Imagine getting put into a situation so severe that the extent of your dreams are the thoughts of an extra food ration. Well Elie Wiesel was put into a situation so horrific and traumatizing that this is the extent of things he considers nothing short of a miracle. This story is written by Elie Wiesel and it is about his experience within the Nazi Concentration camps. WIthin this story we can see the relationship that he has with his father and how these camps begin to alter it. We also see some of the traumatizing events that takes place within the camps and what makes them so horrific and so life altering. Elie and his father’s relationship begins to take a big turn when the dynamic of Elie depending on his father switches. This is also when …show more content…
Elies father plays a major part in Elies initial questioning of his faith. An example that proves this is when Elie says “Yet at the same time a thought crept into my mind: 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 … Instantly, I felt ashamed, ashamed of myself forever.” This shows how Elie is questioning his faith because he feels guilty that he has been having thoughts of leaving his father behind because of the burden he places on him. This shows how ashamed and upset with himself Elie is every time those thoughts come into his head and is a major reason why his relationship with religion is begginning to fade. The Closer Elies father gets to dying the more Elie releases what is going on and he finally quits thinking of his father as a burden and starts coming to his aid. An example of this in the text is when Elies father is sick and it says "My hands were aching, I was clenching them so hard. To strangle the doctor and the others! To set the whole world on fire! My father's murderers! This shows at the end of the day how much his father means to him despite all of the things he said and how he would do anything if it meant he could be well …show more content…
The loss of of Elies father leads to Elies biggest shift in attitude and identity. Proof of this is when Elie says “I REMAINED IN BUCHENWALD until April 11. I shall not describe my life during that period. It no longer mattered. Since my father's death, nothing mattered to me anymore.” This shows how much importance Elies father had in his life and experience at the camps because once his father is gone he does not feel his time at the camps is important enough to discuss. The concentration camps effected Elie and his fathers relationship so much that when the time came for Elie to mourn his father he could not because of all the circumstances he had been affected by. Proof of this is when Elie says “I did not weep, and it pained me that I could not weep. But I was out of tears. And deep inside me, if I could have searched the recesses of my feeble conscience, I might have found something like: Free at last!…” Due to the istinct of survival being the driving force in Elies life we can see how Elie treats his fathers death in a much different way than he would have in a regular
Elie and himself are becoming more apart as a result of his lack of involvement. Because Elie's father never engages with him, their relationship suffers and they are not exceptionally close. In conclusion, their distant relationship is caused by Elie’s father not spending enough time with
Elie's father being alive was something like a crutch for him. Elie's foot had started to swell because it was cold out, and there was discussion about the Red Army approaching, and how the Nazi's would kill off all the injured. Elie, however, had a different mindset,"As for me, I was thinking not about death but about not wanting to be separated from my father." (Wiesel 82). Elie's desire to be with his father and care for him was great, but he would suppress his own pain for his father, which in turn, could've killed Elie.
When Elie was separated from his mother and sister at the beginning of the book Elie was only left with his father. When things got tough, they continued pushing for each other. They made sacrifices for each other and always made sure the other was ok. Elie had lost the rest of his family so his father meant the world to him. At the end of the book this is also taken away from him.
Elie Wiesel shows how relationships can change as life changes and as time goes by and that you can never take them for granted. On the beginning of the book Elie’s relationship with his father is that of him wanting his father to keep him out of the hands of the Nazis and to keep them alive. When Elie and his family were first taken to the Auschwitz he was very scared and concerned for his family. When he and his father got
After the horrors Elie encountered, his relationship with his father changed drastically. Early in his journey, his relationship with his dad was distant. After being deported to Auschwitz, his father was being beaten while Elie thought, ”What had happened to me? My father had been
When Elie Wiesel was only a teenager he was starved, beaten for no good reason, and was separated from most of his family… millions jews went through this same exact pain. Elie Wiesel was born in an isolated town of Sighet,Transylvania and was raised in the Jewish faith. But in 1944 he and his family were sent to a concentration camp in Auschwitz and then Buchenwald where they worked hard labor. In his book ,“Night”, he wrote about his experience during the holocaust, what their daily life was, and the hardships they had to go through. Throughout Elie’s duration in the concentration camps has deeply affected him because he began to slowly lose his faith/religion, lose his emotions and sympathy for other people, and acted more hesitant to certain
This shows how Elie wants his father to realize that he has to fight, not give up. He did not sacrifice his father for its own good, as many children do to their parents in order to survive. However, as the days passed, he began to feel some resentment when he was unable to protect himself from the brutality of the guards instead of pitying
In the beginning of the book Elie and his father were very close and ELie would have probably been balling his eyes out upset. I didn't take this part of the novel as him not caring about his dad because i do believe he loved his father, I took it as he not only has no more feelings for almost anything his shows how his faith has been consumed as he says and he no longer believes in the traditional religious ideas of an afterlife or divine justice, it’s just over and it doesn't really phase him like it would have in the
First, Elie has thoughts of leaving his father to die in Buchenwald. Secondly, Elie’s father runs away from Elie and acts like he doesn’t know who Elie is. Lastly, when Elie’s father died, Elie couldn’t cry. Elie even goes on to say that if he looked deep down, he probably would've been relieved that his father died.
The bond that Elie had with his father was his motivation to survive the torture he was put through. He spent his time in concentration camps focusing on keeping his father alive because if his father didn’t survive, “there was no longer any reason to live, any reason to fight” (99). Elie had no idea if his mother and sisters were still alive, and if he managed to survive the Holocaust, he needed his father to help him survive once they were liberated. He didn’t want to go into the world as an orphan, having witnessed and experienced horrors beyond imagination. Furthermore, he knew that if he focused on keeping his father alive, it would keep him alive too.
When they first arrived at Auschwitz Elie and his father looked to each other for support and survival, Sometimes Elie’s father being the only thing keeping him alive. In their old community Elie’s father was a strong-willed and respected community leader, as the book went on you could see how the roles were becoming reversed he was becoming weaker and more reliant on Elie to take care of him. Their father son bond had always been strong and only grew stronger with the things they had to endure. “My God, Lord of the Universe, give me strength never to do what Rabbi Eliahou’s son has done” Elie was disgusted when he saw Rabbi Eliahou’s son abandon his father to help improve his chances of his survival he prayed he’d never do such a thing, but as his father becoming progressively more reliant on Elie he started to see his father as more of a burden than anything else.
Near the beginning of the novel, Elie wanted to be in the same camp with his father more than anything else. The work given to both his father and himself was bearable, but as time passed by, “. . . his father was getting weaker” (107). The weaker Elie’s father got, the more sacrifices Elie made. After realizing the many treatments Elie was giving his father compared to himself, each additional sacrifice made Elie feel as if his “. . .
The empathy he felt for his father is what drove him to stay alive, to fight for his life. Without his father, he would have given into exhaustion long before the American tanks arrived at the camp. Elie's father gave him strength, therefore giving him resilience. Strong people are resilient people; it took everything Elie had to keep himself alive. In the times he wanted so badly just to lie down, to give up it was his father's presence which kept him alive.
Although he only did so in thought, Elie was aware and it made him question himself as his old mentor Moishe the Beadle taught him to do. Eliezer did not shed a tear for his father, and so he wouldn’t allow himself to dig deep into his feelings because he knew exactly what he would find; a sense of relief. The dehumanization that the Jews had experienced, threw all of their emotions out of place. Rather than feelings sad because his own father died, Elie was happy and relieved when his father had passed. Once dehumanized, the animal instinct to drop the load and keeping moving forward kicks
After Elie’s father dies, Elie is a little bit glad because the responsibility is off him, “And deep inside me, if I could have searched the recesses of my feeble conscience, I might have found something like: Free at last!?” Elie will certainly miss his father because they were very close. Yet part of Elie is glad to have the stress and responsibility off him. Elie is a little bit selfish in this, that he does not care that his father is dead, but he is a little bit relieved. Elie has lost his integrity, he is glad he has to take care of one