Altruism In Night By Elie Wiesel

Defined as one of the very characteristics of nature itself, the topic of survival has brought about disputed claims in a multitude of discussions. Of them all, one of the greatest disagreements revolves around the issue of selfish survival. For the most part, the tales of many survivors have been condemned as self-centered and inconsiderate less fortunate souls. However, such assessments may not be completely true across the wide spectrum of survivor stories. To begin with, the very definition of survival itself varies among those who define it. For the pure sake of discussion, survival is the process of staying alive and selfishness is the quality of being physically self-centered. With that said, a new questions comes into light: “Is the

Essentially, altruism can be viewed as a more extreme state of the two traits combined. Within the common language, altruism can be defined as promoting welfare of someone else at the expense of oneself. Though subtle in many accounts, the topic of altruism almost always exists. Take for example, Elie Wiesel’s Night. A careful observer would note that the very cornerstone of Elie’s will to survive was to care for his slowly dying father. Elie himself pointed out that his “father’s presence was the only thing that stopped [him]” (86) from attempting suicide by falling behind. In his own words, Elie declared that [he] had no right to let [himself] die” (87) for he “was his [father’s] sole support” (87). When his father finally breathed his last after a year of suffering, Elie conceded that “there was no longer any reason to live, any reason to fight” (99). Such bold statements not only give readers a sense of depth in the story, but also conveys the power of altruism. Considering that Elie managed to live through a twenty kilometer death run and over a year of concentration camp conditions because of his father, ignoring the altruistic details of his memoir would be akin to denying his story. Moreover, Laurence Gonzales, the author of Deep Survival reinforces this concept: “Helping someone else is the best way to ensure your own survival. It takes you out of yourself. It helps you to rise above your fears. Now [you are] a rescuer, not a victim[,] [a]nd seeing how your leadership and skill buoy others up gives you more focus and energy to persevere” (331). Aside from human survival, altruism can also be observed in the heart of nature by different rules. Biologically, altruism is defined any behavior that increases the reproductive fitness of other organisms at the expense of itself. In simpler words, the biological definition of altruism does