Family Relationships In Night By Elie Weizer

Family relationships are installed in a person's brain at a very young age and continued to be, according to Smart Beings, “the single most important influence in a child’s life”. This insures that family ties would be very hard to break of someone’s own free will, however in the book Night by Elie Weizer this occurrence happens quite frequently. Throughout the book, there are multiple instances with multiple characters where they willingly refuses or deny their family heritage due to their circumstances. When one’s survival is threatened, family ties are no longer included in their self importance. In the book night, there are examples of this when the people have a lack of food, beatings are increased, and when family hinders rather than

In the concentration camps, starvation was often used as a weapon to force the prisoners into submission. When the lack of food became so unbearable it threatened the survival of the prisoners, they were willing to do whatever it takes to get a morsel of food. One instance this occurred was in a train car when a man was attacked for a piece of bread by another prisoner and exclaimed “Meir. Meir, my boy! Don’t you recognize me? I’m your father...you’re hurting me...you’re killing your father! I’ve got some bread...for you too...for you too....”(106). Because the son has been so starved, he is willing to do anything to gain some sort of food and increase his lifespan. This can further be explained when the father exclaims “Don’t you recognize me? I’m your father”, this insinuates that the son shouldn’t be harming his father, this explains that to this boy family relationships should be important to his self identity. Nevertheless, with this desperation for food and therefore survival, the son can’t focus on anyone else’s needs, he instead has to neglect all others, including his father despite the assumption he most likely gave every part of his own being to keep his son safe and protected. Another example of food being more important than family is when the main character, Eliezer,