Significant Changes in Eliezer’s Relationship With His Father

Change is an unpredictable and inevitable thing. One cannot know what alteration it may bring but it can, without doubt, be expected said Hazel M, an Honor English student (par.1). Eliezer, the protagonist in Night, encounters change numerous times. One of the mainly considerable changes he comes across, while in the concentration camps, is that of his relationship with his father. Before the Holocaust, Eliezer’s relation with his father was very distant, I will say non existent. Throughout the novel, enormous remarkable changes occurred in the father son relationship between Eliezer’s and his father. To highlight a few, we will discuss Eliezer and his father’s emotional change, the connection between them as father and son, and how their build trust in their relationship. Eliezer’s relationship with his father is quite important as it allows them both to live through the anguish and despair brought upon them. And their love for each other helped them both stay alive during the course of torture that Jews people were put through.

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). Eliezer’s father barely expressed his feelings or any signs of emotion towards Eliezer, in consequence created a huge space in their relationship. The important role Eliezer’s father plays in the Jewish community, Sighet, shou...

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...ing change in Eliezer and his father’s relationship proves that trust is the greatest of all.

Eliezer goes through a dynamic change with his father. 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." N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Dec. 2008. .

Wiesel, Elie. Night. New York: Hill and Wang, n.d. Print.