Evil In Night By Elie Wiesel

Throughout my day in school, I see students doing all kinds of things, skipping class, making rude remarks toward others, and spreading rumors. They cause harm to the school, teachers, and their peers around them. But why? Does everyone have some evil in them? Is this their way of having fun? With this in mind, I could connect with two people who also thought about how evil people can be. William Golding and Elie Wiesel wrote books that magnify the circumstances under which people act evil. Wiesel explores the conditions and the uncivil actions of the people in concentration camps during the Holocaust. Golding, too, takes a dive into the human capacity for evil in post-WWII times. Evil is causing harm to others that are unnecessary or over

Just like Elie and his father, the Frenchman and the Pole have spent a lot of time in concentration camps. This differs from their homes, as it has deprived them a lot of their dignity and needs. They have also been shoved into cramped areas with other people who are sick and dying for these same reasons, too. Elie’s father being sick makes him someone weaker. In these concentration camps, people go by “survival of the fittest” and will normally harm others to get extra rations. Sometimes they will be violent towards others just as a form of bullying. If their situation was not so harsh, they would normally be a lot kinder. Many people turned out to be violent and selfish because they wanted to survive. Elie’s father, being sick, and therefore weak, made him a prime target for violence within the concentration camps. Others laugh at him for not doing well, but normally they would be helpful if they were in a better place. Because of the horrible conditions that the people in the concentration camp are in, people believe it is right to act evil. After all, it is for their survival. Earlier, we see when Elie is not willing to give up his gold crown to Franek, a worker there, he searches for a way to manipulate Elie into giving it

My father had never served in the military and could not march in step. But here, whenever we moved from one place to another, it was in step. That presented Franek with the opportunity to torment him and, on a daily basis, to thrash him savagely. Left, right: he punched him. Left, right: he slapped him,” (Wiesel 55). Having any sort of money in a time like this could get you far. Whether it be bribing people, buying things, or just having a bit more money. Franek acts for his greed and after Elie’s father says no to giving him the gold crown, Franek beats him. This way, Elie is forced to give away his crown, as he does not want his father to get hurt. If the situation they were in was not so bad, there would probably have been no argument over the crown. But since times were so tight, people needed everything that could get. To get that, they would do anything they needed to, even if this involved hurting another person. Hurting others also worked well because people wanted to survive instead of dying from injuries. They could not run and are forced to give up what they own in exchange for their well-being and survival. Just like Wiesel, Golding recognizes that a change in situation for people can lead them to do evil things.

Similarly, in his novel, Lord of the Flies, Golding argues that the human capacity for evil is shown through a change in the environment and its conditions. There is a realization