Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Holocaust facts for essays
Dehumanization facts about the holocaust
The truth behind the Holocaust
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Why did Elie let it happen? What could Elie really have done as an alternative to save his father from dying? He could not have helped his father from being beaten up by the SS guards but he did try to help him from being attacked by his own men in his sleeping barracks. Elie really wanted his father to live. Elie does everything possible to help his father unless it would do harm to himself. Elie could not have helped his father from being beaten by the SS guards because on Page 284 in the November 2000 issue of Oprah's Magazine, Elie and her have an interview and during the interview he tells about the times in the camp when his father was being beaten and he said, "And i realized that is was when my father, who was sick, called out to me- and I didn't respond, because I was afraid to be beaten up. I let him die." He also was afraid to stand up to the people in the barracks because he said, "That day my father got his portion of bread, and somebody who saw that he was dying stole his bread." He tried very hard to protect hi father and felt sorrow because he said, "My father wanted me to protect him, but i couldn't." Elie really needs and wants his father to live. When the SS guards yell "Throw out all the dead! Corpses outside!" the guards were going to throw Elie's father out but Elie said, "I threw myself on top of his body, he was cold. I slapped him. I rubbed his hands crying: Father! Father! Wake up! They are trying to throw you out of the carriage" The SS guards yelled" Leave him. You can see perfectly well that he's dead." Elie replied, "No! He isn't dead! not yet!!" On page 286 of the interview with Oprah, Elie explains how he needed his father to live and survive himself by saying "As long as my father was alive, i wanted to live- but only because of him. After he died, between January and April [of the year we were released], I didn't really live." Elie is more concerned about his own safety but does everything g to help his father with out endangering himself. In the book Night, he was telling about when the SS guard were trying to throw his father out of the carriage and Elie says" I set to work slapping him as hard as I could.
He could not believe that the God he followed tolerated such things. During times of sorrow, when everyone was praying and sanctifying His name, Elie no longer wanted to praise the Lord; he was at the point of giving up. The fact that the “Terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent”(33) caused Elie to lose hope and faith. When one chooses to keep silent about such inhumanity going on, they are just as destructive as the one causing the brutality.... ...
When they first arrived at the camp, his father asked their Blockalteste where the toilets were. “Then as if waking from a deep sleep, he slapped my father with such force that he fell down and then crawled back to his place on all fours. I stood petrified. What had happened to me? My father had just been struck in front of me, and I had not even blinked...Only yesterday, I would have dug my nails into this criminal’s flesh.”(Wiesel,39) This shows that Elie would have beaten the guard had he been allowed to. This next quote shows Elie much later, near Buchenwald in a cattle car, cramped and starving. His father’s corpse has just been thrown off the train “And deep inside me, if I could have searched the recesses of my feeble conscience, I might have found something like:Free at last!...”(Wiesel,112) This shows Elie thinking that if he searched inside himself for remorse, he would have found something that said he was free from a
Eliezer thinks of his own father and prays, “Oh God, Master of the Universe, give me the strength never to do what Rabbi Eliahu’s son has done” (Wiesel 91). He didn’t want to admit it but he could already feel his father falling behind. He feared that there may come a time when he would have to choose between his father and his own survival, and that was a choice he didn’t want to make. That choice came one night after being transferred by train to another camp. Once off the train they waited in the snow and freezing wind to be shown to their quarters.
Upon their arrival of Birkenau, Elie was stuck like glue to his father “I felt the pressure of my father’s hand: we were alone.” (pg. 27) He would do anything to make sure his father did not feel a burden for him “ I bit my lips so that my father did not hear my teeth chattering.” (pg. 31) For some reason, Eliezer felt that it was his responsibility to care for his father and make him as relaxed as possible. Despite that, he eventually started to drift away from his original intentions. While his father was on his deathbed he begged for water, and frequently Eliezer would deliver him some, except for one time. During this one time, his father yelled out and was told several times to be quiet. Eliezer lay on the top bunk of the bed and watched the SS men deal him a violent blow on the head. Even after, he begged again for water and Ellie just lay there until the morning when he discovered his father was taken away to the crematories. If this were to happen in the very beginning, Eliezer would have gone right to his father's side with some water to hush him
..., which made him more upset because it was his own father. Also, he speaks about reaching down into his inner conscious to find out why he really was not as upset and he would have been if it were the first week in the camp. Elie believes that if he reached into his thoughts he would have come up with something like: “Free at last!...”(112).
Also, he remained calm when his father was harassed by the guards. In the book, Elie said “Then I had to go to sleep”(Wiesel 112) and after his father’s death, the thing he said wasn’t about his sadness. It was about his freedom. He said, “Free at last”(Wiesel 112). Elie is not the old Elie anymore.
For example, as previously stated, Chief Justice John Marshall ruled against the Cherokee Indians getting removed from their land and forced into present day Oklahoma. Andrew Jackson used his presidential power to overrule on this decision. He removed the Cherokee Indians and sent them on the devastating Trail of Tears, all the while claiming he was looking out for their best interest. Andrew Jackson abused his vetoing power, making use of it more than all the previous presidents combined. This showed his inability to listen to his advisors and to other prominent political figures, a trait very important in a president. In this way, President Jackson exploits his power and authority. Jackson was given the power designated to a president and he truly did use that power, albeit irresponsibly, to the fullest of his ability. By overusing his power, Jackson profoundly showed the characteristics of a democratic
The founders of the US left England and other countries because of the region of the Queen and King. The Founding Fathers feared that a monarchy would arise in this “New World.” A person acting as a President could potentially become a monarchy and not represent the people as the role of president should. Rather than a president representing the people, the founding fathers believed that a strong congress could better represent the people. Jackson, however took a different approach to President leading to his revolutionary change in politics. His approach to President was that it was his job as President to reflect the people and actions taken as President should help the American people. Congress to Jackson was a body of higher elitist that do not care about the common man. For the first time the election was the public interest not just for the elite and selective group of people. Even candidates running against Jackson and the selective group of people agreed that Jackson caused a turning point of Presidential elections. Jackson’s strong will to make change led him to using his veto power more than any other previous President. Some of Jackson’s actions included the closing of the second national bank and a removal of the Cherokee Indians after Congress voted to let them stay. Jackson was a common man before becoming President once he got a taste of power he did at some points
During their journey, Elie loses his father due to illness however does not feel much emotion. After witnessing his own die, Elie “did not weep” and “deep inside me, if I could have searched the recesses of my feeble conscience, I might have found something like: Free at last!...” (Wiesel 112). While going through the camp Buna, Elie and his father had develops a strong relationship with one another. However, after his father’s death, Elie “did not weep” and displays very little towards the event. Elie had felt that his father was a liability for his own survival and did not feel the need to weep over his death. Elie also states that he was “Free at last” showing that throughout the course of the novel Elie had thought as his father as pulling him back from survival. The reason for Elie feels this way is because Elie is still on his journey and his primary goal is to survive through the camps. Elie has become quite desperate through his journey of survival and searches the “recesses of my feeble conscience” for his most inner thoughts. Throughout the novel, Elie had been storing these thoughts in the back of mind. These thoughts include him thinking of his father as liability and him being free from him. At their first arrival at the camps, Elie and his father had been very close to one another going through their journey of survival. However, after
His father is getting old, and weak, and Elie realizes his father does not have the strength to survive on his own, and it is too late to save him. "It's too late to save your old father, I said to myself..."(pg 105). He felt guilty because he could not help his father, but he knew the only way to live is to watch out for himself. "Here, every man has to fight for himself and not think of anyone else. Even of his father..."(pg 105). He thinks of himself, and
Instead of brushing this feeling off, he decided to face this feeling and wanted to help his father more by finding him some soup. This action shows that Elie is not a brute because he is still capable of feeling empathy and compassion towards his father.
Elie cared for his father hesitantly at the end of the book (Wiesel 107). He debated if it was worth his effort to help Shlomo, and was almost persuaded by a Blockälteste (110). Luckily he did not abandon his father like Rabbi Eliahou’s son did (91). Through great struggle he was able to overcome his inner demons and continue to support his father. The only time he did nothing to help his father with was in his father’s death scene where he did not respond to his cries.
Elies father still gets hurt and Elies does nothing when a Kapo prone the violence attacks his father. The only thing that was in Elies mind was, “I had watched the whole scene without moving. I kept quiet. In fact I was thinking of how to get farther away so that I would not be hit myself...That is what concentration camp life had made of me”.
At last, his father was free. He wasn't taking any more beatings, he isn't suffering, and he doesn't have to be in the concentration camps anymore. Elie is free, he doesn't have to carry the weight of his father anymore. Three months after his fathers death nothing mattered to him anymore. The father son relationship shown in this novel, is something no one else has ever seen before. As you can see the roles switch throughout the story. In the beginning Elie’s father is strong, a role model a leader, but through the story he becomes child-like vulnerable, weak. On the other hand, Elie goes from admiring his dad, to worrying and carrying for
Jackson was a self-centered, violent, and ruthless man who paid no attention to what was morally correct, only what he believed in. This man was a notorious gambler who was known to fight at the drop of a hat, and then drop the hat himself! And because he shut down the Central Bank, we entered into the Panic of 1837. Ironically, the same man who opposed paper money ended up on the 20-dollar bill! He completely ignored the Constitution, and the Supreme court on many occasions. And when he was elected into office, he replaced many smart able-bodied officials for unintelligent Jacksonian supporters. This was the kind of man that Jackson was. A man who made more than 4,000 Native Americans die on the Trail of Tears. Jackson was just an unintelligent common-man who managed to win the Presidency. And with it, he brought damage and death to many other people through his