Elie's Relationship With His Father Analysis

Elie’s father loses his strength quickly, “his eyes [grew] dim” (46) almost immediately after arriving. The horrors which he had seen were easily enough to crush the spirit of a former community leader. His disbelief of the horrors he saw questioned the very basis of his soul, and he began to despair. His father’s eyes soon become, “veiled with despair” (81), as he loses hope for survival. The despair of camp life shrouds the human within, showing only another cowed prisoner. Elie’s father no longer can see hope, having his vision clouded by cruelty and hate. Elie’s father is eventually overwhelmed by despair; he, “would not get up. He knew that it was useless” (113). The Nazis crushed his soul, killed his family, stole his home, and eventually took his life; this treatment destroyed the person inside the body. He could no longer summon the strength to stay alive, so he gave up, and collapsed.

The one person in Elie’s life that means everything to him is his father. During his time in the concentration camps, Elie’s bond with his father

This shows Elie’s change in his thoughts on God and having faith. At the beginning of the story, Elie strives to be a spiritual kid and is fascinated by learning about God. He goes behind his father's back to learn about God with Moishe the Beadle, and has intense prayers everyday which he cries during. However, he becomes bitter towards God, angry about all the pain he has inflicted on the Jewish race. This change in perspective was brought on by the torture, abuse, and inhumane treatment by the Nazis. It causes Elie to question how God, who is supposed to be helpful and good, could ever allow such horror. This connects to loss, and how the traumatic

Elie loses complete faith in god in many points where god let him down. He struggles physically and mentally for life and no longer believes there is a god. Elie worked hard to save himself and asks god many times to help him and take him out of the misery he was facing. "Why should I sanctify his name? The Almighty, the eternal, and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent..."(page 33). Elie was confused, because he doesn’t know why the Germans would kill his race amongst many others, and he does not know why god could let such thing happen to innocent people. "I did not deny god's existence, but I doubted his absolute justice..."(page 42). These conditions gave him confidence, and a courage to

After 3 weeks at Auschwitz, they get deported to Buna, which is a turning point for the relationship between Elie and Chlomo. The camps influence Elie and give him a crooked mind focused on staying alive and nothing else. This leads to him disregarding his father. This twisted way of thinking, due to the camps, is making Elie cheer during bomb raids at Buna. He states his thoughts “But we were no longer afraid of death, at any rate, not of that death” (57). This shows that he is willing to die to see the camps destroyed. The most horrifying event that demonstrates his twisted mind is when Eliezer pays no heed to his father while he was being repeatedly beat with an iron bar. Eliezer, rather than acting indifferent and showing nothing, actually feels angry with his father. “I was angry at him for not knowing how to avoid Idek’s outbreak” (52). The new lifestyle of the camps affected Elie and his relationship with his father for the worse.

During the years prior to Elie's Wiesel's experience in the Holocaust, Elie and his father shared a distant relationship that lacked a tremendous amount of support and communications but, eventually, their bond strengthens as they rely on each other for survival and comfort.

During his time in the concentration camps, Elie’s outlook on life shifted to a very pessimistic attitude, showing emotions and actions including rebellion, forgetfulness of humane treatment, and selfishness. Elie shows rebellion early in the Holocaust at the Solemn Service, a jewish ceremony, by thinking, “Blessed be God’s name? Why, but why would I bless Him? Every fiber in me rebelled” (Wiesel 67). Elie had already shifted his view on his religion and faith in God. After witnessing some of the traumas of the concentration camps, Elie questioned what he did to deserve such treatment. Therefore, he began to rebel against what he had grown up learning and believing. Not only had Elie’s beliefs changed, his lifestyle changed as well. When Elie’s foot swelled, he was sent to the doctor, where they put him “...in a bed with white sheets. I [he] had forgotten that people slept in sheets” (Wiesel 78). Many of the luxuries that Elie may have taken for granted have been stripped of their lives, leaving Elie and the other victims on a thin line between survival and death. By explaining that he forgot about many of these common luxuries, Elie emphasizes the inhumane treatment the victims of the Holocaust were put through on a daily basis.

Elie and his father are taken to Auschwitz where they are separated from the rest of the family and first hear about atrocities such as the incinerators and gas showers. In the beginning Elie believes that everything is a rumor, a lie, that humankind cannot perform such crimes, but he soon is forced to witness the demise in front of his eyes. This is when his outlook on his faith starts to waver. While watching the smoke billow up from a crematory, Elie hears a man standing next to him begging him to pray, and for the first time in his life Wiesel turns away from God. “The Eternal, Lord of the Universe, the All-Powerful and Terrible, was silent. What had I to thank him for?” (31).

“Eliezer experiments with the possibility of becoming an adult while his father gradually slips away, all the while giving his son what space he can to let him try out a new role” (Sanderson). “Eliezer's march toward a pseudo-adulthood continues, while his father seems to be regressing. (Sanderson). Elie’s father starts to get sick and is becoming an annoyance for Elie. When Chlomo sinks into a snow bank during a forced march to the next death camp, too sick to move, Eliezer begs his father to stand up and continue moving” (Sanderson). Elie also felt no remorse for his father as he was being beaten by a S.S guard. “At first my father simply doubled the blows…I felt angry at that moment… Why couldn’t he avoid Idek’s wrath?” (Wiesel 54). Even when his father was being beaten for not marching right he still became annoyed with is dad. He also gave up his soup with a heavy heart. “I gave him what’s left of my soup.” I was aware that I did it groggily” (Wiesel

Most people believe that family helps build you up and make you stronger, even through tragic events; this isn’t always true. In Elie Wiesel’s book, Night, he explains the hardships he and his father, Shlomo, experienced while in concentration camps. In the book, Elie and his dad went through many tough situations together: starvation, beatings, and health issues. As more and more horrific events occurred, Eliezer's relationship with his father began to fade. As Shlomo grew weaker physically, Eliezer grew weaker emotionally; the intense trauma numbed his heart. Because of these many difficulties, Eliezer was shaped into an independent young man who no longer relied on his family but on his own strength for survival.

In his anger stage, Elie gained strength from his anger and feeling of superiority, but while he needed help, he began to bargain for strength from God, sacrificing his superiority to help his father. After his trials were over, Wiesel was able to look back on his struggles and accepted the lesson that could be learned from them, the lesson God wanted the Jewish people to learn: that no people should be abandoned to the mercy of oppressors. Wiesel learned that people’s indifference to the strife of others was what allowed atrocities to happen because “Indifference and neglect often do more damage than outright dislike” (J. K.

“The weak die out and the strong will survive, and will live on forever.” That is the case for Eliezer and his father. In the concentration camps, family turns against each other. Eliezer still cherish the fact that his father is still there by his side but his father sometimes acts as a burden for him. In this point of time, Elie seems to be focusing on only himself, and he uses everything to protect himself even if it’s manipulative. I liked how the author informed the readers that life in the concentration camps is extremely overwhelming that family turns against each other. For example, it stated that Eliezer is angry at not Kapo but his

During the holocaust many things pile on top of each other and God worse and worse. As Elie witnessed this he began to wonder if God was real and wondered why God would do such a thing. He realized this as everyone told their opinions about the crematorium, "oh god, master of the universe, I'm your infinite compassion have mercy on us" (pg.20). Elie prays aloud to God for aloud and tells him why would God do such a thing to people who had no reason to be treated a certain way. Eventually Elie had ups and downs with his

A key point during the early point of Elie’s life is that Elie illustrates himself as spiritual and very invested in his faith, but from the duration of the Holocaust loses his faith. He asks himself why God would allow his people to suffer and not help them, stating

Loss of faith in humanity is something familiar to a teenage generation. But this case of realization and truthfulness was something of terror and deviation; not normal or just a simple action of trying to tell the truth. This story of growing up is brutal and premature. Elie went into the Holocaust so young and not only lost his faith but also his childhood. After an event like the Holocaust, people change dramatically, in their belief, in their physical health, in their mental health, and in their faith in everything. Elie unsurprisingly to me, lost all faith and belief not only in God but also in humanity and possibly in himself and in his capability. “For the first time, I felt anger rising within me. Why should I sanctify His name? The