Abina Ananthakumar
ENG2D
Ms. Coutu
May 19, 2023
Familial Bonds Overcome Hindrances
Families can provide solace and support during challenging times, but they can also destroy lives, reshaping them in unimaginable ways. Eliezer Wiesel’s influential memoir, Night, vividly describes his journey as a young boy, referred to as Elie, trying to survive amidst the torments of the Holocaust. Nevertheless, during such a harrowing period, Elie’s family emerges as a double-edged sword. Despite the burdens Elie and his family, specifically, his father Shlomo, cause each other, preserving the bond they have is most important. To Elie, his father is his only source of moral support, motivation, and trust. Until the very end, the kinship between Elie and his father allows them to stand strong together in all circumstances. As a result, familial ties are essential for Elie
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Primarily, family ties are crucial between Elie and Shlomo as they can obtain necessities for survival from one another. Throughout the memoir, it is evident that the Jewish prisoners lack quantities of essentials, such as food and liquids. Despite this, Elie and Shlomo, being a family, look out for one another to ascertain their survival. Thus, Elie and Shlomo find a way to provide such vital needs for each other. For instance, “(Elie’s) father had a present for (him): a half ration of bread, bartered for something he had found at the depot, a piece of rubber that could be used to repair a shoe” (73). Shlomo, being a conscientious parent, puts his son first and does everything he can to help provide for him. Consequently, he voluntarily forfeits such valuable material that may have proved effective in repairing any of his essential garments for the benefit of his son. Elie, being an adolescent, needs proper
Many people live for other people, that is why relationships are so important. In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, the motif of father/son relationship develops to characters of Elie and his father by needing each other for survival and giving one another a reason to live. In the beginning of the novel, Elie and his father did not have a close relationship,
Have you ever wondered how it would feel if you had to go through a horrific historic event? Well, Eliezer Wiesel was one survivor of a historic event, the Holocaust. After the tragedies, he witnessed he made the book “Night”. The memoir “Night” by Elie Wiesel is about the importance of their father-son relationship. Elie and his father have always been side by side each day, no matter what.
Night, by Elie Wiesel shows how traumatic events can bring families closer together through the character relationships of Elie and his father, as well as through the sinister setting of the concentration camps. The characters are the main way that Elie shows the development of a father-son relationship, however the shift in the relationship wouldn't be possible without the horrid setting that the characters had to live through. The characters in Night show how bad times can lead to a positive development in relationships. Before Elie and his father arrived at the camps, they had a strained relationship.
He said in the book after his father all he cared about was his bread that he got. “Please sir i’d like to be near my father. ”(Wiesel 50) this quote shows how family is important to Elie, later in the book Elie traded food to be in the same bunk as his father. This shows how much family
They always do what they can to stick together and never be separated. Elie is always looking after his father, especially when he is in trouble. For example, the SS officers were cleaning out the dead bodies from the train carts to make room. They were going to take Elie’s father because they thought he was dead. But Elie knew he wasn’t dead and wouldn’t let them take him,
In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, the power and resilience of family is explored through determination of survival. This novel portrays a first hand account of the Holocaust and the terrible events that occurred. The father and son duo of Elie Wiesel and his father, Shlomo Wiesel, must find purpose in each other to live and survive one of the largest and most cruel genocides in the modern world. Despite you or society’s current conditions, this novel shows that everyone has a motive to live. Even in the most hopeless of situations, everyone needs a purpose in life.
Shlomo’s selflessness demonstrates the incredible strength of the bond between father and son. Wiesel’s survival gives Shlomo a reason to live despite the brutal conditions he has to
Tragedy Brought Them Together Since tragedy causes agony to one’s emotional and physical health, having family through the process therefore can help mend the soul back to upright health. Family has been an influence in my life when there are trials and tribulations. During these bumps in the road, I wouldn’t have been in suitable mind without my family. These relationships that we form with one another will build a solid foundation for present and future events. Provided throughout my paper will be key situations from the book Night, in which Elie Wiesel was in need of family and relationships to help him through the tragedy of the concentration camps.
When they first arrived at Auschwitz Elie and his father looked to each other for support and survival, Sometimes Elie’s father being the only thing keeping him alive. In their old community Elie’s father was a strong-willed and respected community leader, as the book went on you could see how the roles were becoming reversed he was becoming weaker and more reliant on Elie to take care of him. Their father son bond had always been strong and only grew stronger with the things they had to endure. “My God, Lord of the Universe, give me strength never to do what Rabbi Eliahou’s son has done” Elie was disgusted when he saw Rabbi Eliahou’s son abandon his father to help improve his chances of his survival he prayed he’d never do such a thing, but as his father becoming progressively more reliant on Elie he started to see his father as more of a burden than anything else.
In Elie Wiesel’s Night, the narrator’s evolving relationship with his father is a central theme. However, the novel also examines other father/son relationships and the impact of the Holocaust on families. The story examines the difficulties of these relationships by using the themes of guilt, abandonment, and love. While the story seems to argue that the father/son relationships weren’t difficult to maintain during the Holocaust the story actually argues that the relationships were hard to maintain during the Holocaust and it helped people get through the Holocaust.
Throughout the books, relationships are very important in hard times like the Holocaust, even though not everyone will have the best relationship. The relationship between a father and son plays a main role in both books. Elie and his father’s relationship is very important to Elie and his time in the Holocaust because they depend on each other to survive. In the beginning, Elie and his father are taken to a concentration camp and are separated from his mother
Eliezer and his father rely on one another to survive through the Holocaust. Together they encounter the cruelty of the Nazis, the lack of compassion from the prisoners, as well as the difficulty of simply surviving. They remain strong together unlike other father-son relationships seen in the novel. A majority of the prisoners gravitate towards self preservation while Eliezer chooses to remain with his father. Eliezer does exhibit ambivalence in continuing to help his father because the conditions of the Holocaust continually make it harder to make others a priority than oneself.
What can happen to the rest of one's emotions once a survival instinct takes over is astonishing. Eliezer’s sick father, Shlomo, was the only link he had back into his past, his good life. Also Shlomo was a burden to Elie. Whenever Elie started admitting that his father was a burden, he caught himself and stopped because he felt ashamed and guilty. When his father finally died of Dysentery, Elie found himself doing the unthinkable, he had abandoned his father like the Rabbi’s son did to him.
Food begets nourishment, satisfaction, and occasionally happiness; to Elie food compels worry, seeing that his father fades regardless of how much he’s given. A meager decision shows his maturity, few children his age put forth the effort to show care for their parents, much less to keep them viable. Elie’s relationship with Shlomo grows stronger through their experiences until death. The little, European boy transforms from living as Elie Wiesel to surviving as A-7713, but his relationship with his father alters from essentially the silent treatment to a genuine love.
A father, son relationship is a cherished experience full of games, sports, and joy. However the Holocaust deprived many Jewish children of these desired moments. The concentration camps of Europe, in World War II, instilled fear in the Jewish population. Although a perilous journey, the people of the Holocaust were able to survive longer periods of time due to the presence of a family member. The Italian film Life is Beautiful and Elie Wiesel’s Night portray parallels as well as many differences between the father and son protagonists.