An Essay On Persepolis By Elie Wiesel

2327 Words10 Pages

When your suffocating all you want is air. When your dying all you want is life. But what about after you’re saved, what do you learn? What do you become? The experiences we go through in life helps us shape into the person we are today. We learn about ourselves and we gain the qualities we have learned. In the book Persepolis, Satrapi lives her childhood during the Islamic Revolution. The struggles she’s been through made her defiant but also willing to sacrifice when needed. In the book Night, Elie Wiesel is deeply affected by the Holocaust. During his experiences in the concentration camp, he gained the quality of being loyal and also grateful for everything he has. I have not experience in great length the agony and torment that Satrapi …show more content…

Through all his suffering and pain in the concentration camp, Elie learned that he has the strength to stay loyal to his father who has been holding him back from surviving. The concentration camp was brutal mentally and physically. Many people were having trouble keeping themselves alive much more their family. People without the strength to stay loyal would abandon their loved ones for their own benefit. In the camp, when Elie and his dad were just waiting to die, they were slowly losing hope of ever truly living again. Elie’s father became very ill on their journey through the cold so even when Elie witnesses many sons leaving their sick father behind he could not bring himself to do so. He helped his father every step of the way. When he lost his father in the snow, “[Elie] walked for hours finding him”(106), risking his own life and knowing that he is wasting his energy. Not many people are like Elie in the concentration camp, many people saw that Elie’s father was very ill so they took advantage of him. They stole his food and water and left him with nothing. With the little strength he had, Elie fought for his father and what was left of his father’s pride. When his father was closer to death Elie took even better care of his father, he even promised his father that “[they] will look after each other”(89). Later he even gave his food to his father knowing it could lessen his own chance of staying alive. Their relationship demonstrates that Elie’s loyalty and love for his father is stronger than his instinct for