The Destructive Power of Family Ties in Night
In the novel “Night” by Elie Wiesel family ties is a constant and essential theme of the novel. the relationship between Elie and his father shows that having someone during a traumatic time can be the difference between life and death and while it can be positive it can also lead to a negative outlook. Throughout the novel a change in responsibility, support, and guidance presents the highs and lows in the importance of how those relationships can either hinder or help.
The importance of family in challenging and traumatic times is very apparent as in “Night” Elie is thrown into such a new, dark and death filled place with no guidance from anyone but his father, Shlomo. In the initial stages of the novel Shlomo is very apparent in Elies's life as it was quickly changing at such an immature age by having everything stripped away like family, wealth, morals and even faith, some sort of crutch is needed. Family is a reliable source of emotional and physical support as they are always pushing you and want the best for you an example of this is in the novel when Shlomo and Elie finally
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During this time Elies's father, Shlomo, could be perceived as a physical manifestation of Elies' Survival Motivation and Emotional Resilience. Elie defines most of his will to live and continue coming from his father presence which fuels his determination to protect and support the final remaining connection he has to the rest of his family which is evident through his constant selfless acts to preserve and save his father. The shared hopes, fears and dreams now made Elie think of him and his father as one, for Elie to survive means his father needs to survive these experiences cause people to think of everyone as a whole and not a singular
When Elie was separated from his mother and sister at the beginning of the book Elie was only left with his father. When things got tough, they continued pushing for each other. They made sacrifices for each other and always made sure the other was ok. Elie had lost the rest of his family so his father meant the world to him. At the end of the book this is also taken away from him.
Elie and his father relationship changes as both of them go through more hardships. At the end Elie began to think that his father was sort of a burden and he feels guilty for thinking this of his father. Elie looks up to his father in the beginning of the book because his father is a respected member of the Jewish community. Elie’s father refused to be his mentor due to the fact that he did not agree with his decision to study mysticism.
Father son bonds are arguably the most important and influential things on a child’s life. In Night by Elie Wiesel Eliezer’s father harms his chances of surviving. Eliezer and his father get put into a concentration camp. There surviving is hard enough, let alone caring for and giving your food to your father when it should be the other way around. Although some would argue that eliezer’s father helps him through the camp, his father ultimately weighs him down and harms eliezer’s chance of survival through him becoming increasingly frail and weak, his health deteriorating further, and his becoming increaingly dependant on Eliezer for survival.
Clarence Budington Kelland once said “ my father didn’t tell me how to live; he lived and let me watch him do it”. In the book Night it tells the opposite. The book Night is about a boy named Elie Wiesel and he is 15 years old. Elie and his family went to the concentration camp but then got separated. Elie and his father get sent to Buchenwald.
To Elie, his father is his only source of moral support, motivation, and trust. Until the very end, the kinship between Elie and his father allows them to stand strong together in all circumstances. As a result, familial ties are essential for Elie
He said in the book after his father all he cared about was his bread that he got. “Please sir i’d like to be near my father. ”(Wiesel 50) this quote shows how family is important to Elie, later in the book Elie traded food to be in the same bunk as his father. This shows how much family
In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, the power and resilience of family is explored through determination of survival. This novel portrays a first hand account of the Holocaust and the terrible events that occurred. The father and son duo of Elie Wiesel and his father, Shlomo Wiesel, must find purpose in each other to live and survive one of the largest and most cruel genocides in the modern world. Despite you or society’s current conditions, this novel shows that everyone has a motive to live. Even in the most hopeless of situations, everyone needs a purpose in life.
Shlomo’s selflessness demonstrates the incredible strength of the bond between father and son. Wiesel’s survival gives Shlomo a reason to live despite the brutal conditions he has to
Elie also impacts himself by being scared of letting go of his father, and by feeling this way it makes Elie stronger and pushes his father forward. Even though Elie’s father died, Elie still continued on with his hope of reaching the end of the awful journey. Strong is a word to Elie inherited because he kept believing in living even though he had nothing to live
Secondly Elie learns to rely on his father for survival and what it means for his father to lean on him for survival. Elie learns what it means to have no meaning in life after his father's eventual death. Elie also learns what a selfish son looks like. Elie sees in the view of other sons actions what he could have done to his father. After Elie’s family is split Elie is leaning on his father there is almost no moment where Elie is not with his father or wants to be with him father but when Elie’s father was first getting bullied due to the fact that Elie had a gold crown tooth that he was saving to get extra something like bread.
Elie’s father is a man who is very involved in his community. He is a person who is often sought after for advice, and he is a man who is respected by the Jews of Sighet. However, this has the adverse effect of driving him away from his family emotionally. Elie recalls how “[Shlomo] rarely displayed his feelings, not even within his family, and he is more involved in the welfare of others than that of his own kin” (4). He becomes more connected with the community, but his connection with his family suffers.
When they first arrived at Auschwitz Elie and his father looked to each other for support and survival, Sometimes Elie’s father being the only thing keeping him alive. In their old community Elie’s father was a strong-willed and respected community leader, as the book went on you could see how the roles were becoming reversed he was becoming weaker and more reliant on Elie to take care of him. Their father son bond had always been strong and only grew stronger with the things they had to endure. “My God, Lord of the Universe, give me strength never to do what Rabbi Eliahou’s son has done” Elie was disgusted when he saw Rabbi Eliahou’s son abandon his father to help improve his chances of his survival he prayed he’d never do such a thing, but as his father becoming progressively more reliant on Elie he started to see his father as more of a burden than anything else.
Family; a blessing, or a curse? In the book Night, Elie Wiesel offers many significant themes, but the question, “is family a blessing or a curse,” is one of the most prevalent and begging themes in the novel. During the novel, Wiesel often questions if he should try and keep his father around, or if life would just be better without him in the picture. “‘Don’t let me find him! If only I could get rid of this dead weight, so that I could use all my strength to struggle for my own survival, and only worry about myself,’ I immediately felt ashamed of myself, ashamed forever,” (Wiesel, 111).
Family is essential when going through an extremely dark, depressing, lonely period of time, like the Wiesel's did. Elie and his father experienced things that are unimaginable and couldn’t have made it as far as they did without each other. Throughout the book Night the author Elie Wiesel is trying to accomplish the goal of making people understand that there will be difficulty throughout life and family will be there to make the hard times easier. Elie uses imagery, symbolism, and flashbacks to explain the importance of family after his tragic trauma.
What can happen to the rest of one's emotions once a survival instinct takes over is astonishing. Eliezer’s sick father, Shlomo, was the only link he had back into his past, his good life. Also Shlomo was a burden to Elie. Whenever Elie started admitting that his father was a burden, he caught himself and stopped because he felt ashamed and guilty. When his father finally died of Dysentery, Elie found himself doing the unthinkable, he had abandoned his father like the Rabbi’s son did to him.