To find a man who has not experienced suffering is impossible; to have man without hardship is equally unfeasible. Such trials are a part of life and assert that one is alive by shaping one’s character. In the autobiographical memoir Night by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, this molding is depicted through Elie’s transformation concerning his identity, faith, and perspective. As a young boy, Elie and his fellow neighbors of Sighet, Romania were sent to Auschwitz, a macabre concentration camp with the sole motive of torturing and killing Jews like himself. There, Elie experiences unimaginable suffering, and upon liberation a year later, leaves as a transformed person. His story displays how, though experiences affect decisions, it is the individual who chooses to either find purpose when there does not seem to be a clear objective, or allow one’s anguish to be fruitless. This concept is further explored with psychiatrist Viktor Frankl’s idea of logotherapy, and discussed in Elie’s interview with talk show host Oprah Winfrey decades after the Holocaust. In Night, Elie is overwhelmed by his suffering, as he experiences a deprivation of individuality, degradation of faith, and drainage of emotion, but he manages to find a way to channel this affliction into productivity and become a survivor rather than a victim.
It is easy to misunderstand how devastating life in a concentration camp was, but through Elie’s loss of identity and distrust in God, the reader can discern the