Father and Son ; Divided or Connected
Elie Wiesel is forced with the choice of helping the people he cares for to go alone throughout the novel, this causes the readers to question how they would’ve faced the issue of working with others or work alone. The novel Night is written by Elie Wiesel which depicts his struggle between fighting alone or working with his father during the holocaust. This struggle accentuates due to witnessing horrific events at the concentration camp. He witnesses a son murder his father for food and son leaving his father for dead while running, this causes him to have this internal struggle of self- preservation or family commitment due to seeing how sons treat their fathers. The Novel Night effectively shows
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On the train to the new concentration camp one guard commands everyone to “throw out all the dead … [ then suddenly Elie] woke [up] from [his slumber and] threw [himself] on top of his [father’s] body” to wake him up from his feeble state (104). This shows his commitment to his father because it showed what he was willing to do for his beloved father. This represents the choice of family commitment up to this point. His love for his father made him burst from his nap to protect his father from any harm, even though it went against the guard's order Elie protected his father, causing their bond to strengthen even more. Once they made it to the other camp their bond would become even more defined. This would lead Elie to give “a ration of bread .. to change beds with a prisoner in [his] father’s bunk” (113). This choice of going out of his way to bunk with his father shows his commitment to him. Him giving up his ration could’ve caused his death but he did it anyway to support his father. His father was sick but Elie made sure to give up one thing that supported him to support his father. On the other hand, many sons would choose to betray their father to preserve …show more content…
As Elie “gave [his] father what was left of [his] soup. But it was with a heavy heart” (97). This starts to show the effect those kids had on Elie and how he is considering no longer assisting his father in the future as it could be detrimental to him. Before Elie would assist his father with anything without thinking about himself, however after what he saw with the other sons did to their fathers he found it hard to help his own father as he could do the same thing to his own. In the block his father was a pariah and was crying and humming to himself until when a guard struck him in the head, Elie “did not move … [he] Engrav[ed] [the picture of his father’s] blood stained face, his shattered skull” (116). His father needed him the most in this moment, but he left him for dead. The younger Elie would’ve sprung up in the defense of his father, after his experiences of the sons in concentration camps he decided to leave his father for a gruesome and brutal
When Elie was separated from his mother and sister at the beginning of the book Elie was only left with his father. When things got tough, they continued pushing for each other. They made sacrifices for each other and always made sure the other was ok. Elie had lost the rest of his family so his father meant the world to him. At the end of the book this is also taken away from him.
Elie's father being alive was something like a crutch for him. Elie's foot had started to swell because it was cold out, and there was discussion about the Red Army approaching, and how the Nazi's would kill off all the injured. Elie, however, had a different mindset,"As for me, I was thinking not about death but about not wanting to be separated from my father." (Wiesel 82). Elie's desire to be with his father and care for him was great, but he would suppress his own pain for his father, which in turn, could've killed Elie.
In the beginning of the story, they lean on each other as their situation in the camps gradually worsens. They share rations, comfort one another, and Elie even makes sure to keep his father from the verge of death by not allowing him to sleep in the snow, which would have inevitably lead to his death. However, as the book progresses their relationship deteriorates when the brutal conditions of the concentration camp forces them to prioritize survival over their previous bond. Elie starts to emotionally withdraw as he grows more detached and distant from his father. The loss of hope and the overwhelming despair of their circumstances takes a heavy toll on their relationship..
Elie didn’t want his father to die and did everything for him. In the beginning of the memoir he states “I had asked my father to sell everything, to liquidate everything, and to leave.” (Wiesel 9). Then again towards the end he took his fathers food, and laid above him while he died. So in the beginning he showed his love for his father, but then became very distant and not caring.
Elie was left with his father after being cut off from his mother and sisters. Because of the circumstances in the camp, his father's health deteriorated, and despite Elie's best efforts to take care of him, there was only so much he could do. Elie has been heartbroken about his father's slow, agonizing death throughout the entire novel. This shows how traumatized Elie was he had no time to morne the loss of his father that is real dehumanization.
For all he knew, his father was the only person he had besides him in the camps, and by losing him, he would lose all hope and give in. Elie himself feared being left alone, and without his father, he would be left to his own devices. This moment in time illustrates how his father would give him resilience, as he was the only one Elie had left (at the time) who would provide him hope, aid, and support throughout their stay. This is one of the very first actions in which Elie hints that his father will be his driving motivation to keep pushing for survival, which we see later throughout the book. We see such a demonstration when Nazi officers had mistaken his (Elie’s) father as dead.
This shows how Elie wants his father to realize that he has to fight, not give up. He did not sacrifice his father for its own good, as many children do to their parents in order to survive. However, as the days passed, he began to feel some resentment when he was unable to protect himself from the brutality of the guards instead of pitying
He knows that death could come at any day, and still managed to give his soup and bread to his father. Without Elie’s father being there he would give up. Elie tried everything i his power to keep his father alive with him. One night Elie and his father were asleep in a shed and some of the other Jews thought that his father was dead. Elie did everything that he could to wake his father up, because if he did not then the Jews were going to throw him outside to die.
Families should always be important to you no matter what. Elie and his father are in a very rough spot because they are in concentration camps in Auschwitz and Buchenwald. They are going through times trying to survive in the camp so they would have to stick together. “Listen to me, kid. Don’t forget that you are in a concentration camp.
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.
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 “. . .
The empathy he felt for his father is what drove him to stay alive, to fight for his life. Without his father, he would have given into exhaustion long before the American tanks arrived at the camp. Elie's father gave him strength, therefore giving him resilience. Strong people are resilient people; it took everything Elie had to keep himself alive. In the times he wanted so badly just to lie down, to give up it was his father's presence which kept him alive.
Elie 's inaction or inability to help his father and his guilt for not doing so helped Elie to shape the person he has become now is because he kept on realizing his stand on the situation on the harsh behavior towards his father. As he starts to live more with his father he became started to realize how important he was to him and how important he is for him. In the book Night, Chapter 7, when Elie and his after were on the cattle car he said"My father had huddled near me, draped in his blanket, shoulders laden with snow. And what if he were dead as well? I called out to him.
He had made a commitment to stay with his father after being separated from the rest of his family, and the only person he knew well was gone. It was hard for him emotionally, but now he only needed to care for himself. In the novel, Elie mentions that being in the camp for so long had changed his outlook on life. He was noticing that he was starting to act different, more selfish. This could have been a reason for why he survived in a camp that was intended to kill you one way or another.
Elie has to endure being split from his family, being taken away from his home, and then being forced to work until he’s at the brink of death. Although Elie has never been close to his father, that all changes as he is suddenly put in these cruel environments. Eventually Elie’s care for his father grows so much that his only reason to keep working is because of him. This backfires on him as when time goes on his father only grows weaker, both physically and mentally. Elie goes out of his way to help his father thrive instead of himself, and even goes as far as to share the little rations he has with his father.