According to The Wall Street Journal, an American Psychological Association survey said that nearly one-third of adults struggle with basic decisions. Jews in concentration camps during World War II were faced with many decisions as well, but their decisions were not basic nor pleasant like debating whether to have chocolate ice cream or vanilla. The Jews were put in hard situations where none of the outcomes were desirable. In Night, a memoir by Elie Wiesel, Elie and the Jews he encounters are no exception to the lose-lose situations which Lawrence Langer referred to as “choiceless choices”. Moral dilemmas were so tough during this time as the Jews battled keeping their dignity and morals or surviving. It seems like it was impossible to do …show more content…
Yom Kippur was an important religious holiday for the Jews that called for them to not eat for the entire day. The Jews debated whether they should do this or not because they already fasted everyday, though not of their own choosing or free will. Due to their malnourishment and harsh conditions they were already so sick and weak, and “to fast could mean a more certain, more rapid death” (69). Some of the Jews argued that God was testing them, but if He was Elie still didn’t fast. His father had told him not to, but Elie also did it as a sort of rebellion because he felt God no longer cared about him. The Holocaust was very trying physically and emotionally for the Jews, but it was hard on their spiritual faith as well, even for rabbis and for Elie who had been very devoted to his …show more content…
When they were being evacuated on the death march Elie was quickly losing strength and “the idea of dying, of ceasing to be, began to fascinate” him (86). He was put in a hard spot where if he stopped for a break he would be trampled or shot, but to continue to run meant more pain, especially for his throbbing foot, and he was already so exhausted. In this case, it was Elie’s father who helped him survive. Elie knew he was his father’s sole support and that if he died his father probably would too. Since his father was there, Elie gave himself the mindset that he had to push on, but if his father had not been there beside him he could have easily chosen the other option and let himself fall to the ground. To survive people needed some sort of hope or something or someone to live for, to give the suffering purpose. Without a purpose the suffering wasn’t worth it, and they died. Elie’s father was Elie’s reason to continue living, to continue pushing through the pain, so because of him Elie lived another
In Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, Elie had to make several decisions which had a severe impact on his life.. If he failed to make the correct decision it could have resulted in a darker outcome. Elie's decision to lie about his age,not fast during Yom Kippur,and him not fight for food and instead he decides to eat the scraps that were left in any. Those decisions had a significant impact on his life and his identity. As Mr.Wisel once said “Action is the only remedy to indifference:the most insidious danger of all”.
A human is not capable of discerning the right from the wrong while going through an extreme struggle such as the Holocaust. Their sense of morality is overpowered by their need of survival. This is seen is Elie Wiesel’s book, “Night”. Wiesel states, “She received several blows to the head, blows that could have been lethal. Her son was clinging desperately to her, not uttering a word” (26).
The holocaust makes physical and mental alterations to Elie’s life, and this tells the reader that the people who did this are effective and impacting, also it shows that Elie’s mind is controlled by what he was experiencing. Way back at the start of the book the readers see an adolescent boy who is studying Kabbalah, but when suddenly German officers come to ship the Jewish citizens out of his town, Elie wants to run away. By
The Jews constantly smelled flesh being burned and heard the cries of millions of their own friends and family. This kind of violence and cruelty caused Elie to fight for his life everyday. Although Elie never completely
His descent to atheism also made him grow a sense of despair alongside it, he lost hope and rebelled against it. During Yom Kippur Elizer believed in no other reason to fast, his choice was to eat his rations in the spirit of rebellion, and because of God's silence(Wiesel 69). A deep hatred had developed between Elizer and his view of
Trapped Choices They were given so many choices, only to be led down a path that conjoined at the end regardless of how long it took or how they got there, and one of the millions who walked that path was Elie Wiesel. The path was an intricate structure, perfected by the Nazi party during the period of WWII from 1933 to 1945. It was used as a way of mental, physical, psychological, and even generational torture as the lasting effects of it have lived through the families of those who walked this path. After the manipulation of not only the German population but the Jewish as well, the Nazi party, with the Axis Powers, moved Jewish, Polish, gypsy, and other groups through the process of the Holocaust, using it as a systematic way for mass execution
Elie has every reason to believe his father would be taken. Elie is becoming much weaker and is unable to work as effectively, yet he no longer regards his own safety as his utmost priority. This is the same Elie who had disobeyed his father’s orders in the past, the same Elie who felt that his father cared more about the community than him. Even after all this, he grows to have his father as such a massive priority for him, that he no longer thinks of his own survival as his number one priority. Elie desperately clings to his father as the last vestige of his former life.
Those that did not choose to fast kept about the same amount of energy they had before, but the ones that did fast lost their energy. When they lost their energy, they could not do as much, which led to death. Some died from starvation, while others died in a crematorium. Elie survived the fasting period because he decided against fasting. He kept his strength and got to live through
Imagine you were living at the time of the holocaust and you were selected to be killed whether by your age, gender, or beliefs. Well, this actually happened to a survivor who gone through a difficult life. In the book Night by Elie Wiesel quoted, “A young Jewish boy discovered the kingdom of Night. I remember his bewilderment, I remember his anguish. It all happened so fast.
He rejected the idea that Jews are God's chosen people, trying to claim that they were only chosen to be tortured. Elie added, “Blessed be Thou, Almighty, Master of the Universe, who chose us among all nations to be tortured day and night, to watch as our fathers, our mothers, our brothers end up in the furnaces?” Elie also refused to fast on the day of Yom Kippur not only because he needed every bite of food and his father forbade him from doing so, but also because he believed that there was no longer any reason for him to fast. He turned the act as a symbol of rebellion against God. At this point, survival was Elie’s main focus and not God.
During World War II, many people remained neutral or indifferent to the atrocities that were happening around them. However, the words of Elie Wiesel serve as a powerful reminder of the importance of taking action in the face of injustice. In his quote, Wiesel swears never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation, emphasizing the importance of taking sides and never remaining neutral. As an American citizen, I reflect on what I would have done during the war and what different life choices I would make in the future. It's easy to say that I would have resisted the Nazi regime, but it would have taken immense bravery to do so.
In the book Night, Elie Wiesel is forced to make many hard decisions, from deciding if he should trade his shoes to determining if he should give his dying father his food. During the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel and his father are separated from their family and have to survive each other and face the challenges of being prisoners at the concentration camps. Some decisions that Elie makes in Night benefited his survival and some did not, we’re going to analyze his choices and see how they either benefited or worsened his chances of survival and how they affected others. Near the start of the story, a prisoner tells Elie and his father to lie about their age, Elie decides to listen to the prisoner and lies about his age. Because Elie makes this
The heart wrenching and powerful memoir “Night” by Elie Wiesel depicts Elie’s struggle through the holocaust. It shows the challenges and struggles Elie and people like him faced during this mournful time, the dehumanization; being forced out of their homes, their towns and sent to nazi concentration camps, being stripped of their belongings and valuables, being forced to endure and witness the horrific events during one of history’s most ghastly tales. In “Night” Elie does not only endure a physical journey but also a spiritual journey as well, this makes him question his determination, faith and strength. This spiritual journey is a journey of self discovery and is shown through Elie’s struggle with himself and his beliefs, his father
Near the beginning of the novel, Elie wanted to be in the same camp with his father more than anything else. The work given to both his father and himself was bearable, but as time passed by, “. . . his father was getting weaker” (107). The weaker Elie’s father got, the more sacrifices Elie made. After realizing the many treatments Elie was giving his father compared to himself, each additional sacrifice made Elie feel as if his “. . .
Although it is not outwardly stated, it can be assumed that Elie was not the only Jew to eat during this particular Yom Kippur; whether their actions were due to practicality or anger will remain unknown. Other Jews hold on to their last pieces of hope. Even when surrounded by death, they praise God’s name and fast in His honor. But even the most religious of Jews are not immune to the world around them. Even the rabbi begins to