his family members. Despite his studying, Elie wavered in his belief in Kabbalah while he was at the camp. In the book Elie says, “‘Where are You, my God?’” (66). Elie is wondering why God is not helping the Jews. Elie had complete faith in his religion until now, when he is starting to question his beliefs. He had learned that God will punish evil and save the righteous. However, when Elie saw that God was not helping the Jews situation then asked himself the question, “Is God real?”. Elie became worried because he felt he had lost a companion that always seemed by his side at all times. He lost hope. While Elie was in the camp he had changed the way he acted towards his Dad. Before Elie was sent to the camp Elie had a love hate relationship with his dad. However while they were in the camp together they became closer. Elie showed this when, “I tightened my grip on my