Night By Elie Wiesel Research Paper

The novel “Night” by Elie Wiesel demonstrates that the desire to survive is greater than any other forces within people. It is one of mankind’s most powerful, yet destructive forces, which impairs their capacity to maintain their sanity and morality. Firstly, Elie illustrates how the survival instinct of an individual living in horrific conditions can overpower even the strongest relationships. Secondly, in the prisoners fight for survival, they portrayed almost all manner of violence and callousness as a result of the victim’s loss of humanity. Finally, Elie was not able to remain optimistic and struggled with holding out hope throughout his tough times. This led him to question his faith in God.
Even the strongest human loyalties can be

It makes them do things they would not normally do in order to survive, regardless of whom they are harming. The Jewish prisoners depicted every kind of violence and callousness as a result of their loss of humanity because of their struggle for survival. These victims were dehumanised by the Nazis, in addition to being starved, mentally and physically abused, and made into slaves. They were forced to submit to cruel treatments that caused them to behave in a selfish and greedy way even towards their family. For instance, because of the scarcity of food, the prisoners were given a few rations of bread and soup, which wasn't enough to satisfy their hunger. When the Jewish prisoners were being transported to Buchenwald in the cattle wagons, Elie stated, “One day when we had come to stop, a worker took a piece of bread and threw it into a wagon. There was a stampede. Dozens of starving men fought desperately for a few crumbs. The worker watched the spectacle with great interest.” The prisoners were fighting each other and they were ready to kill for a small amount of bread, as if the rules of society doesn’t exist to them anymore. Their priority is to acquire food as it is extremely limited. They were either just satisfying their hunger or they are holding on to the smallest hope of survival. This illustrates how the Jewish prisoners were guided by their instinct to survive rather than

Elie was not able to preserve his faith in God when he struggled to survive in the concentration camps. He started to question his faith by saying, “Blessed be God’s name? Why, but why should I bless him? Every fiber in me rebelled.” In the midst of so much suffering, Elie finds it hard to bless God. He rejected the idea that Jews are God's chosen people, trying to claim that they were only chosen to be tortured. Elie added, “Blessed be Thou, Almighty, Master of the Universe, who chose us among all nations to be tortured day and night, to watch as our fathers, our mothers, our brothers end up in the furnaces?” Elie also refused to fast on the day of Yom Kippur not only because he needed every bite of food and his father forbade him from doing so, but also because he believed that there was no longer any reason for him to fast. He turned the act as a symbol of rebellion against God. At this point, survival was Elie’s main focus and not God. This clearly shows how traumatic experiences cause people to doubt whether their God is truly