Night By Elie Wiesel Analysis

Loyalty to Family comes after Self-Preservation

In times of catastrophic hardship, people devolve to primitive beings only concerned about themselves. Anti-Semitism is discrimination directed towards the Jewish Race and is used as a scapegoat ideology by Adolf Hitler to motivate the German people into being manipulated to commit mass genocide. Without Anti-Semitism, Hitler wouldn’t have been able to achieve the atrocities acted out during the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel, author of Night, shares the story of Eliezer’s horrific experiences as a Jewish boy during the Holocaust. Eliezer starts out as an innocent Jew that is a devote disciple of Talmud and evolves into an emotionless body that fights to survive until he can attain freedom. Elie Wiesel

uses the literary devices of tone, mood, and allusion to show the theme of loyalty to family comes second hand to self-preservation.
The usage of the literary device; tone, is used to demonstrate the authors perception of people who ironically consider themselves devout to their family until self-preservation becomes a priority.

Eliezer demonstrated the prioritization of self-preservation over loyalty to loved when a Nazi soldier “began beating my father with an iron bar” (4.78) and Eliezer “watched it all happen without moving. I kept silent in fact” (4.79). The tone Elie Wiesel uses to describe Eliezer’s nearly non-existent reaction to his father’s beating shows how Wiesel believes people prioritize themselves over the ones they claim they would die for. Wiesel believes that if Eliezer truly cared for his father he would’ve at least attempted to stop the Nazi soldier from beating his father. The lack of action taken by Eliezer further proves the perception given in Wiesel’s negative tone towards these false claims of unity binded by love towards family. The negative tone is furthermore demonstrated by Wiesel’s dismal attitude towards a situation where a weak man’s son beats and kills his own father for a piece of bread. This act truly demonstrates the tone towards the Jewish people’s false perception of family over everything. If family truly came first, then there would be no possible reasoning behind the killing of a man by his own son over bread, regardless of the situation this act disproves the misconception that these people prioritized their family over

themselves.
Mood is a literary device that Wiesel uses to portray his feelings towards the Jewish people’s prioritization of self-preservation over loyalty to family through descriptions of events that occurred. Wiesel describes a situation on where Eliezer searches for his father but stops and thinks “If only I didn’t find him! If only I were relieved of this responsibility, I could use all my strength to fight for my own survival, to take care only of myself” (8.26). This event further proves that the idea of loyalty to family comes second hand to self-preservation and Wiesel portrays these feelings when he describes Eliezer’s feelings towards potentially not finding his father as ‘relieving’ and that Eliezer could ‘take care of only himself’. This portrayal blatantly provides evidence that Eliezer values his own life over his loved ones. Eliezer quickly says “I felt ashamed forever” (8.27) but only thinks this because he is supposed to care about his family and his true thoughts are the ones that come to him originally. Wiesel describes the situation with a mood that perceives Eliezer as a selfish being that has devolved to a primitive state.

Allusion, a literary device used to indirectly reference, is used to furthermore explain the skewed belief that humans care more about their loved ones than themselves. Eliezer is approached by a fellow Jew in the concentration camp and the man tells him “Don’t forget that you are in a concentration camp. In this place, it is every man for himself, and you cannot think of others. Not even your father. In this place, there is no such thing as father, brother, friend. Each of us lives and dies alone” (8.86). This man’s belief connects to the theme when it portrays a Jewish man’s belief that the concentration camps are place where ‘every man for himself’ is the only way anyone can survive. Anyone who truly was devoted to his family and didn’t only care about himself could never make such a preposterous claim. The use of allusions to convey the theme continues when Eliezer genuinely considers what the man says and thinks to himself that the man “was right, I thought deep down, not daring to admit it to myself. Too late to save your old father … You could have two rations of bread, two rations of soup” (8.87) once again proving that people will self-preserve before concerning themselves about the well-being of their family.
Humans, in times of hardship, will quickly derail from previously set morals and become degenerated into primal individuals that prioritize themselves over everything. Eliezer shows this repetitively throughout the novel when he values his own well-being over his fathers. The man who killed his weak father for bread is another example and the prisoner who tells Eliezer to save both his fathers and his own rations all for himself is another furthermore proving the theme that self-preservation comes before loyalty to family. The author’s tone, mood, and use of allusion portrays Jewish individuals in the concentration camps acting in ways that consistently demonstrate the theme; self-preservation is prioritized over loyalty to loved ones.