Strong relationships are the foundation of life. Night by Elie Wiesel explores this topic by throwing a father and son relationship into a tragic event. As the book progresses, Elie Wiesel’s relationship with his father strengthens his will to survive, even though the events have driven them apart. In the book, family is shown to be important for one’s survival, then his father’s wellbeing becomes his sole reason for survival and in the end the relationship fades but still strengthens the ability to survive.
In the book, family is an important reason for survival. When Eliezer was given a chance to escape, Eliezer chooses to stay with his family instead of leaving selfishly (18). Eliezer choosing family over personal safety makes it evident that family is a key to Eliezer’s instinct of survival. Eliezer’s understanding of “family is survival” strengthens even more when he is in the concentration camps. In the concentration camps, a distant uncle approaches Eliezer and he decides to stay close to this uncle (40). Even though Eliezer and his uncle are distant relatives, Eliezer staying close to him shows Eliezer understands family is a reason to continue to live. During the talks with his uncle in the concentration camps, Eliezer is confronted with the issue of telling his uncle about his family. Eliezer lies to his uncle about what has happened to his family (42). Eliezer lies to his uncle to protect his uncle from losing hope to be alive. By doing this Eliezer displays factors that he understands family is his will to survive. Although Eliezer’s will to survive is his family as the book progresses, the entire family is reduced to his father.
Eliezer is separated from his mother and sister thus, Eliezer’s reason to survive shift...
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...humanity which increases his survival abilities. Even though Eliezer loses his relationship with his father, losing the relationship fuels his will to survive positively.
Night by Elie Wiesel shows the relationship Eliezer has with his father throughout the book strengthen his resolve to survive. In the beginning, Eliezer’s family is the will of Eliezer’s survival. As the book progresses it becomes his father’s presence that is the reason for Eliezer’s survival. At the very end, it was losing the bond with his father that strengthens his ability to survive the most. The progression of Night and the struggles Eliezer endures causes his relationship with his father to perish but in turn, strengthens Eliezer’s will to survive.
Works Cited
Wiesel, Elie, and Marion Wiesel. Night. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1960. Print.
“My father's presence was the only thing that stopped me. He was running next to me, out of breath, out of strength, desperate. I had no right to let myself die. What would he do without me? I was his sole support.” This quote from the book night represents the father son relationship in the book written by Elie Wiesel. Elie Wiesel was a famous writer and a Holocaust survivor. He wrote many nonfiction books, and night being one of his most successful. Through this book, Elie Wiesel indicated that when night came bad things happened. Elie, a young Jewish boy, and his family were forced into small ghettos by Nazis during World War II. Elie and his family later departed to the unknown were the Nazis sent them to a concentration camp in Auschwitz.
In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, a bunch of relationships change dramatically according to Elie. This novel shows many changes with people that really affects the story. His relationship with with his father is the biggest change of all. It can be seen from the beginning to the end. Elie’s relationship with God changes as well. He had strong faith in God but yet as the story goes on, the camp starts to affect him and slowly loses faith. Another is the relationship with his friends. As the the story progresses, he slowly grows apart. He became more more independent except for being with his father.
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.
Upon entering the concentration camps, Eliezer and his father demonstrate a normal father and son relationship. In a normal father son relation, the father protects and gives advice to the son, and the son is dependent and reliant on the father. Eliezer and his father demonstrate this relationship to extremes throughout the beginning of their time in the camp. Eliezer reveals his childlike dependency upon entering the camp. Eliezer displays this dependency during first selection by stating, “The baton pointed to the left. I first wanted to see where they would send my father. Were he to have gone to the right, I would have run after him (Night 26-32) ” . Eliezer’s determination to stay with his father was constantly present. Eliezer reflects on a time in the camp which is all that he could think about was not to lose his father in the camp. Eliezer also requires his father’s protection during their stay in the concentration camps. Unintentionally demanding this protection, Eliezer remembers, “I kept walking, my father holding my hand” (Night 29). Eliezer continues to show his need for his father’s presence. Eliezer’s actions and thoughts reflect his
As much as Eliezer tried to deny it, he knew the point was coming where he would have to leave his father behind. Had he not done so, his own life could have come to an end. At one point in the book the prisoners are being marched to another camp. When Rabbi Eliahu starts falling to the back of the procession, his son marched ahead and abandoned his father. Eliezer witnesses the boy trying to rid himself of the burden his father, Rabbi Eliahu, has become.
...was almost no relationship. The father is a busy, well respected member of the Jewish community who has almost no interaction with his family. Eliezer recalls that his father was “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” (2, Wiesel). When the two arrived at the camp we notice a switch in their relationship. The horrible experiences they encounter together at Auschwitz bring them closer to each other. Eliezer’s father becomes more affectionate and shows emotions toward his son who starts feeling this love. This is clear when Eliezer states “my father was crying, it was the first time I saw him cry, I had never thought it was possible” (19, Wiesel). It is clear that their relationship transforms from obedience and respect to love and caring about each other.
The significance of night throughout the novel Night by Elie Wiesel shows a poignant view into the daily life of Jews throughout the concentration camps. Eliezer describes each day as if there was not any sunshine to give them hope of a new day. He used the night to symbolize the darkness and eeriness that were brought upon every Jew who continued to survive each day in the concentration camps. However, night was used as an escape from the torture Eliezer and his father had to endure from the Kapos who controlled their barracks. Nevertheless, night plays a developmental role of Elie throughout he novel.
...nd the doctor refused to help him because there was nothing he could do. He started to hallucinate and the others made fun of him. Did they not realize they suffer the same fate as him? When Eliezer woke, his father was no longer there. Possibly taken to the crematorium, all Eliezer could think was that he was free at last. What happened to not wanting to be separated from his father? He had become selfish and it is now hard to feel sympathy for him.
At the beginning of the story, Eliezer and his father are very distant, and there is no close relationship between them. They are never intimate or dependent on each other, before the deportation. After living through death, despair and starvation every day in the concentration camps, Eliezer not only becomes sad, melancholy, also undergoes powerful changes in the relationship, he shares with his father. Their relationship used to be distant, but their bond becomes strong, and filled with trust over time. Works Cited Hazel, M. "Change is crucial in a person’s life.
Every man, woman, and child has his or her breaking point, no matter how hard they try to hold it back. In Night by Elie Wiesel the main theme of the entire book is the human living condition. The quality of human life is overwhelming because humans have the potential to make amazing discoveries that help all humans. Elie Wiesel endures some of the most cruel living conditions known to mankind. This essay describes the themes of faith, survival, and conformity in Night by Elie Wiesel.
At the beginning of the book, Eliezer was in the higher levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. This hierarchy starts at the bottom with physiological needs, and progresses upwards with safety needs, belonging and love, esteem, and finally self-actualization. Eliezer was working with his love and belonging needs with respect to his religion. He was obsessed with the Jewish scripture. He wanted to learn. He was an extremely intellectual teenager. He would study the Jewish scripture with Moche the Beadle. "We would read together, ten times over, the same page of the Zohar. Not to learn it by hear, but to extract the divine essence from it." His views on the divinity of God do not endure through the Holocaust and the concentration camps.
Eliezer loses hope, trust, and his beliefs. He begins to rely on himself because he knew that only he can help himself and he could not depend on anyone else. "Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever..."(pg 32). Elie's father was struck, and that was when he realized he was afraid of death, and he felt guilty because he did not help his father.
When people are placed in difficult, desolate situations, they often change in a substantial way. In Night by Elie Wiesel, the protagonist, Elie, is sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp where he undergoes many devastating experiences. Due to these traumatic events, Elie changes drastically, losing his passion in God, becoming disconnected with his father, and maturing when it matters most.
Night is a memoir written by Elie Wiesel, a young Jewish boy, who tells of his experiences during the Holocaust. Elie is a deeply religious boy whose favorite activities are studying the Talmud and spending time at the Temple with his spiritual mentor, Moshe the Beadle. At an early age, Elie has a naive, yet strong faith in God. But this faith is tested when the Nazi's moves him from his small town.