Themes In Night By Elie Wiesel

Throughout life, one learns through experiences to cherish even the simplest of comforts. Through pain and unimaginable suffering, it is impossible for one to not lose faith or hope in life. Throughout the book Night, Elie Wiesel’s experiences from before he even enters the camps, to the end where he is free. Explains the mind of one who has endured great suffering and lost, causing them to finally break after continuous torture. Leading to loss of faith in religion, life, and even humanity. Where one can’t begin to comprehend the reason why someone of such cruelty can choose whether someone shall live or die.

To be chosen to work in the camps seems to be reassuring to Wiesel, and the other Jews. They may be tortured in many ways, however it

They are who the Germans say they are. Causing more fear through the Jews, knowing that they can be chosen to die, because in the eyes of the Germans they are there to work until death. ¨I became A- 7713. From then on, I had no other name.¨ (Wiesel 42). Wiesel creates a sense of despair and hopelessness as the Jews are stripped of their identities, whoever they were before, is now gone. They are now numbers in a system on the road to their demise. Trying to live off of what little hope they have left. Wiesel explains, “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.” (Wiesel 36). Weisel shows the helplessness that him and the rest of the Jews are faced with, and explains how they are now all equal in everything, clothes, lives, financially, and even with

The Jews being deprived from good nutrition and good portions of food, are left to save their rations as to eat them periodically as to have energy over more time. “You mustn’t eat all at once. Tomorrow is another day.” (Wiesel 44). With this, some had to scurry to find as much food as they could find, take care of themselves and their loved ones, and to ensure them with as much energy as possible as to not become too weak in the eyes of the German officers. Because if they were too weak they would be “selected”, and sent to the crematoria. “Take care of your son. He is very weak, very dehydrated. Take care of yourselves, you must avoid selection. Eat! Anything, anytime. Eat all you can. The weak don’t last very long around here…” (Wiesel 45). The pain and suffering caused by the search for food almost seems to cause people to lose faith by itself. Where if one doesn’t get to eat, then they become weak, causing almost inevitable death if they can’t work. Which ultimately brings people together to help each other find strength, as they are all equally likely to be “selected”.

In conclusion, one can see how selection, tattoos/ID’s, and rations and food. All symbolize the hopelessness and despair that Elie and the Jews are all faced with as they try to escape the clutches of death. The lives they all had being stripped from them, causing them to all be equal, and fearful