I have enjoyed reading the book Night, by Elie Wiesel. Elie Wiesel is a concentration camp survivor, who is using this piece of literature to break free from the silence that has surrounded the holocaust. Reading Night makes me feel as though I have been transported back in time during World War 2, in the middle of a concentration camp. It isn’t a wonderful place to be, but it is a special experience. The way that Wiesel portrays childhood in Night is cold. Eliezer, the main character and narrator of Night, thinks that God has forgotten about his children. This look on childhood is present throughout the whole story since most of it Eliezer is a child himself, but it is very clear in the scene where the young boy is being hanged. The boy in …show more content…
It also gave me a chilling visual that left me speechless. It also showed me how concentration camps ripped innocence from children. The way that adolescence is formed in the story is a bit more complex than the way it was for children. Eliezer is told to lie about his age so he is an adult, but his father is told to lie about his age so the Nazis think that he is older. This shows that you have a higher chance of making it through a concentration camp if you are an adult, but not too old an adult. In concentration camps, young adults were very useful for the Nazis, because they could serve as laborers, but elderly people were useless to them and would end up in the crematory fast. This shows how the Nazis would only spare your life if you were useful to them, but it shows the dehumanization of the people in these horror fullied camps. The way children and adults are connected in Night is through father and son relationships. Eliezer is able to stay with his father through most of his journey, but the way he views his father changes throughout the time he spends in the camps. He starts looking to his father for support and answers but ends up just seeing him as a