Many teenagers often ask themselves who they are and what they believe. As they search for an answer, they slowly begin to build their identity. The principles that underlie the universe of obligation allows adolescents to continue to find their identity. Because of this, impressions or previous stereotypes conceived then usually stays with them until adulthood. Elie Wiesel’s Night and Helen Fein’s Universe of Obligation helps allows teens to understand the world around them.
In Night, Jews are slowly reduced to nothing but animals. While the prisoners are in the concentration camp, the prisoners develop a new economic system where food and clothes replace coins and money. The Germans take advantage of this and use it for their amusement.
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In front of the iron doors at Auschwitz, there is a description that work makes you free. The German propaganda proclaims that working at the camps is not confinement, but liberty. The Nazis initially gave the prisoners a choice between labor or death. Wiesel employs irony in this situation because the Jews did not have a real option. When the SS officials were told to liquidate the concentration camp in Buna, the Nazis sent the prisoners to the crematorium and did not give them food despite how much they worked. Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night is good to people because it teaches them about the universe of obligation. The universe of obligation says that the closer people are to you, the more obligated you feel towards them and that the expansion and shrinkage of this universe are often a matter of life and death. The Holocaust is a strong example of what happens when one’s universe shrinks incredibly small. The purpose of the universe of obligation is to allow humanity to progress and even sometimes regress. It is important for people to know about the universe of obligation, so a tragic event such as the Holocaust does not