Eleven million people have died during the Holocaust, among those, there were at least one million dead in Auschwitz alone. The concentration camps were a horrible place to live for all Jewish people during the war. Although there were many dead and dying in these camps, Auschwitz helped strengthen the bond between Eliezer Wiesel, the author of the bestselling memoir, Night, and his father. During the course of the memoir Night ,by Elie Wiesel and Marion Wiesel, Eliezer's relationship with his father changes from distant to loving and emotionallly open as the relationship roles reverse. Eliezer becomes the caretaker for his father while his father becomes the one needing guidance. The reader can learn to love and respect one's parents and …show more content…
to always cherish and care for their loved ones because they might not always be there to care for them. At the beginning of the novel in chapter one while Eliezer's father is taking care of Eliezer, he and his father have a very distant relationship because his father seems to be against Eliezer's religious obsessions and beliefs. As Wiesel explains his father's views on his religious doings; he narrates,“He wanted to drive the idea of studying Kabbalah from my mind.” (Weisel 27). Although his father is just trying to follow the traditional belief path of the Jewish religion, this quote explains the separation of religious beliefs between father and son. It also explains that Eliezer and his father have very separate mindsets from each other. Elie Wiesel seems to create a sense of antagonism in Eliezer's father as he tries to limit Eliezer's religious doings and studying. It is only until chapter three that the reader sees any sense of bond between the two as Wiesel explains that “There was no time to think, and I already felt my father’s hand press against mine: we were alone.” (Wiesel 63). Eliezer and his father have bonded for the first time in the memoir at this exact moment and their bond only grows throughout the story. During the bulk of the memoir, as Eliezer and his father are being held in the concentration camps, Eliezer and his father begin to take care of each other as they are the only people they have to love.
Eliezer stays alive for his father and his father stays alive for him. At the beginning of chapter five, during the evening of Rosh Hashanah, Eliezer and his father meet up after saying prayers. Wiesel explains, “I felt a tear on my hand. Whose was it? Mine? His? I said nothing. Nor did he. Never before had we understood each other so clearly.” (Weisel 117). This quote supports the fact that Eliezer and his father have built a very sturdy, loving relationship because of their similar struggles. It also hints that Wiesel is beginning to develop the dynamic factor of the relationship between father and son almost as if it too is a character that influences the memoir. They both benefit from taking care of each other. Another example of reliance on each other is shown during chapter six as Eliezer and his father are being separated from each other after the selection. The day after Juliek's death, Eliezer and his father are almost separated as his father is classified as weak. Eliezer recalls, “[His] father was sent to the left. [He] ran after him." (Wiesel 155). This action, as Wiesel explains more specifically in the memoir, left some people shot and dead. Eliezer is willing to sacrifice his and his father's lives for a slim chance that they do
survive. As the end of the memoir draws near, Eliezer becomes the caretaker for his father. Even though letting his father die would further his chances of survival, he stays with and cares for him unlike many other characters in the book. Eliezer begins to feel very attached yet again somewhat distant from his father as he struggles to care for his father and keep him alive. In chapter seven, as the gravediggers are collecting the dead from the train cars and almost collect Eliezer's father, Eliezer exclaims, “Father! Father! Wake up. They’re going to throw you outside …” His body remained inert.” (Wiesel 158). This quote shows the unbreakable bond that father and sone have built up throughout their time in the camps. Eliezer now feels almost completely responsible for keeping his father alive. After his father's death in chapter nine, Wiesel explains “I shall not describe my life during that period. It no longer mattered. Since my father’s death, nothing mattered to me anymore.” (Wiesel 177). Eliezer has lost all hope for a short period of time because his entire universe has collapsed with his father's death. Shortly after, Wiesel explains that his dreams were about an extra ration of soup. This extra ration symbolizes his guilt for his father's death even though it was important to his survival. Eliezer's bond with his father stays and will stay strong even after his father's death. In conclusion, as the relationship roles between Eliezer Wiesel and his father reverse, their time in the concentration camps will always be a memorable time that brought the two closer than they ever would have been. Eliezer and his father did many things and bonded many ways to help and save each other's lives throughout their time at Auschwitz. That is the reason why Eliezer lived to write his memoir and why he and his father were in the group of twelve out of hundreds that walked out of their train car alive. The bond of father and son after surviving the concentration camps win live on forever in Eliezer and the memory of his father.
Did you know you could kill 6,000,000, and capture about 1 million people in one lifetime? In “Night” Elie Wiesel talks about the life of one of those 7 million people, going into detail about the living conditions, and also talking about the experiences in the book that happened to him. The book explains how it felt to be in a concentration camp, and how it changed a person so much you couldn’t tell the difference between the dead and the living. Elie Wiesel is the author and he was only around 15 when this story happened, so this is his story and how the events in the story changed him. So in the book “Night” by Elie Wiesel, the main character, “Elie,” is affected by the events in the book such as losing faith, becoming immune to death, and emotionally changing throughout the course of the book.
The book, Night, by Eliezer (Elie) Wiesel, entails the story of his childhood in Nazi concentration camps all around Europe. Around the middle of the 20th century in the early 1940s, Adolf Hitler and his Nazi army traveled around Europe in an effort to exterminate the Jewish population. As they went to through different countries in order to enforce this policy, Nazi officers sent every Jewish person they found to a concentration camp. Often called death camps, the main purpose was to dispose of people through intense work hours and terrible living conditions. Wiesel writes about his journey from a normal, happy life to a horrifying environment surrounded by death in the Nazi concentration camps. Night is an amazingly
Six million Jews died during World War II by the Nazi army under Hitler who wanted to exterminate all Jews. In Night, Elie Wiesel, the author, recalls his horrifying journey through Auschwitz in the concentration camp. This memoir is based off of Elie’s first-hand experience in the camp as a fifteen year old boy from Sighet survives and lives to tell his story. The theme of this memoir is man's inhumanity to man. The cruel events that occurred to Elie and others during the Holocaust turned families and others against each other as they struggled to survive Hitler's and the Nazi Army’s inhumane treatment.
Night by Elie Wiesel was a memoir on one of the worst things to happen in human history, the Holocaust. A terrible time where the Nazi German empire started to take control of eastern Europe during WWII. This book tells of the terrible things that happened to the many Jewish people of that time. This time could easily change grown men, and just as easily a boy of 13. Elie’s relationship with God and his father have been changed forever thanks to the many atrocities committed at that time.
Night is an autobiography by a man named Eliezer Wiesel. The autobiography is a quite disturbing record of Elie’s childhood in the Nazi death camps Auschwitz and Buchenwald during world war two. While Night is Elie Wiesel’s testimony about his experiences in the Holocaust, Wiesel is not, precisely speaking, the story’s protagonist. Night is narrated by a boy named Eliezer who represents Elie, but details set apart the character Eliezer from the real life Elie. For instance, Eliezer wounds his foot in the concentration camps, while Elie actually wounded his knee. Wiesel fictionalizes seemingly unimportant details because he wants to distinguish his narrator from himself. It is almost impossibly painful for a survivor to write about his Holocaust experience, and the mechanism of a narrator allows Wiesel to distance himself somewhat from the experience, to look in from the outside.
The book Night is about the holocaust as experienced by Elie Weisel from inside the concentration camps. During World War II millions of innocent Jews were taken from their homes to concentration camps, resulting in the deaths of 6 million people. There were many methods of survival for the prisoners of the holocaust during World War II. In the book Night, there were three main modes of survival, faith, family, and food. From the examples in the book Night, faith proved to be the most successful in helping people survive the holocaust.
When his father was beat up by the guard or even he was getting beat up by the Kapo. Elie could only think of himself, which is a good thing not wanting to get hurt for others in my opinion. Also, when Rabbi’s son ran away from him I would guess Elie would think of the same thing but instead wanted to protect his father. Then last when Elie’s father was about to die his last words was, “Elizer” which was Elies name. Elie was finally think that his duty is over on protecting his father. Also, Elie also thought, “free at last” which meant his can fend for him. So, his relationship with his father wasn’t good. Cause Elie thought the reason he is alive because of his father. That is why his relationship with his father wasn’t a good
Eliezer discovers even though his father can no longer protect him, Eliezer still cares for his father and wants the best for him. This is an example of what one would do in the parental role in a relationship. Eliezer has now taken on the role of the father, while his father has taken a reverse direction and has become the dependent child. I find that the relationship between Eliezer and his father demonstrates a switch in roles during their time in concentration camp. The dark conditions were a void for all of the relationships in camp.
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.
His father’s love towards him does not change a bit. His father once bought a present for him: a half rations of bread, bartered for something he had found at the depot, a piece of rubber that could be used to repair a shoe. They both shared whatever was given to them. Eliezer too used to send a piece of bread he got to his father. His father gives his last possession he had with him to Eliezer, A knife and a spoon telling him not to sell it quickly and to use it when in need. Eliezer did not fear death as much as he feared separation from his father. “I was thinking not about death but about not wanting to be separated from my father.”(82 )
First of all, the father-son relationship between Eliezer and his father in the novel experiences an emotional change. At first, the relationship between these two characters is rather stressed and awkward. They were ever close to each other, and Eliezer illustrates the painful atmosphere by describing, “My father was a cultured, rather unsentimental man. There was never any display of emotion, even at home. He was more concerned with others than with his own family” (Wiesel 2).
Before Elie Wiesel and his father are deported, they do not have a significant relationship. They simply acknowledge each other’s existence and that is all. Wiesel recalls how his father rarely shows emotion while he was living in Sighet, Transylvania. When they are deported, Wiesel is not sure what to expect. He explains, “My hand shifted on my father’s arm. I had one thought-not to lose him. Not to be left alone” (Wiesel 27). Once he and his father arrive at Auschwitz, the boy who has never felt a close connection with his father abruptly realizes that he cannot lose him, no matter what. This realization is something that will impact Wiesel for the rest of his time at the camp.
The Holocaust survivor Abel Herzberg has said, “ There were not six million Jews murdered; there was one murder, six million times.” The Holocaust is one of the most horrific events in the history of mankind, consisting of the genocide of Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, mentally handicapped and many others during World War II. Adolf Hitler was the leader of Nazi Germany, and his army of Nazis and SS troops carried out the terrible proceedings of the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel is a Jewish survivor of the Nazi death camps, and suffers a relentless “night” of terror and torture in which humans were treated as animals. Wiesel discovers the “Kingdom of Night” (118), in which the history of the Jewish people is altered. This is Wiesel’s “dark time of life” and through his journey into night he can’t see the “light” at the end of the tunnel, only continuous dread and darkness. Night is a memoir that is written in the style of a bildungsroman, a loss of innocence and a sad coming of age. This memoir reveals how Eliezer (Elie Wiesel) gradually loses his faith and his relationships with both his father (dad), and his Father (God). Sickened by the torment he must endure, Wiesel questions if God really exists, “Why, but why should I bless him? Because he in his great might, had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many other factories of death? (67). Throughout the Holocaust, Wiesel’s faith is not permanently shattered. Although after his father dies, his faith in god and religion is shaken to the core, and arguably gone. Wiesel, along with most prisoners, lose their faith in God. Wiesel’s loss of religion becomes the loss of identity, humanity, selfishness, and decency.
The ground is frozen, parents sob over their children, stomachs growl, stiff bodies huddle together to stay slightly warm. This was a recurrent scene during World War II. Night is a literary memoir of Elie Wiesel’s tenure in the Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel created a character reminiscent of himself with Eliezer. Eliezer experienced cruelty, stress, fear, and inhumanity at a very young age, fifteen. Through this, he struggled to maintain his Jewish faith, survive with his father, and endure the hardships placed on his body and mind.
Some of the most fabled stories of our time come from individuals overcoming impossible odds and surviving horrific situations. This is prevalent throughout the Holocaust. People are fascinated with this event in history because the survivors had to overcome immense odds. One, of many, of the more famous stories about the Holocaust is Night by Elie Wiesel. Through this medium, Wiesel still manages to capture the horrors of the camps, despite the reader already knowing the story.