Elie Wiesel's Relationship In Night

Relationships within our lives are of the utmost importance for our survival in this world. Whether it be a relationship on a friend level, a connection with a parent or another family member, or even a bond with a significant other, we need that kind of interaction within our lives to be able to survive.

Within the memoir Night, Elie Wiesel recounts how his relationship with his father was very strained before the two of them were forced into the Jewish concentration camps of World War II. On page four Wiesel wrote, “My father was a cultured man, rather unsentimental. He rarely displayed his feelings, not even within his family, and was more involved with the welfare of others than that of his own kin.” To me, this quote displayed that though

It is those thoughts that shape guilt and remorse within us when situations go wrong (like in Elie’s case his father dying), but it’s also those thoughts that make us the most human. No matter how strong our relationship is with somebody, we always tend to wish something easier could happen when bad things occur, but it is human nature, we cannot help it. So therefore, I do not think that Elie lost “the game” he was stuck in. If Elie lost the game than I have lost it on countless occasions over even more minor things. I think the most important thing that Elie should’ve gotten from his terrible experience was the opportunity he had to grow closer with his father. That sounds cruel as well, but had they not been put into concentration camps, or had they fled, their connection likely would’ve remained as it had been at the start of the book. Or worse, if Elie and his father hadn’t been able to grow closer in the concentration camps, and his father had died while they were on poor terms, he would’ve had to live with the fact that they hadn’t been close, which is almost worse than the guilt of not being able to help his dying father. He couldn’t cure his father's illness or force fate to make he and his father’s situation better, but I believe that he should’ve been grateful for the time he did get to spend with him, even though the circumstances were poor. And in staying alive himself, I believe Elie overall did win the game he spoke of, even if it wasn’t something he could come to realize at that sorrowful chapter in his