Father Son Relationship 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 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)

One of the major themes that can be found in Night, by Elie Wiesel, is one of father/son relationships. To quote a father from the book, Stein, “The only thing that keeps me alive is knowing that Reizel and the little ones are still alive.” Not all father/son relationships are as good however. Another part of the book reads, “I once saw. . . a boy of thirteen, beat his father for not making his bed properly. As the old man quietly wept, the boy was yelling, ‘If you don’t stop crying instantly, I will no longer bring you bread. Understood?’” In presenting examples like these, Wiesel communicates a message of the importance of good father/son relationships to his readers. This paper will examine father/son relationships throughout the book,

In Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie and his father’s relationship before the concentration camps consists of little emotion shared between each other; their estranged relationship leaves no room for them to show affection towards each other. In Sighet before the Holocaust, Elie’s father engages more with the citizens of the town than with his own family. Later, when Elie and his father arrive in their first concentration camp in Birkenau, they grow closer very quickly, relying on each other to continue their fight to live with the little food and harsh treatments. When Elie and his father live their lives before the Holocaust in Sighet, his father spends most of his time tending to the needs of the community and less to the needs of his family; however, when the two of them arrive in Birkenau, their relationship rapidly changes as his father plays the role of a supportive parent and Elie the helpful son.

Kids tend to rebel against their parents as they grow older. In the memoir, Night, Elie Wiesel recalls his experiences with his family during World War II. His mother and sisters were taken away from him as soon as he arrived at Auschwitz, only his father remained. Elie Wiesel witnessed many terrible events during his first night at camp; the only thing that kept him in line was his father. Elie Wiesel’s father kept him from possibly killing himself. When Elie Wiesel lives in the concentration camp with his fellow Jews, he begins to question the fairness of God, who he had followed his entire life. Elie Wiesel lost faith in God, particularly the faith that He would use His divine power to help him, and he began to rely on his father instead, which gave him more reason to live.

The holocaust is the most deadly genocide in the world that impacted millions of life by controlling and running life because of one mean man. In Elie Wiesel memoir, The Night is describing his own experience before, during and after the holocaust. He describes in meticulous details his experience in the concentration camps such as Auschwitz and Buna with is father. Wiesel depicts how the Nazi slowly destructs every interpersonal relationship in the Jews community. Within the autobiography, Wiesel shows how the interpersonal relationships are important within the population in general, in the concentration camp and in more precisely with is own relationship with his family.

Elie’s father died of dysentery, starvation, and exhaustion in Buchenwald, only weeks before the liberating army came to the gates of the camp. After the liberation, Elie described how their first act as free men was to throw themselves upon the provisions for such were the inhumane savages they had become.

The relationship between a father and son is one of the strongest relationships between family members. A son looking after his father might seem unusual, but in unusual circumstances, relationships are often forced to adapt. The father is the mentor and the son should look up to the father for support and guidance. This relationship plays out in Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, through the concentration camps. Hitler and the Nazi’s have been deporting Jews to concentration camps and eventually killing them. Wiesel travels through the horrible circumstances. In 1944, Elie Wiesel lives in Hungary with his parents and his three sisters, but they deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and is split up, but remained with his father. Wiesel describes his experiences traveling through different concentration camps with his father, Shlomo. Wiesel tells about the different people he meets and events that happen. Wiesel meets other fathers and sons, whose relationships are not going well. Elie and his father stick together as they face many challenges. As time went on in the camps the fathers became weaker and their chances of survival decreased. The sons helped their fathers go on, but this would slow the sons down. In his Holocaust memoir Night, Elie Wiesel uses the motif of father-son relationships to show that while there are benefits to having a strong connection with someone amidst extreme circumstances, there are also disadvantages because the other person may become a burden.

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).

In the beginning of the book, before experiencing life threatening difficulties, Elie was much more determined to stay with his family (in order to survive). Eliezer thought that his father was what kept him going and gave him strength, he was certain that the right thing to do was to stay with his dad. In chapter 3 Wiesel states, “My hand tightened its grip on my father. All I could think of was not to lose him. Not to remain alone” (30). In these sentences, Elie explains that he and his father needed to stay together. This quote also shows what Elie’s emotions were; he was scared to suffer through the concentration camp alone. Elie also shows his need for family when he says, “Franek, the foreman, assigned me to a corner... ‘Please, sir ... I’d like to be near

Elie Wiesel’s book “Night” shows the life of a father and son going through the concentration camp of World War II. Their life long journey begins from when they are taken from their home in Sighet, they experience harsh and inhuman conditions in the camps. These conditions cause Elie and his father’s relationship to change. During their time there, Elie and his father experience a reversal in roles.

Elie Wiesel’s memoir “Night” shows many of the crimes committed by the Nazi regime during the Holocaust. In the memoir, Wiesel recalls his experiences in the Holocaust. In many of the dire situations, it is not Elie who pulls himself out of a situation, it is the presence of his father. For example during the Death March: “My father’s presence was the only thing that stops

Over the course of Elie Wiesel's novel Night, the protagonist Eliezer gradually begins to lose his faith in God. He sinks deeper and deeper into the evils of the Holocaust, first in the ghetto, then in the Nazi concentration camp. As Eliezer's views on religion begin to change, so does his relationship with his father. He begins the novel still a young boy, and regards his father as powerful and full of strength. Gradually, he is stripped of his boyhood illusions as well as his faith, and comes to regard his father as an ordinary mortal. He grows frustrated with his father's physical weakness, and assumes the role of occasionally reluctant protector of the older man, rather than the adolescent he was before. The relationship betwee Eliezer and God, and his loss of faith in God parallels that of the loss of faith in his father. [Thesis]

Pain and suffering are temporary, but family is forever. Family is one of the most important concepts in Elie Wiesel’s novel Night. Elie Wiesel’s relationship with his father drastically changes over the duration of his journey. Elie begins his experience by being completely dependent upon his father, but as he continues through the horrifying years, he learns to be independent. Even in the very beginning of his journey, Elie Wiesel’s life was dependent on a perfect stranger.

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