Bread in Night
Bread, you may not think of it, but in the book Night, it becomes crucial through the events. In Night, the word “bread” was used multiple times throughout the book. Now bread is just food, but sometimes, depending on people’s hierarchy of needs, it can be more than food. Bread can be food, a luxury, it can represent normality, friends and family together. But in the book Night bread becomes from food, to currency, a tool for survival, it represents negotiations, bartering. Then deeper in the book, it’s life or death, it’s worth diamonds, it’s someone’s life, another’s death. Bread represents survival at the fittest. Bread can represents family, friends, currency, negotiations, life and death.
This specific text in Night “Intent on preparing our backpacks, on baking breads and cake.” Shows that before Elie and his family was sent to the concentration camp, bread is typical food. In the beginning, Elie was studying a specific religion. That shows that Elie’s hierarchy of needs is probably at the top, self actualization. This also shows that bread is the least important thing to think about at the beginning of the book.
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A boy tried to negotiate Elie to give him the shoes for a ration of bread and margarine. Later in the book Elie’s father traded some rubber for a ration of bread. Bread had become a tool for survival. People trade with and for bread to survive. Bread hadn’t become a priority to Elie yet, as some parts of the book mentions him not eating his ration and allowing his father to eat his food. Elie’s hierarchy of need drops to belongingness and loves need. At the near end of the book, when Elie’s father is slowly dying. Someone tells Elie that he could’ve have double ration, if Elie let his father die of starvation. But Elie refuses and prioritizes his father than his