For most of the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie was determined to remain with his father, after being separated from his mother and sisters during the early years of the Holocaust. Elie’s father, his only remaining relative, was all he had left. Determination to keep them together very well may have been what kept him alive. Eventually, his father’s willpower deteriorated along with his health, making him more of a burden than a tether by the end of the book. Although he still loved his father, Elie no longer needed him. That being said, this example reflects the idea of death and release, a reoccuring theme present in the conclusion of Night. In the final chapters, prisoners from Buna who had been so close to freedom could wait no longer, and death was a sort of release from their pain. In this way, those who died were free. That freedom was so …show more content…
Dementia and physical illness rendered him too weak to rely on, so rather than asking how Elie would live without his father, a new question was presented: How would his father live without Elie? Immediately after arriving to a liberation camp, the surviving prisoners were divided into various groups, prompting Elie to squeeze his father’s hand as if his life depended on it. Unfortunately, exposure to such unforgiving environments had introduced Elie’s father to the kind of seductive release mentioned previously. This was conveyed through an argument between the two where Elie refused to let his father sleep. Elie had known that if the latter slept, he would never wake up. However, Elie’s father was obstinate, begging to rest because he was so unbearably weak. The one-sided quarrel caused Elie to admit, “I knew that I was no longer arguing with him but with Death itself, with Death that he had already chosen” (105). Elie had previously demonstrated the strength to fight for his life, but his father didn’t possess that same strength. He sought release from his
In the book Night, we the readers witness the hardships and struggles in Elie’s life during the traumatic holocaust. The events that take place in this story are unbearable and are thought to be demented in modern times. In the beginning Elie is shown as a normal teenage Jewish boy, but the events are so drastic that we the readers forget how he was like in the beginning. Changes were made to Elie during the book, whether they were minor or major. The changes generated from himself, the journey, and other people.
He is fighting to keep his father alive, angered by the lack of desire to live. Elie’s father is suffering from dysentery, too weak to move from his cot. “For a ration of bread, I was able to exchange cots to be next to my father.” Elie has taken measures to comfort his ill-stricken father, even trading much needed food to be nearer to him. As Elie’s father begins to become more incapacitated, Elie takes the responsibility of keeping both their spirits up and keeping him
Elie also requires his fathers’ protection during their stay in the camps. Unintentionally demanding this protection, Elie remembers, “I kept walking, my father holding my hand” (29). Elie continues to show this need for his fathers presence. Elie’s thoughts and actions reflect his reliance on his father in
The heart wrenching and powerful memoir “Night” by Elie Wiesel depicts Elie’s struggle through the holocaust. It shows the challenges and struggles Elie and people like him faced during this mournful time, the dehumanization; being forced out of their homes, their towns and sent to nazi concentration camps, being stripped of their belongings and valuables, being forced to endure and witness the horrific events during one of history’s most ghastly tales. In “Night” Elie does not only endure a physical journey but also a spiritual journey as well, this makes him question his determination, faith and strength. This spiritual journey is a journey of self discovery and is shown through Elie’s struggle with himself and his beliefs, his father
During the years of 1933-1945 the Holocaust separated and killed many Jewish families. Night, a memoir by Elie Wiese,l is the story of a young Jewish boy and his family going through dehumanizing situations in Concentration Camps. In those situations the father-son relationship it grew stronger each time. The relationship progresses from to almost nothing to never wanting to be separate from each other to feeling relief and guilt.
In Night. People in concentration camps tried to protect each other but struggled very hard to do so. Sometimes, they barely had a chance to begin with. For example, Elie witnessed someone kill himself because they already committed all he had left to taking care of a family member and was stuck. “A terrible thought crossed my mind: What if he had wanted to be rid of his father?
Family; a blessing, or a curse? In the book Night, Elie Wiesel offers many significant themes, but the question, “is family a blessing or a curse,” is one of the most prevalent and begging themes in the novel. During the novel, Wiesel often questions if he should try and keep his father around, or if life would just be better without him in the picture. “‘Don’t let me find him! If only I could get rid of this dead weight, so that I could use all my strength to struggle for my own survival, and only worry about myself,’ I immediately felt ashamed of myself, ashamed forever,” (Wiesel, 111).
Think of a circumstance where you were so hungry and thirsty, that you did not even care to think about your father anymore. That circumstance goes against common father-son relationships. The common father-son motif is where the father looks out and cares for the son. In the book “Night” by Elie Wiesel, he explains why the circumstances around a father-son relationship can change their relationship, whether it 's for the better or the worse. Since the book is about the life of Elie in a Nazi concentration camp, the circumstances were harsh and took a toll on multiple father-son relationships.
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 “. . .
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!” This story told by Elie demonstrates how though Elie was somewhat upset, the first thought that occupied his mind was that there would be one less hungry stomach, and one less mouth to feed. This greatly shows that although Elie wanted to mourn over his father, his current mindset of self preservation and instinct would not allow
Breaking The Chains Of Conformity With Courage Courage is similar to being the ripened fruit on a barren tree, it gives life and color to a dull exterior. The courage that others display gives our nation determination for another day. Courage is the ability to prevail through hardships, to reveal your true inner nature, and to stand up for what you believe, when the rest of the world falls as a slave to conformity. Hardships are lurking around every corner of our life ready to immerse whenever we least expect them.
The memoir Night written by Holocaust survivor Eliezer Wiesel is a recollection of the Holocaust. In the memoir Eliezer describes his experience during the height of the Holocaust near the end of the second World War. A time of concentration camps and prejudice on Jews from the Germans/Nazis. In Eliezer’s memoir he uses literary devices to help bring his experience to life for the audience. Using similes, metaphors, irony, symbolism, imagery, and so much more.
Suffering not only forces people to make inhumane decisions but it also causes people to lose hope and give up on themselves. In this section of the book, Elie describes a time where he was devastated to see his father beaten and hurt in the camps. Throughout his time in the camps, Elie saw and heard the abuse that was given to people in the camp killing his hope. The biggest turning point in the story was when he saw his father getting beat. When Idek “began beating [Elie’s father] with an iron bar … [Elie’s] father simply doubled over under the blows, but then [Elie's father] seemed to break in two like an old tree struck by lightning”
“I realized that he did not want to see what they were going to do to me. He did not want to see the burning of his only son”(42). When Eliezer arrives at Auschwitz, the separation of his family puts an emotional toll on his father since he realizes that only him and Eliezer are still alive. This will be a catalyst to their relationship becoming stronger as they endure more together. Elie Wiesel, the author of the novel Night writes his own personal accounts of experiencing the Holocaust through the character Eliezer.
Night Critical Abdoul Bikienga Johann Schiller once said “It is not flesh and blood, but the heart which makes us fathers and sons”. But what happens when the night darkens our hearts our hearts? The Holocaust memoir Night does a phenomenal job of portraying possibly the most horrifying outcomes in such a situation. Through subtle and effective language, Wiesel is able to put into words the fearsome experiences he and his father went through in Auschwitz during the Holocaust. In his holocaust memoir, Night, Elie Wiesel utilizes imagery to show the effect that self-preservation can have on father son relationships.