Elie Wiesel, a holocaust survivor that has used his experience to write and publish a memoir, Night. In this book, Wiesel talks about the journey and hardships he and his father faced while imprisoned in the concentration camps. Night portrays numerous themes, one of which being self preservation. This is depicted in a multitude of scenarios along with Wiesel's battle with the temptations that he is faced with in regard to choosing between self preservation and altruism. When one is being forced to endure the abysmal conditions of those who were imprisoned by Nazi soldiers, one becomes desperate. In times of desperation, the morality of individuals is questioned, to others as well as themselves - whether they realize it or not. Prisoners of …show more content…
Despite Eli’s best efforts to bring attention to his fathers illness and get help, there was nothing anyone would or could do to remedy his fathers worsening condition. His father remained ill in the barracks, lying in wait for death to provide the sweet relief he had been longing for. His fathers condition continued to worsen, he began to hallucinate, he could no longer get up to relieve himself, and he became a burden to his bunk mates. Despite this, Elie did his best to care for his father and make peace with those around him. The Blockalteste noticed and observed this, and had given Elie a piece of advice in regard to his fathers being. “Listen to me, kid. Don’t forget that you are in a concentration camp. In this place, it is every man for himself, and you can not think of others. Not even your father. In this place, there is no such thing as father, brother, friend. Each of us lives and dies alone. Let me give you good 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). Elie did in fact consider and was tempted, though he quickly came to terms with his resolve and conscience. He continued to treat his old father, feeding him, keeping him company and bringing him the occasional portion of water. Despite his dedication, his father had passed away, presumably taken while Elie was asleep, his last words being his son's
How did the execrable setting, the concentration camps, alter those involved? Good people were manipulated and changed into performing heinous acts. “Night,” is written from the perspective of Eliezer, as he navigated through the survival of the Holocaust, with his father. Eli became aware that people who neglected their morals thrived, this revelation troubled him deeply. The inhumane atrocities that took place during the Holocaust resulted in corrupt mindsets among those involved: the German soldiers, the Jews and Eliezer himself.
When Elie’s community was moved to the ghettos, his father acted as a harbinger, passing on any news he could find, and keeping the crowd calm, “Sleep peacefully, children. Nothing will happen until the day after tomorrow, Tuesday” (Wiesel 18). The image of a proud leader that Elie had of his father is tainted when they began to march to the first camp, as his father began to cry. It is when he and his father are separated from his sisters and mother that Elie realized how essential his father is - if his father is gone, he has nothing.
Elie protects and helps his father as well as he does not sacrifice him for his own survival as so many sons have done to their fathers. However as days pass by, he starts to feel some resentment toward his father especially when he is unable to protect himself from the bestiality of the SS instead of pitying him. In addition to that, toward the end of their way to Buchenwald his father becomes weak and cannot move, maybe because of fatigue or loss of hope. He leaves his father and sleeps deeply, when he wakes up, he could not find him and searches for him half-heartedly because a thought tells him maybe he could increase his chance of survival if he was alone. Fortunately, he finds him, ”Father!
Furthermore, Elie’s relationship with his father worsened as they spent more time at the concentration camp. In this scene, Elie’s father is extremely sick after having been in the concentration camp for a long time. After his father is gone in the morning and assumed to have been sent to the furnace because of his poor condition, Elie expresses to the reader how he did not necessarily feel sad after his father got sick and died. While explaining his emotions surrounding his fathers death,
Elie has every reason to believe his father would be taken. Elie is becoming much weaker and is unable to work as effectively, yet he no longer regards his own safety as his utmost priority. This is the same Elie who had disobeyed his father’s orders in the past, the same Elie who felt that his father cared more about the community than him. Even after all this, he grows to have his father as such a massive priority for him, that he no longer thinks of his own survival as his number one priority. Elie desperately clings to his father as the last vestige of his former life.
This puts a big strain on their relationship. Elie is forced to take care of his father and make sure his dad is taken care of enough to survive. Elie gets very frustrated with his father for not being able to take care of himself. At one point, Elie even thinks about leaving his father behind to save himself. In this quote, "I could have screamed in anger.
When Eli's father is hurt at the start of his time in the camps, he cares deeply about him. But the longer he spends there, the less Elie cares about violence. Finally, Elie becomes greedy, which turns into guilt. Elie loses track of his father and starts to look for him, but he thinks about what would happen if he stopped guiding his father to survival. "If only I were relieved of this responsibility, I could use all my strength to fight for my own survival, to take care only of myself...
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
The parent-son situation has changed for Elie, and Elie now has to take on the responsibilities to care and tend to his father in order to ensure he will survive against the other camp inmates as well as the camp itself. This lack of being able to be cared for by someone else and now having to handle the hardships of caring for someone else greater than him as well as himself exemplifies how Elie faced severe burdens that shook his
When they were being evacuated on the death march Elie was quickly losing strength and “the idea of dying, of ceasing to be, began to fascinate” him (86). He was put in a hard spot where if he stopped for a break he would be trampled or shot, but to continue to run meant more pain, especially for his throbbing foot, and he was already so exhausted. In this case, it was Elie’s father who helped him survive. Elie knew he was his father’s sole support and that if he died his father probably would too. Since his father was there, Elie gave himself the mindset that he had to push on, but if his father had not been there beside him he could have easily chosen the other option and let himself fall to the ground.
As he found himself around people and an ambient where everyone survives for himself, he became aware that he has many responsibilities to do compared to his before concentration camp life. Elie develops new ideas based on the responsibilities that each individual possesses as he confronts with corruption. As he encountered with his father’s hard sickness, Elie understood that he holds many burdens that should be completed, since he wasn’t a child anymore. Now it was his time to take care of him as he did once for Elie, illustrated as he says "I gave him what was left of my soup. But my heart was heavy.
In the coming weeks, the true weight of the situation landed on Elie. In Night, Elie goes as far as to not describe his life during the period after his father's death as, “It no longer mattered anymore” (Wiesel 113). He goes on to say, “Since my father’s death, nothing mattered during that period” (Wiesel 113). While Elie’s father was a responsibility Elie did not wish to bear during the camps, he soon came to find out that without him his life lacked meaning. Without his father, he had lost the one thing he had left that brought him purpose.
Water’” (Wiesel 111). If Elie were to keep giving his father his food, his father most likely wouldn’t have gotten better anyway which means that Elie would’ve wasted his food and left with almost
He was running next to me, out of breath, out of strength, desperate. I had no right to let myself die. What would he do without me? I was his sole support” (Wiesel 86-87). Elie told himself that he had to live because his only family was now his father. Because of this, Elie realized that if he died then his father would be alone and he would lose all of his motivation to keep on going without Elie.
I probably brought him more satisfaction than I had done during my whole childhood.” (p.77) This quote explains how sensitive Elie is with his father; How much he cares for and looks after his father. How much he checks on his father's health and remains kind to