How Is Elie Wiesel Portrayed In The Book Night

Can you imagine staring death and evil in the eye everyday? Or watching innocent people lose the stare-down and drop like flies around you? Elie Wiesel doesn’t need to imagine. He lived through this nightmare and many others as one of the broken to survive the Holocaust. In Wiesel’s book Night, he recounts this surreal event through his own point of view. The novel gives us insight into what he had endured, as well as millions of others. How the conditions changed Elie’s and other’s mindset and thoughts is enough to make any stomach churn. Wiesel begins his account with his hometown of Sighet, Transylvania, Romania. One of the first things we learn about Elizer is that he wants to study the Kabbalah despite his father’s wishes. He tells Elie

“Our eyes opened. Too late (Wiesel, 23).” Elie himself is not the first one to become totally lost. It’s an unfortunate older lady who Elie refers to as Mrs. Schächter. She gradually becomes erratic and claims she sees a fire. At first, people seem to sympathize with her. Though, as things go on, they become less patient and understanding. She was gagged and tied up in hopes of silence. Eventually, she was beaten. Elie admitted that the screams were worse than “the heat, the thirst, the stench, [and] the lack of air (Wiesel, 26).” Her screams would’ve caused the rest of the train car to go insane if not for the end of the journey. However, it is arguable that Elie has already started a decline in sanity. After arriving in the camp, he thinks about killing himself by jumping into the furnace. In the same scene, he doubts his God and his faith is becoming broken. His father, later on, is hit by an inmate after asking a question. Elie “stood petrified,” and admitted “only yesterday, [he] would have dug [his] nails into this criminal’s flesh (Wiesel, 39).” Elie was already losing himself and his values, after only stepping into the camp less than 24 hours