Night By Elie Wiesel Research Paper

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Night by Elie Wiesel is a memoir of his experience as a young Jewish boy, during the Holocaust, who was sent to a concentration camp. Eliezer has a difficult time maintaining his faith when he sees the other prisoners lose faith and humanity. He takes the audience through his daily life during this time, showing what he went through and the battles he faced. In Night, Elie deals with many tragic instances where he thought of how he would be better off taking care of just himself and not his father. Self-preservation versus family commitment is the most important theme in the novel because, throughout the whole story, Elie shows the audience his commitment to his father and his family, but in the end, Elie chooses himself. Elie shows the struggles …show more content…

Elie’s family was important to him and he tried to not let himself lose sight of that but his self-preservation took over that commitment. "A terrible thought crossed my mind: What if he had wanted to be rid of his father?" (Wiesel 91). With a heavy heart, Elie takes care of his father by surrendering his soup. Elie feels that because he was resistant in handing his father the soup, he is just like Rabbi Eliahu's son and he “did not pass the test”. When it looked like he wouldn’t survive any longer Rabbi Eliahu’s son abandoned him. Elie realizes that this is a situation he and his father may be put in as well. Elie’s father was getting weaker and this separation freed him of a burden that eventually was going to decrease his chances of surviving. When Elie’s father died because he was sick, Elie was not affected by this, which shows a somewhat similar connection between Elie and Rabbi Eliahu’s son. He was relieved that he didn’t have to worry about his father anymore. "I did not weep, and it pained me that I could not weep. But I was out of tears… [I was] Free at last!" (Wiesel 112). If Elie wanted to keep surviving, he knew something had to change. When his father is taken to the crematorium and he finds out about this, he feels both guilty and relieved by his father's passing, knowing he no longer has to worry about anyone but himself. Elie struggles with an internal conflict that he could