Empathy In Elie Wiesel's Night

Empathy; the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. An admirable trait, it often coincides with one's resilience. In Elie Wiesel’s Night, he recounts his experiences as a young man during the Holocaust. It is a journey of suffering and survival, where the true devastation of the Holocaust is brought to light. Elies great empathy for his father shaped his resilience which allowed him to survive.

In the beginning, Elie and his father serve as a source of support and empathy for each other. At this point they don’t yet know the full devastation of what’s going on, and possess a sense of hope. They spend a lot of this portion confused, and only progressively become more fearful. After arriving at the camp, however, the real fear sets in. They’ve been separated from Elie's mother and

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. It goes without saying Elie was very strong. The mental and physical resilience it would have taken to come back from that experience, to go on and publish books and do interviews is unimaginable.If Elie wasn’t empathetic, he wouldn't have kept his father alive as long as he did, and he himself may not have been around to share his experience. If Elie wasn't resilient, he wouldn't have been able to constantly recount his experiences to the world. He could have simply holed himself up and hid from the world, a thought that would have no doubt been tempting. These qualities were what saved his life and helped preserve the memory of that terrible