The Role Of Guilt In Night By Elie Wiesel

The power of guilt is something that consumes people, something that many people fail to recognize, and something many try to escape from. In the literary works The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and Night by Elie Wiesel, the characters, Elie and Amir, confront guilt that negatively impacts how they develop as characters. These characters fail to recognize the guilt they possess and let it consume them. In addition, Elie and Amir face traumatizing experiences in their respective childhoods that lead to the guilt they must challenge which defines their identity. Joyce Meyer, an American author, argues that humans are not built to withstand the guilt they may possess; likewise, in Night and The Kite Runner, the role of guilt is very impactful

Wiesel utilizes the events in his novel to demonstrate the effect of guilt on the character development of Elie. While his identity is already shaped by his stay at the concentration camp, Elie’s inability to take action and tell the truth shapes him even more as it is shown through his experiences. Elie feels guilty when sees himself surviving while the people around him have a different fate. This leads to internal struggles where he struggles with deciding whether it's better to die than survive because he feels that at times that life isn’t worth living after being aware of his surroundings. The concentration camp changes Elie and leaves him traumatized with the memories he experiences there, which leads him to believe that dying might be the only way to eliminate his guilt. When Elie watches Idek beat up his father, he says that if he “felt anger”, it would be at his father because he feels guilt that he can’t stand up for his father and is showing anger towards his father because he got into this situation. Elie’s inability to do something makes him feel guilty since he loves and cares for his father. However, he is unable to do anything about it since “life in a concentration camp” had changed him to a point where he greatly struggles with the internal conflict between life or death, and he is stripped of his innocence as a result of his experiences there. Elie questions whether it’s worth it to see people struggle or it's better to die, so the haunting memories and guilt can be relieved. Living at a concentration camp dehumanizes Elie and many others, leading Elie to feel guilty that he is alive while other people are treated poorly and killed. Elie feels guilty when he says “I lied” after talking to Stein because he doesn’t tell the truth of Stein’s family survival. He felt that had he