Examples Of Inhumanity In Night By Elie Wiesel

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.

When Elie and his family are sent to a concentration camp, he is fortunate enough to not be separated from his father. At first, this is a relief, and is father is his will to survive. “The idea of dying, of ceasing to be, began to fascinate me. To no longer exist. To no longer feel the excruciating pain of my foot… My father’s presence was the only thing that stopped me. He was running next to me, out of breathe, out of strength, desperate. I had no right to let myself die. What would he do without me? I was his sole support.”(86)

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.

“To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering” (Nietzsche). This quote, said by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, describes the desire to survive that was inside of Elie Wiesel in his story. The book describes Elie’s late teen years when he was sent to a concentration camp by the German government. In the book, he is separated from his whole family except for his old father, and both are put to work inside of the camp. As Elie suffers through the camp, his faith and his life face many tests and trials. There are many instances throughout the book when people die or when somebody loses their faith. The theme of the book Night, written by Elie Wiesel, is survival, as shown by the death of many Jews during the Holocaust, people willing to do anything to survive, and people’s faith not surviving the traumatic experiences of the concentration camps.

A great quote that Elie Wiesel said. The way he said it made it meaningful and powerful, just like his book Night. In his amazingly written book is about Elie Wiesel himself as a 15 year old going through the Holocaust. At the time he was in Transylvania that was invaded in 1944 by Germany. Later on forced to move to a ghetto then moved again to the concentration camps by cattle cars. Once Elie and his family got to the concentration camps soon enough he mother and sister were killed but Eile stood

Throughout the novel, we can understand that in the beginning, the relationship between Elie and his father was not the best because Elie believed his father cared more about the Jewish community than him. However, by the time the father and the son only had each other, they were depending on each other. Elie was only living for his father because he knew his father would not survive without him. They were both helping each other in a ways surviving. For example, Elie gave his father lessons in marching step, to help him survive (55). Also, Elie became less and less emphatic toward his dad during the concentration camp days. The Nazi sabotages the wonderful bond a father and a son had together. Elie could see his own father get beaten up and even than; he had no emotion or anger (39). Once his father got beat up with an iron bar, and Elie did nothing to help him, he just stood there (54). Even thought he had no emotion, even when his father past away, Elie said “I did not weep, and it pained me that I could not weep. But I was out of tears. And deep inside me, if I could have searched the recesses of my feeble conscience, I might have found something like: Free at last!...

Elie, his father, and the prisoners had to run in the snow more than 40 miles to another concentration camp, deeper in Germany. When they stopped a man, Rabbi Eliahou, asked if Elie and his father if they had seen his son. Elie had and he realized that the Rabbi’s son had “wanted to get rid of his father…to free himself from an encumbrance” (Wiesel 87). They then got on cattle trains that took them to the next concentration camp, Buchenwald. They passed by villages and when people threw bread in, the prisoners began to fight to the death for it. One son began to attack his own father for a piece and killed him, only to be killed the next moment himself. Soon after they arrived in Buchenwald, Eliezer’s father was very weak and sick. A part of Elie felt that if he could get rid of his father he “could use all [his] strength to struggle for [his] own survival” (Wiesel 101). He was very ashamed, even more so when his father died and he felt “free at last” (Wiesel 105).

Towards the end of the book, Elie lost his faith. An example of this occurs when the main character said, “Where is God’s mercy?

“I figure, sometimes, bad things happen to us so we can achieve a higher purpose and attain greater happiness and fulfillment in life” - Omoakhuana Anthonia. Sometimes, bad things have to happen to people for them to realize their true potential and purpose in life. This proves true for the survivors of the holocaust, they now have the power to stop things like this from happening ever again. For Elie Wiesel, this is especially true, after he survived he went on to write the book “Night”, this book has really helped people to understand what truly happened and to gain respect for the survivors; he also went on to win a number of awards, including the nobel peace prize. In the book “Night” by Elie Wiesel, our main character, Elie,

When going through a rough period of time, people may lose hope in their faith or religion. To start with, when the summer was wrapping up, Elie sees people praying and states, “Why, but why would I bless him? Every fiber in me rebelled. Because he caused

In the novel, Night, Elie Wiesel is a dynamic character shown through the conflict, character versus nature, where he went from being defeated to defiant in the personified death in the concentration camps. Through his journey in the concentration camps and struggle for survival, Wiesel encounters death several times, he either witnesses death’s ways or outlives them. While being in Auschwitz, one of the largest concentration camps from the Holocaust during World War Two, Wiesel had grown numb to the effects of death, he had outgrown the disbelief of how cruel the world could be, of how God could remain silent in such a time of need and help, “Death enveloped me, it suffocated me. It stuck to me like glue. I felt I could touch it. The idea

Elie Wiesel portrays how the Holocaust emotionally impacted him throughout his entire memoir, Night. A significant emotional challenge for him was determining a way to keep his father and him alive, especially as times got more difficult as the story continued. Elie saw many boys abandoning their fathers. For instance, Zalman was running alongside Elie in transport, while aware he was ahead of his father. Elie assumed that Zalman thought his father was a gratuitous obstacle for survival. Or when Meir-intentional or not- killed his father for bread. He was determined not to echo their methods. Though, as time went on, that goal got harder to achieve. Men would tell him that his father's death was inevitable, he should be saving himself, and he “could have two rations of bread, two rations of soup” (Wiesel 111; ch.8). He considered this “only [for] a fraction of a second, but it

The boy struggled due to the non strategically placed rope. This sight caused confusion and fear among the prisoners. After Elie witnessed the awful hanging of his fellow peers, he lost all belief in the god he once worshipped. “And in spite of myself, a prayer formed inside me, a prayer to god in whom I no longer believed.” (Wiesel,67)

Several SS men rushed to find me, creating such confusion that a number of people were some my father and I. Still, there were some gunshots and some dead” (Wiesel 96). Because Elie ran after his father, some people were shot and dead, that could have been him, but Elie did not care. As long as he stayed with his father, he was okay. Even though his father was getting weak, Elie never left his side, even if it meant putting his own life in danger. Most people in the camp did abandon their fathers, however, and would even beat their own fathers to death for a few crumbs. Elie was the different one in this case, he was one of the only people that did not abandon his father and did not just think of himself the whole time. His father and him relied on each other in the camp and because of that they were both able to be so resilient depsite the terrible conditions thy faced. Without his father by his side, Elie did not feel alive. For example, after Elie’s father

Elie being scared of being beat, looks away when his father is being beat by the Kapo. He “felt anger at the moment, it [is] not directed at the Kapo but at [his] father”(54). He is angry, not at the one who is causing damage to his father, but at his father. He is angry at his father for not avoiding the Kapo’s wrath. Elie no longer feels honorable or has the dignity he once had. He has lost respect for himself making him feel useless. He feels that he can not do anything about his father being beat because he will just be ignored. He will be beat himself, and for the sake of survival, he can not risk his health. He has no more respect for himself, therefore he has no respect for others. This is all due to the loss of self-respect; the loss of self-respect has major toll on people's