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Elie Wiesel Family Theme

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The Ones We Love? Family; a blessing, or a curse? In the book Night, Elie Wiesel offers many significant themes, but the question, “is family a blessing or a curse,” is one of the most prevalent and begging themes in the novel. During the novel, Wiesel often questions if he should try and keep his father around, or if life would just be better without him in the picture. “‘Don’t let me find him! If only I could get rid of this dead weight, so that I could use all my strength to struggle for my own survival, and only worry about myself,’ I immediately felt ashamed of myself, ashamed forever,” (Wiesel, 111). This is just one example of the internal conflict going on endlessly within himself. In Night, the question asking whether family is a blessing or a curse is the most significant theme because it highlights good and bad times, it shows the internal conflict between whether he wants his father around or not, and it illustrates the dehumanization Elie faces throughout the Holocaust. When thinking of family, …show more content…

As he is walking around the camp, he is trying to find his father, but at the same time he is wishing he didn’t, “‘Don’t let me find him! If only I could get rid of this dead weight, so that I could use all my strength to struggle for my own survival, and only worry about myself,’ I immediately felt ashamed of myself, ashamed forever,” (Wiesel, 111). This excerpt describes just how badly he wants to leave his father. He loves him dearly, but Elie gets constant reminders of the terrors of the camp. People die constantly and they don’t have to take care of a withered old man such as Elie’s father. He doesn’t want to be next. Deep down, he wants to leave his father behind, but he doesn’t want to admit that to himself. Evidently, Elie, at this point, is not ready to get rid of his father, but more than ready to, at the same

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377 Words | 2 Pages

Night, a memoir by a survivor from the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel is about him in a little town of Transylvania in Sighet. Throughout the book, you learn what Elie did during his time in ghettos, concentration camps, and surviving. But, through most of this torment his father was right next to him. Although family relationship can keep a person alive, there are times when their relationship can be burdensome. Firstly, Stein maintaining hope being he believes his family is alive is a citation of keeping a person alive from family relationships.

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197 Words | 1 Pages

In Elie's Wiesel Memoir, Night, the motif of relationships reveals the theme of importance of family by showing the impact that Wiesel's family had on him before he was taken to the camp, when he lost his mother and sister, and when he lost his dad. In the beginning of the Memoir the importance of family relating to the motif relationship is revealed through their relationship. Their relationship stays the same in the beginning. In the memoir Elie says “We decided to take turns sitting” This quote shows how Elie’s family and friends were working as if they were one big family.

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801 Words | 4 Pages

In the book Night, we the readers witness the hardships and struggles in Elie’s life during the traumatic holocaust. The events that take place in this story are unbearable and are thought to be demented in modern times. In the beginning Elie is shown as a normal teenage Jewish boy, but the events are so drastic that we the readers forget how he was like in the beginning. Changes were made to Elie during the book, whether they were minor or major. The changes generated from himself, the journey, and other people.

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651 Words | 3 Pages

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.

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500 Words | 2 Pages

At this point in the story, his own father started to get sick and weak, and all Elie could do was walk him. Elie sees no point in continuing to live when there

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847 Words | 4 Pages

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 “. . .

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747 Words | 3 Pages

Wiesel’s purpose including these relationships in Night explain how society should act during adversity. He wants to express that humanity needs to work together and support one another to survive. Humans generally choose to be independent when basic necessities are threatened. Wiesel wants to make a point that their personal connections are as important to survival because it keeps their humanity intact. Without humanity, Humans are no better than the atrocities they faced during the

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583 Words | 3 Pages

Many people live for other people, that is why relationships are so important. In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, the motif of father/son relationship develops to characters of Elie and his father by needing each other for survival and giving one another a reason to live. In the beginning of the novel, Elie and his father did not have a close relationship,

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246 Words | 1 Pages

In the memoir ‘Night’ by Elie Wiesel, he (Elie himself) penned his time in a Jewish ghetto and - later on - in Auschwitz. As the reader gets closer to Elie through his work, he shows his heart and how he wishes that he could have helped others that were close to him in their hour of need. Firstly, he regrets not being a more caring older brother to Tzipora. ‘Where is... Tzipora...’(45) he asked his father, not showing concern for his older sisters, but just Tzipora. This shows that he wanted to be that amazing big brother that everyone that has one would ever want, but he - unfortunately - could not when they were separated into genders.

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783 Words | 4 Pages

Decision Making by Elie in Night The decisions made by Elie Wiesel in the book Night both positively and negatively impacted his life. These were decisions that the author thought were best for him or for his mother, sister and father. However, the particular decisions made by the boy in Night affected his identity, innocence, and significantly changed his view of life during his experience in the holocaust.

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780 Words | 4 Pages

In the beginning, Elie and his father serve as a source of support and empathy for each other. At this point they don’t yet know the full devastation of what’s going on, and possess a sense of hope. They spend a lot of this portion confused, and only progressively become more fearful. After arriving at the camp, however, the real fear sets in.

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783 Words | 4 Pages

Elizer always looked after his father’s safety and well being but shortly before his father dies, he begins to care less and less about himself and his father: “I had no more tears. And in the depths of my being, in the recesses of my weakened conscience, could I have searched it, I might perhaps have found something like—free at last!” (106) Eliezer states that their first act as freed men is not to think of revenge, they only think about food. This quote shows that, though Elie has lost his identity so much to the point where he could become a wild animal, he still manages to keep the human instinct of survival. He some way or another pushed past the Nazi brutality to survive hunger, torment, and distress.

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910 Words | 4 Pages

Night Critical Abdoul Bikienga Johann Schiller once said “It is not flesh and blood, but the heart which makes us fathers and sons”. But what happens when the night darkens our hearts our hearts? The Holocaust memoir Night does a phenomenal job of portraying possibly the most horrifying outcomes in such a situation. Through subtle and effective language, Wiesel is able to put into words the fearsome experiences he and his father went through in Auschwitz during the Holocaust. In his holocaust memoir, Night, Elie Wiesel utilizes imagery to show the effect that self-preservation can have on father son relationships.

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695 Words | 3 Pages

Think of a circumstance where you were so hungry and thirsty, that you did not even care to think about your father anymore. That circumstance goes against common father-son relationships. The common father-son motif is where the father looks out and cares for the son. In the book “Night” by Elie Wiesel, he explains why the circumstances around a father-son relationship can change their relationship, whether it 's for the better or the worse. Since the book is about the life of Elie in a Nazi concentration camp, the circumstances were harsh and took a toll on multiple father-son relationships.

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879 Words | 4 Pages

Family; a blessing, or a curse? In the book Night, Elie Wiesel offers many significant themes, but the question, “is family a blessing or a curse,” is one of the most prevalent and begging themes in the novel. During the novel, Wiesel often questions if he should try and keep his father around, or if life would just be better without him in the picture. “‘Don’t let me find him! If only I could get rid of this dead weight, so that I could use all my strength to struggle for my own survival, and only worry about myself,’ I immediately felt ashamed of myself, ashamed forever,” (Wiesel, 111).

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