Survival In Night, And How It Impacts Different Characters Elie Wiesel’s Night is a true story, a memoir describing the experience of many Jewish people’s reality during the Holocaust. During this time, many people had to struggle with decisions to make, people to help, and understanding the harsh reality of what happened to them. In the end, everyone was simply doing what they needed to survive. The most impactful theme in Night is survival, demonstrated by the way certain people deal with surviving, physically, mentally, or emotionally. In Night, people are not given the chance to survive, some do things for others, while others self-preserve in order to survive. First, for some, survival was never an option. Upon entering the camp, Elie …show more content…
Wiesel gives many examples of people giving advice to others to stay alive. In the beginning, this shows the mindset of people feeling they could get through the horror of saving others along the way. To set the stage, Elie and his father have just been told to lie about their ages to avoid the furnaces, upon questioning Elie states “ ‘I’m eighteen’. My voice trembling” (Wiesel 33). Continuing with this, Elie, when asked by the SS. Men how old he is, he lies to ensure his survival. He and his father knew they had to lie to maintain their chance of survival. The man in the cattle car informed them to lie about their age, in doing this he allowed the survival rate to increase. We never hear what happens to the man after this encounter, however, he helped Elie and his father survive. Inferring from this we could also assume he informs others to lie, continuing to increase the survival rate. In addition, Elie was given the advice “Stop giving your ration of bread and soup to your old father. You cannot help him anymore. And you are hurting yourself. In fact, you should be getting his rations” (Wiesel 110-111). Like the circumstance above, Elie is given advice for his own survival. Elie has hope at this point that he can save his father's life through prayer, hope, and good omens. Elie does not take this advice out of hope for the survival of his father. Elie understands by giving his father his rations lowers his nutrition, but he would rather continue his fathers' survival. In doing so he saves his humanity and also the survival of his father's life as well. Wiesel is attempting to have people understand, helping others may lead to the survival of one’s humanity and greater survival numbers. Even though many people do good for another being, there was still plenty of betrayal, sacrifice, and selfishness involved with
Elie Wiesel, the author of “Night” wrote a book about the struggles of being in the Holocaust and what he had to overcome to survive. Elie (the main character) Is going on the Death March. This is what the Nazis did to Jews to try to kill as many of them as possible. He is very tired on the walk
This act can be seen as empathetic; Elie makes sacrifices for his dad because they rely on each other. In Night, throughout all the complex outcomes, others tried to raise the spirits of the others, which helped them. The memoir reads, "Have faith in life, a thousand times faith. By driving out despair, you will move away from death" (Wiesel 41). One of the characters recognizes the havoc around them, in which he encourages them to keep their heads up.
Elie Wiesel is now beginning to develop all these different actions that are on the uprise and beginning to happen all throughout Europe. Throughout the book, Wiesel tells the readers what he had to go through to survive and what he felt like such as this line in the book, “because of his hunger and deprivation, he had become nothing more than a stomach”. He is showing us all how poorly they were getting treated with hardly an food, any water, no medicines, no doctors that were able to keep yourself in ok shape to survive. Despite all this misery and the thought of death through the camp that was beginning to take place, their were still plenty of moments when people were being very generous and extremely caring toward one another with sharing, helping one another out and sometimes even defending one another even though the knew the risks of doing so. Such as when, Elie’s father began to give rations of his own hardwork food to his son so that he can live longer and possibly have a chance of a better life one day while his father begins to face starvation and depression with the less food that he is eating and that everyone else is getting.
Imagine everything that keeps you human being quickly stripped away from you, turning your importance into a number on a chart. This is what Elie Wiesel experiences in the Holocaust and is what he wants to express to the reader in Night. His character changes drastically throughout the memoir, changing him from a happy, carefree religious boy to a desensitized husk of his former self, broken by his experiences in Auschwitz. When the memoir begins, Elie’s biggest concern was his belief that he should study Kabbalah, while his father believes he is too young. Then he shifts the tone of the memoir with the line “
Despite some people being in such drastic situations, they still show humanity in their actions. In the book “night” by Ellie Weisel. It talks about his life during the holocaust and what he had to go through while they put him in a concentration camp. Many of the inmates that Elie Wiesel was in camp with had shown humanity in their own ways and actions, despite being in such dangerous situations. And many of those actions could have impacted their survival.
Night is a memoir that is told from a Holocaust survivor, Elie’s point of view. Elie describes the Holocaust as a life changing tragedy and his survival, a miracle. To follow it up, the narrator also mentions his survival is to tell others how the violation of Human Rights had impacted the lives of the Jewish people. The Germans had violated nearly all human rights the Jewish prisoners had, to the point where the prisoners lost faith in their religion and their belief in God.
In fact, you should be getting his rations…’ “ (110-111). The Blockaltest tells ELie that he should forget about trying to care for his sickly father more and to focus on surviving. Elie is conflicted because he wants to stay with the only family he knows he has left and didn’t want to abandon his father to prioritize himself like Rabbi Eliahu’s son. This shows the struggle between life and death because if Elie were to continue giving his rations to his father, he risked his own well-being. When his father got extremely sick, Elie had to choose between helping his father by sacrificing more of his rations or saving himself and keeping his
Weisel’s father becomes sick and close to dying, and Elie feels compelled to provide for his father. Initially, Weisel gives his father part of his rations each day. A few days later Weisel and the Blockalteste talk about his sick father, and the Blockalteste gives him advice. “‘Stop giving your ration of bread and soup to your father. You cannot help him anymore.
This discussion continued for some time. I knew that I was no longer arguing with him but with Death itself, with Death that he had already chosen” (Wiesel 105). Therefore, forcing himself not to do a particular thing helped Elie during hard times. He knew that if he slept on the snow, it would mean a silent death. Going to sleep and never waking up.
Ever since humans came to be, they have done many things to ensure their survival. It’s the reason why we humans have evolved as much as we have. Humans have invented devices, accomplished many challenges, and have even relied on nothing but willpower to survive. When somebody survives a tragic event they are left with some terrifying memories that haunt them forever, but a few survivors are courageous enough to share their experience. Obviously, one of the shared experiences is the book called Night by Elie Wiesel.
Elie Wiesel illustrates survival of the fittest by showing that people are willing to lie in order to survive. In the book Night, Elie gives the reader an example of how people are willing to lie in order to survive by lying about his age, during the selection, in order to not be killed and to stay with his father. During selection a man warns Elie about getting through the selection by telling him to say he is eighteen: Hey, kid, how old are you?
He was able to continuously replenish his weak, old father little by little by making sacrifices such as by giving up his “ration of bread and soup” (110) due to his health and youth. But one aspect that he did not notice was that “every man for himself and . . . each of us lives and dies alone” (110). Elie does not discard his hopes of killing two birds with one stone, until at the end of the novel, when the doctor points out
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
Everyone is born with an inherent instinct to survive. It is human essence to do whatever it takes to survive, even if it indicates taking a life. Although you may not consider murder, when confronted with tribes and tribulations, your morals are the last thing you'll be regarding. In the memoir Night, Elie Wiesel recalls his time in the holocaust, the mass genocide of Jews generated by the Nazi party during WWII. One of this novel's persisting themes is survival and self-preservation.
In the novel Night the protagonist, Elie Wiesel, narrates his experiences as a young Jewish boy surviving the Holocaust. Elie 's autobiographical memoir informs the reader about how the Nazis captured the Jews and enslaved them in concentration camps, where they experienced the absolute worst forms of torture, abuse and inhumane treatment. Dehumanization is shown in the story when the Jews were stripped of their identities and belongings, making them feel worthless as people. From the start of Elie Wiesel 's journey of the death camps, his beliefs of his own religion is fragile as he starts to lose his faith. Lastly, camaraderie is present as people in the camps are all surviving together to stay alive so as a result the people in the camp shine light on other people 's darkness.