Eliezer's Connection with his Father in Night by Elie Wiesel

In his book, Night, Elie Wiesel spoke about his experience as a young Jewish boy in the Nazi concentration camps. During this turbulent time period, Elie described the horrifying events that he lived through and how that affected the relationship with his father. Throughout the book, Elie and his father’s relationship faced many obstacles. In the beginning, Elie and his father have much respect for one another and at the end of the book, that relationship became a burden and a feeling of guilt. Their relationship took a great toll on them throughout their journey in the concentration camps.

When Elie and his father first entered the camps, his father was struck and Elie did nothing to help his father: "What had happened to me? My father had just been struck, in front of me, and I had not even blinked. Only yesterday, I would have dug my nails in this criminal's flesh" (39). This shows that, although Elie did not share a close relationship with his father, he still feels that he should stand up for his fahter for the fact that they are father and son. Elie is very violent in that he would have "dug his nails in the criminals' flesh." Evidently, Elie is furious towards the offender. Unfortunately, Elie does not do anything when his father is struck because he does not want to draw attention to himself. Nevertheless, the bond between Elie and his father does strengthen: "And what if he were dead, as well? He was not moving. Suddenly the evidence overwhelmed me: there is no longer any reason to live, any reason to fight" (98-99). Elie reveals that he truly depends on his father for survival. Because he believes his father is no longer alive, he loses all hope for surviavl. Although Elie expresses anger towards his father from time to time because he is being a burden, he still feels that his survival is meaningless without his father. The strong bond that the two developed once they entered the concentration camps proves that nothing can come between them so easily.

In his fleeting thoughts of abandoning his father to deal with the beating alone, Eliezer is beginning to betray the bonds of family; he is losing the original compassion and willingness to sacrifice his own well-being to help others that he entered the camp with. Although a suggestion of worry and compassion remains in Eliezer's tone, these senses are inadequate for Eliezer to forgo his own safety and well-being. In this, Eliezer has become selfish. He has begun to lose his altruism. However, even in the face of the ever-present self-interest seen in other prisoners of the camp, Eliezer fails to lose this important side of himself completely.

“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

Auschwitz. A place where death had its name written in this horrifying area. This place will cause a drastic change in the way Elie Wiesel and his father see their relationship. Especially, how Elie might perceive his faith throughout his experience. In addition, to the awful conditions in this place, nobody expected such big persecution and dehumanization against Jews when arriving at this location.

Earlier in the story, Elie wanted the protection of his father and his presence throughout his time in the camp, but later in the story his father became a burden upon him. When Elie’s dad was sick in the camp Buchenwald, he kept constantly asking favors from Elie. During one of the interactions with his father, a prisoner said to Elie, “ You are hurting yourself. In fact, you should be getting his rations... I listened to him without interrupting.

Nobel Peace prize winner, Eliezer Wiesel, endures a horrific journey from 1944-1945 when he along with his family arrived to the gates of Auschwitz. During World War II, German leader Adolf Hitler executed an estimate of six million Jews, Gypsies, and those who were disabled, attempting to create what he considered the master race. From 1933-1945 Jews were enslaved in concentration camps, where they were forced to perform hard labor until they eventually died . People had their families split not knowing it was the last time they would ever be together, yet somehow in the tragedies of the Holocaust, Elie and his father managed to stay together never turning on one another. Throughout the novel Night, Elie and his father had a distant

He rarely displayed his feeling, not even within his family, and was more involved with the welfare of others than with his own kin” (Wiesel 4). His father never showed emotion, so when he did everyone else knew something was severely wrong. His dad really cared about Elie and wanted the best for him. It was like not wanting to watch the family dog that everyone grew up with being laid down. Nobody wants to have to bear

This is the one that is the saddest because of all the different emotions that they experience together. Elie starts to grow a hate or embarrassment for his father. Elie’s father was getting beaten by the head Kapo Idek. “What’s more, If i felt anger at that moment, it was not directed at the Kapo but at my father” (54). Elie was thinking that it was his father’s fault for getting in Idek’s way and that his father was embarrassing him.

In the sixth and seventh sections of the book Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie tells about two other father and son relationships along with his own relationship with his father. All three relationships are very different in many ways, but they also have several similarities between them. Eliezer and his father, Shlomo know that they are the only person that the other has, so they both try to stay alive for each other. They both try to stay together at all times to know that the other is alive. Eliezer would not let his father die and his father would not let him die no matter how tired they were.

Throughout night you will see many situations of a strained, close, then conflicted father/son relationship between Eliezer and his father. In the beginning of the book Elie and his father were distant. Eliezer's father worked mainly with the jewish community. Eliezer’s father rarely notice when things went on with his family.

Additionally, Elie’s father was a busy community leader in Sighet. The Jewish community would come and ask him about any public or private matters. His duties left him with little time for interaction with Elie. Elie states, “He was more concerned with others than with his own family” (Wiesel 2). This shows how his father did not give him the love a child would normally receive from their father. He believed that his father had no care for the family. It also explains how Elie and his father did not have a close relationship with each other. Because of this, Elie became more of an independent boy.

Elie Wiesel’s novel Night explores the ways traditional father-son relationships break down under impossible difficult conditions. This father-son relationship is like no other. He details father-son relationship to show how father and son relationship suppose to be . He also show how natural it is for people who love each other still get along even after a bad situation.

In the Novel, Night, by Elie Wiesel, a young boy revisits his life during the holocaust. The boy is not alone, he has his father. But even then, this is not enough. Weisel portrays the oblivion and destitution for the jewish people during this time in Germany. The overall connection between Eliezer's Father and himself symbolizes the stages of a prisoner's mind over the time of the holocaust.

In Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie’s father acts hard-hearted toward Elie and his family and dismisses Elie’s idea to pursue Kabbalah with the belief that Elie’s age effects his understanding of Kabbalah. In Sighet Elie and his father hold a relationship as if they are two strangers to one another or as if his father provides food and shelter for Elie but gives him no love or affection. In Birkenau and Auschwitz, Elie and his father cherish a relationship of love and trust resulting in genuine loyalty between the two. Elie and his father undergo vicissitudes in their relationship starting in Sighet where they possess a distant, unsentimental, and remote relationship to Birkenau and Auschwitz, where they rely on one another to live and never imagine