NIGHT Throughout the journey Eli takes, his reasons for crying slowly diminish and eventually he finds himself unable to cry. At the beginning of the novel, Eli would cry without knowing why he was crying. In Chapter 1, Moishe asks “why do you cry when you pray?” It was a question that Eli could not answer. He did not have a reason for it, he had just assumed it was something he had to do. Other than crying when he prayed, crying did not really happen a whole lot around him. The first time Eli had ever seen his father cry was when they were being loaded onto the convoys. Crying is a very powerful feeling that is expressed throughout the novel. “Soon everyone was crying. Groaning. Moaning. Cries of distress hurled into the wind and the snow.” (Page 103) At this point everyone had lost so much, they had already experienced so much tragedy and had little control over anything that was happening in their live. Elis’ entire persona changes through the entire war. In the beginning, he would cry without a reason and by the time the end had come, he had cried so much that he had no more tears for his father. …show more content…
“The next morning, we walked towards the station, where a convoy of cattle cars was waiting.” (Page 22) Right off the bat, they were treated as cattle. They were perpetually called “filthy dogs” and whipped for bad behaviour. Eventually they had gotten so used to being treated as animals, that they began acting like them. Blood turned on blood just for a tiny thing of food. Everyone became ready to kill over a piece of stale bread. Like in nature, it became every man for themselves. After you were taken care of, then, maybe you could afford to take care of someone else. The civilized men were all racing the same race, and everyone was hoping that someone else would be the