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Imbalance Between Wants And Needs In Night By Elie Wiesel

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Informative Essay: Want & Need Wiesel once stated that… “In one terrifying moment of lucidity, I thought of us as damned souls wandering through the void, souls condemned to wander through space until the end of time, seeking redemption, seeking oblivion, without any hope of finding either.” This passage illustrates how the imbalance between personal wants and fundamental needs can strip away hope and leave individuals feeling detached from their larger purposes and ambitions. The imbalance between wants and needs in this context can lead to profound physical and psychological suffering. When wants surpass needs in such dire circumstances, it can lead to the erosion of moral values and the loss of empathy. When one is attempting to decide …show more content…

This stands out with great importance because it can lead to a loss of perspective and an inability to prioritize what truly matters. Elie stated, "The idea of dying, of ceasing to be, began to fascinate me. To no longer exist. To no longer feel the excruciating pain of my foot. To no longer feel anything, neither fatigue nor cold, nothing. To break rank, to let myself slide to the side of the road… My father's presence was the only thing that stopped me." Elie helps and protects his father at all costs, even at his own. His commitment and devotion to his father made him continue enduring the suffering and pain, and avoided the idea of dying. Elie consistently puts his father's well-being before his own, as evidenced by several key moments in the book. For example he sacrificed his own food for his father. As the harsh conditions intensify, their bond is tested, and they must prioritize their immediate needs over their personal desires. At times, Eliezer struggles with feelings of guilt and self-preservation, conflicted between his instinct to survive and his responsibility to care for his father. To reiterate, a possible outcome could imply feeling remorseful because as previously stated, Elie had to choose between his personal warfare or his

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The concentration camps shows one of the nine circles of hell in Night to show greed. Throughout the book the author shows greed between the characters, which Elie sees throughout the book. During the book Elie sees how the greed has affected the Jews, which causes them to act differently, and for some not even to act humanely. One instance where Elie deals with greed is when he was forced to give up his gold in his tooth: “ A few days after my visit, the dentist’s office was shut down. He had been thrown into prison and was about to be hanged.

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We see this when Eliezer’s father sees him laying down and wakes him up before he falls asleep to his own death, but we do not see Eliezer willing to do that for his own father. But he does regret letting his father die when he knew his father would have done anything to keep his son alive, so we see Eliezer feeling guilty about his decision. I think that is why he wrote some of this book so that his father could be remembered and the sacrifice his father made for

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In his memoir, Elie Wiesel writes, “Since my father's death, nothing mattered to me anymore” (113), showing that his reason for living had left him. He also states that he had “only one desire: to eat. [He] no longer thought of [his] father…” (113), which allows the reader to comprehend that with no reason to live, instinct had taken over. Somehow, he indifferently fought to survive, but it was very clear that his beliefs on life had changed

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Elie states, “The idea of dying, of ceasing to be, began to fascinate me. To no longer exist. To no longer feel the pain of my foot. To no longer feel anything, neither fatigue nor cold, nothing. To break rank, to let myself slide to the side of the road …”(86).

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The empathy he felt for his father is what drove him to stay alive, to fight for his life. Without his father, he would have given into exhaustion long before the American tanks arrived at the camp. Elie's father gave him strength, therefore giving him resilience. Strong people are resilient people; it took everything Elie had to keep himself alive. In the times he wanted so badly just to lie down, to give up it was his father's presence which kept him alive.

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