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Examples Of Survival In Night By Elie Wiesel

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“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. The first reason that the theme of Night is survival is shown by all of the many people that died during the Holocaust to the hands of the Nazis. The first example of this is found when the book states, “Not far from us, flames, huge flames, were rising from a ditch. Something was being burned there. A truck drew close and unloaded its hold: small children. Babies!” (Wiesel 32). In this part of the story, Elie is walking through the camp and watches and babies and children are thrown into a fire and burned. The Germans are throwing these children into the flames and the children die. They babies had no chance to fight back. They were not given the opportunity to even try to survive, as their life was cut short right after it even began. Another example of survival found in the death of Holocaust victims can be found when the book says, “But the third rope was still moving: the child, not too light, was still breathing … And so he remained for more than half an hour, lingering between life and death, writhing before our eyes” (Wiesel 65). This boy in the story is being executed by hanging for supposedly helping another man commit a crime. However, he is so young and short that the noose does not work, so the boy struggles for a long time trying to fight against death. Instead of just giving up, he tries to battle against death.

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