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Night By Elie Wiesel

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Have you ever felt compelled to do anything that seemed wrong? A powerful urge that made you feel compelled to act. Everyone goes through this at least once in their lives. What if this desire was as significant as saving yourself or a loved one? Elie Wiesal's memoir "Night" portrays Elie's inability to choose between himself and others throughout his imprisonment in a concentration camp. Elie's mind is conflicted between his rebellion against God, his desire to die but urge to live, and his responsibility to his father.
Firstly, Elie Wisel, a devout Jew, questions whether he actually believes in God. At the start of the memoir, Elie is depicted as a religious child who places a high priority in his beliefs. However, when he witnesses the horrors …show more content…

However he fought the tragic circumstances to stay alive until the end. He wanted to kill himself as soon as he arrived at the concentration camp because of the horrible conditions. “If that is true, then I don’t want to wait. I’ll run into the electrified barbed wire. That would be easier than a slow death to the flames (33)”. The thought of slowly being burned and going through all the suffering made Elie contemplate whether killing himself in a quick way was the better option. Furthermore, after what Elie had been through, he desired to disappear altogether. “The idea of dying, of ceasing to be, began to fascinate me. To no longer exist (86)”. Elie's internal conflict illuminates the meaning of the work as a whole because when a person sees so many deaths of dear ones, having no hope, and does labour work all day, they feel that there is no use in living anymore. Nonetheless, even after everything Elie had witnessed, the instinct to survive just grew stronger. “And something in me rebelled against death (89)”. Elie had struggled so hard to survive, and he had witnessed so many deaths. Something inside him persuaded him that he couldn't quit. Not after what he went through to survive and suffer the misery. Thus, Elie debates between giving up on his life and doing everything he can to survive in the concentration …show more content…

Elie's primary comfort when entertaining the camp was being with his father. “We did not know, as yet, which was the better side, right or left, which road led to prison and which to the crematoria. Still, I was happy, I was near my father (32)”. Being alone might make you feel weak; meanwhile, being with family members makes you feel much stronger. That's why Elie preferred to be with his father, where he felt more at ease. Furthermore, being in the concentration camp without his father was more difficult for Elie than being dead. “As for me, I was thinking not about death but about not wanting to be separated from my father (82)”. Elie had been through so much with his father so they couldn't betray each other now. Staying together after felt more essential than survival. However, towards the end of the memoir, Elie was ready to let go of providing for his father. “If only I were relieved of this responsibility, I could use all my strength to fight for my own survival, to take care of myself… (106)”. This conflict helped reveal the meaning of "Night" as a whole because Elie's devotion to his family meant a lot to him, yet because of the torment he encountered at the concentration camp, he grew to think only of himself. Taking care of his father while working at the camp was a massive burden for

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In Night. People in concentration camps tried to protect each other but struggled very hard to do so. Sometimes, they barely had a chance to begin with. For example, Elie witnessed someone kill himself because they already committed all he had left to taking care of a family member and was stuck. “A terrible thought crossed my mind: What if he had wanted to be rid of his father?

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In this book Elie speaks of his hardships and how he survived the concentration camps. Elie quickly changed into a sorrowful person, but despite that he was determined to stay alive no matter the cost. For instance, during the death

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In fact, I was pleased with what was happening to him: my gold crown was safe. It could be useful to me one day, to buy something, some bread or even time to live.” (Wiesel 52). Comparing one’s life to the lives of those living in concentration camps, is typically, drastically different. Most of us living today have more than one set of clothing, one thin blanket, and one to two meekly meals of watery soup and stale bread per day, things that plenty of people take for granted every day.

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For Elie, his survival can be attributed to the choices he made when faced with various choiceless choices, like choosing work or death and lying or telling the truth, as well as having his father right by his side the entire journey. Immediately after Elie and his father arrive at camp they are presented with a choiceless choice. They are told, “Here, you must work. If you don’t you will go straight to the chimney. To the crematorium.

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Wiesel changes vastly throughout the book, whether it is his faith in God, his faith in living, or even the way his mind works. In the beginning of his memoir, Wiesel appeared to be faithful to God and the Jewish religion, but during his time in concentration camps, his faith in God wavered tremendously. Before his life was corrupted, he would praise God even when he was being transferred to Auschwitz, but after living in concentration camps, he began to feel rebellious against his own religion. In the book, Elie

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Near the beginning of the novel, Elie wanted to be in the same camp with his father more than anything else. The work given to both his father and himself was bearable, but as time passed by, “. . . his father was getting weaker” (107). The weaker Elie’s father got, the more sacrifices Elie made. After realizing the many treatments Elie was giving his father compared to himself, each additional sacrifice made Elie feel as if his “. . .

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Namely, the text Elie describes the burning of hundreds of thousands of people getting chosen by a soldier left (Burned) right (Survived). Eventually, the readers need to understand how punishment leads to death. During camp, he faked his age to 18. He lost innocence without knowing he needed only himself to survive to live for one day to be saved.

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He wonders if he dies will all his pain go away. He asks himself if he dies will he stop suffering in the life no one should ever have to live. Elie also becomes desensitized too torture after a while because of how he is treated in the camp. Prisoners from the concentration camp are walking to, what Elie doesn't know, are the gas chambers. While they are walking they pass the crematorium.

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In the beginning of the story, Elie goes through traumatic experiences with questioning his religion and even contemplating suicide. Elie speaks out by stating, “That's what I wanted to do. To scream out, to cry out—to die. But I no longer had the strength to do so. I was alone.

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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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Elie’s hope quickly changed into depression. Being with him all of the way, Elie’s father was the most important thing to him while he was in the camps. After his father’s death, Elie saw the rest of life as useless, as stated in the book, “Since my father’s death, nothing mattered to me

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Throughout the novel, his emotion started to slip away, and he lacked emotions from all of the traumatic events he had gone through. Seeing and going through this abuse, and even seeing his father slowly die, made him realize he needs to be strong. “My father had just been struck, in front of me, and I had not even blinked. I had watched and kept silent'' (Wiesel 39). Elie's environment had made him numb and petrified.

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Families should always be important to you no matter what. Elie and his father are in a very rough spot because they are in concentration camps in Auschwitz and Buchenwald. They are going through times trying to survive in the camp so they would have to stick together. “Listen to me, kid. Don’t forget that you are in a concentration camp.

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