Night By Elie Wiesel: Chapter Analysis

A crime against humanity is a deliberate art, typically as part of a systematic campaign, that causes human suffering or death on a large scale. One example of such is the Holocaust. People were enslaved, starved, and tortured in concentration camps such as Auschwitz. Anyone who has survived through the Holocaust have been changed drastically. In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, Eliezer and his father are sent to Auschwitz and have to stick together to survive. Together, they face many challenges and hardships throughout their horrific journey. Due to this, Eliezer loses faith in Judaism, becomes desensitized to death, and turns more self-preserving.

In the beginning, Eliezer was very religious, even going out to find himself a teacher to guide him in his studies of Kabbalah. As the book progresses though, Eliezer begins to lose faith, until finally, in chapter 5, he snaps. “I was nothing but ashes now, but I felt myself to be stronger than this Almighty, to whom my life had been bound for so long. In the midst of these men assembled for prayer, I felt like an observer, a stranger.”(68). As you can see from this passage, Eliezer sees himself as an outsider, a “stranger”, when looking at the assembled men. He sees himself as someone who is watching the actions of the Jewish people.

Observing, not participating. As shown, the events that took place at Auschwitz caused Eliezer to convert from a faithful Jew, to a non-believer.
To further illustrate, we can look in chapter 4 to see how now, because of the tragic events, Eliezer has become desensitized to death.

After watching a young boy be hung by the SS, Eliezer says, “I remember that on that evening, the soup tasted better than ever…”(69). From this text, we can conclude that Eliezer has become completely numb to the effects of death. Despite just seeing a boy be hung, Eliezer remembers that the “soup tasted better than ever”. He is thinking about the soup and not the poor boy that was hung right in front of him. The death of the young boy had no effect on Eliezer. As demonstrated, because of what Eliezer had to go through, he has become unaffected by

death.
An additional example of how Eliezer’s journey affected him is that he became more self-interested. Toward the beginning of Eliezer and his father’s time at Auschwitz, Eliezer looked out for his father. When his father failed to be able to march, Eliezer tried to teach him. But as time went on, Eliezer started to think more of himself. One example of this is when, in chapter 8, the doctor told Eliezer that Eliezer should be getting his dying father’s meals instead of his father. To Eliezer's horror, he agreed: “He 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…”(111). Here, Eliezer thinks of taking his father’s rations because he was “Too late to save”. Eliezer thinks of himself before his father instead of trying to actually save him. Evidently, Eliezer’s time at Auschwitz made Eliezer become more self-preserving.
It is easy to see that Eliezer’s enslavement at Auschwitz caused him to lose faith in Judaism, become unfazed by death, and have a more self-interested mindset. Night by Elie Wiesel is an important piece of literature that enlightens the privileged public about the horrors the victims of that Holocaust had to endure. It teaches important lessons about those who wouldn’t have learned it otherwise. Hopefully, this book will be read for many years to come to keep teaching more and more people.