Night By Elie Wiesel: Divided Or Connected

Father and Son ; Divided or Connected

Elie Wiesel is forced with the choice of helping the people he cares for to go alone throughout the novel, this causes the readers to question how they would’ve faced the issue of working with others or work alone. The novel Night is written by Elie Wiesel which depicts his struggle between fighting alone or working with his father during the holocaust. This struggle accentuates due to witnessing horrific events at the concentration camp. He witnesses a son murder his father for food and son leaving his father for dead while running, this causes him to have this internal struggle of self- preservation or family commitment due to seeing how sons treat their fathers. The Novel Night effectively shows

On the train to the new concentration camp one guard commands everyone to “throw out all the dead … [ then suddenly Elie] woke [up] from [his slumber and] threw [himself] on top of his [father’s] body” to wake him up from his feeble state (104). This shows his commitment to his father because it showed what he was willing to do for his beloved father. This represents the choice of family commitment up to this point. His love for his father made him burst from his nap to protect his father from any harm, even though it went against the guard's order Elie protected his father, causing their bond to strengthen even more. Once they made it to the other camp their bond would become even more defined. This would lead Elie to give “a ration of bread .. to change beds with a prisoner in [his] father’s bunk” (113). This choice of going out of his way to bunk with his father shows his commitment to him. Him giving up his ration could’ve caused his death but he did it anyway to support his father. His father was sick but Elie made sure to give up one thing that supported him to support his father. On the other hand, many sons would choose to betray their father to preserve

As Elie “gave [his] father what was left of [his] soup. But it was with a heavy heart” (97). This starts to show the effect those kids had on Elie and how he is considering no longer assisting his father in the future as it could be detrimental to him. Before Elie would assist his father with anything without thinking about himself, however after what he saw with the other sons did to their fathers he found it hard to help his own father as he could do the same thing to his own. In the block his father was a pariah and was crying and humming to himself until when a guard struck him in the head, Elie “did not move … [he] Engrav[ed] [the picture of his father’s] blood stained face, his shattered skull” (116). His father needed him the most in this moment, but he left him for dead. The younger Elie would’ve sprung up in the defense of his father, after his experiences of the sons in concentration camps he decided to leave his father for a gruesome and brutal