AP Language And Composition: Night

Haidyn Rife
Mrs. J. Gillum
AP Language and Composition
2 January 2023
Night: Book Report Throughout Night, Wiesel references the transformations of those in the concentration camps, implying that even the most sincere people can be hardened by brutality. Without close examination, it appears that Wiesel incorporated this theme because he believed that it applied to himself; after all, he explicitly admits that his incarceration had permanently changed him. However, Wiesel’s thoughts and actions throughout the book convey that he had a sense of undying kindness that, though challenged by the camps, never truly faded. It is evident in the beginning of the memoir, when it is unbridled and purely displayed in response to the unexpected severity

On one of their first nights in camp, Wiesel’s father inquired another prisoner for the location of a restroom but was met with a swift slap. Though deeply bothered by it, Wiesel admitted to being paralyzed by fear: “I stood petrified. What had happened to me? My father had just been struck, in front of me, and I had not even blinked. I watched and kept silent” (Wiesel 39). Within a few days, Wiesel's reactions had already begun to change; without adaptation, he risked placing himself and his father in danger, and the need for unresponsiveness only grew with time. His sensitivity continued to lessen with additional exposure to more and more atrocities, eventually even saying, “The thousands of people who died daily in Auschwitz and Birkenau, in the crematoria, no longer troubled [him].” Nonetheless, if bluntly presented with cruelty, Wiesel still felt distressed. In one instance, the SS instructed the prisoners to watch a hanging, and although Wiesel had already experienced desensitization, that “boy, leaning against his gallows, upset [him] deeply” (Wiesel 62). Often, events had the potential to prove that Wiesel had lost his humanity and become a brute, but when actually confronted with an issue, he found that he still had empathy. Nearing the end of his time in the camps, Wiesel's father was unfortunately dying of dysentery, causing Wiesel to worry incessantly and sacrifice some of his own rations for his father. As a struggling young boy himself, Wiesel did occasionally wish that he could forfeit the responsibility of his father, though he was always remorseful afterwards. As his father approached his deathbed, a fellow inmate advised Wiesel to remember his circumstances: “‘Don’t forget that you are in a concentration camp. In this place, it is every man for himself, and you cannot think of others’” (Wiesel 110).