Elie Wiesel Loss Of Innocence In Night

Humans change throughout their life both physically and mentally. Some as they age, but also as they experience life-altering events. Elie Wiesel, author, and protagonist of his memoir, Night, had to experience the horrors of the Holocaust personally. This led him to modify his life in many aspects. Elie Wiesel changes throughout the story by losing his innocence, faith, and overall emotional standpoint. Elie Wiesel loses his innocence during his time in the Holocaust from events detailing the brutality of man. Elie detailed his life as a young adolescent boy at the beginning of his memoir, and it exemplified a nice and easy life not full of worry. However, when he gets sent on his journey through the concentration camps, it would be clear

From this action, Elie grasps the savagery of man after experiencing it on a personal scale. He realizes how humans could be so ruthless to torture other people, let alone a young child, with no regard. This pain would engrave into Elie’s mind for the rest of his life.“Then came the march past the victims. The two men were no longer alive. Their tongues were hanging out, swollen and bluish” (Wiesel 64). Again, Elie further comprehends the cruelty of man; when the soldiers hanged two men and a child. The child especially affected him, and it disheartened Elie even more so that the child was tortured for an action he did not commit. Both of these events were two of many which quickly caused Elie to lose his

“‘Why do you cry when you pray?’ he asked, as though he knew me well” (Wiesel 4). At the beginning of the memoir, Elie recalls he would cry for no apparent reason. This shows he was a very emotional person, crying for something and not even knowing the reason why. However, later in the story, this would prove to not be the case anymore. “I did not weep, and it pained me that I could not weep. But I was out of tears'' (Wiesel 112). Elie lost his father to the brutality of the Holocaust. In spite of that, he did not cry. Going from sobbing without a reason to not even crying when a close loved one passes shows how Elie slowly became apathetic towards life proving the mental trauma the Holocaust brought to