How Does Elie Wiesel Change In Night

In the novel Night, Elie Wiesel gives an account about his life in a concentration camp. His focus is of course on his obstacles and challenges while in the camp, but his behavior is an example of how human beings respond to life in a concentration camp. The mood, personality, behavior, and obviously physical changes that occur are well documented in this novel. He also shows, as time wears on, how these changes become more profound and all the more appalling. As the reader follows Elie Wiesel’s story, from his home in the ghetto, to his internment at Auschwitz-Birkenau, to his transfer and eventual release at Buchenwald, one can see the impact of these changes first hand.

     Eli has a definite change emotionally. He thinks about the things he would never consider if he was not in Auschwitz. For example, on page 102, Elie says, “I gave him what was left of my soup, But it was with a heavy heart. I felt that I was giving it up to him against my will.” In the beginning, it was as if Elie would do anything for his father. After all, his father was older and it was Elie’s turn to look after him. After a while, his father seems like almost a burden to him. Elie felt obligated to give him the rest of his food, but if given the choice, he probably would not have given it up easily.

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

In life, people go through different changes when put through difficult experiences. In the book Night, Elie Wiesel is a young Jewish boy whose family is sent to a concentration camp by Nazis. The story focuses on his experiences and trials through the camp. Elie physically becomes more dehumanized and skeletal, mentally changes his perspective on religion, and socially becomes more selfish and detached, causing him to lose many parts of his character and adding to the overall theme of loss in Night.

While Elie was in the concentration camp he changed the way he acted. This new behavior led him to develop new character traits. While Ellie was in the concentration camp he became angry at many things. For example “I would have dug my nails into the criminals flesh” (Wisel 39). Elie shows extreme anger when the Nazi officials are beating Elie’s father. Elie was angry because the Nazi soldiers were not treating them nicely and keeping them in poor conditions. Elie was usually not a person to display anger, but he shows this when his family members are being hurt. Elie wants to stand up for what is right and for his family members. Despite his studying, Elie wavered in his belief in Kabbalah while he was at the camp. Elie was a religious boy before he went to Auschwitz, but while in the camp, he became angry at God. In the book Elie says, “‘Where are You, my God?’” (66). Elie is wondering why God is not helping the Jews. Elie had complete faith in his religion until he experienced and witnessed such horrible suffering. He had been taught that God will punish evil and save the righteous. However, when Elie saw that God was not helping the Jews situation,

Originally, Eliezer was a young teenager who was devoted to his religion and was pious. According to the text, Elie explains, “Why did I pray? Strange question. Why did I live? Why did I breathe?” (4). Religion was Elie’s way of life and brought him a sense of completeness. Praying and understanding his religion was like breathing, he couldn’t live without it. He dedicated himself to his faith and wanted to follow the same acts as his father who was a known man in their town of Sighet and put other people and his religion before himself. At a young age, Elie wanted to study Kabbalah, which is the deepest insights into God and the purpose of creation. He found his master in a man named Moishe the Beadle. Moishe the Beadle was a master in everything he has done and was an influential person in Elie’s life. For instance, “Man comes closer to God through the questions he asks Him...Man asks and God replies...The real answers, Eliezer, you will find only within yourself,”(5). Moshe proved that God is always there to guide you no matter what happens, but sometimes you also have to rely on yourself. Elie was astounded with the way Moishe viewed God and the lessons he was taught. It became a routine for Elie to converse with him. But after Moishe was transported from Sighet for being a foreign Jew, Elie started to have a change of thought. Weisel points out, “One day… I saw Moishe the Beadle… told me what had happened to him and his companions… were forced to dig huge trenches… they [the Gestapo] shot their prisoners… Infants were tossed… and used as targets for the machine guns,” (6). Moishe’s experiences sounded so horrifying that nobody believed him- he was called a fool and liar. Although

Elie and his family never thought the rumors would ever reach them. Until one day it did. Sending them to ghettos, making them leave their lives behind. “I looked at my house in which I had spent years seeking my God, fasting to hasten the coming of the Messiah, imagining what my life would be like later. Yet I felt little sadness. My mind was empty.” (page 19) Elie didn’t know what to think. No one had a clue as to where they were going to be located now. The place where he used to worship his god was beginning to be taken away from him. He doesn’t realize that his god would make him feel so betrayed and little

The book opens with Elie’s life before him and his family were taken away. The story continues talking about how when they arrived in Auschwitz his mother and sister were taken to the crematorium with other women and children who were not strong enough to work in the camps. The only people left from Elie’s family were him and his father. Throughout the whole book Elie talks about how his father was his only motivation to keep going. When Elie’s father dies he contemplates to keep going or just to give in. In the end he is liberated and is freed.

Elie first recalls Dr. Mengele’s “eight short, simple words” (Wiesel 27) when he enters the camps: “Men to the left! Women to the right!” (Wiesel 27) In this part of the book, Elie and his father are separated by his mother and sisters. This metaphorically kills Elie because he is very attached to his family as are they to him. A piece of Elie has been taken away from him forever. Later in his memoir, he mentions the cruel hanging of the Pipel. Previous hangings that day did not phase Elie, but when the young, angelic Pipel was hanged, Elie said his once flavorful soup “tasted of corpses.” A man near Elie was saying “Where is God now?’ And I heard a voice within me answer him: “Where is He? Here He is- He is hanging here on this gallows…”(Wiesel 62) This is a powerful quote that shows how Elie has also began to question his faith. This brings about the mindset of the death of God in Elie. Elie begins to show distrust and rebellion in his God. This is a sharp contrast to Elie’s former beliefs. When Elie’s father dies, Elie emotionally shuts his mind off. He says “After my father’s death, nothing could touch me anymore.” He had finally given up. His father was his rock tied to the balloon, his reason to keep going. Without his father, Elie gave up and became zombified like the rest of the broken souls. Elie fully turned into the emotionless man that he was set to become as a result of surviving

Before Wiesel traveled to this gruesome death camp, he showed an abundance of positive traits. Some of these being his love for his religion, his strong hope for his future, and his powerful, loving family. In the first few pages Elie confesses his love for his religion and his ambition to pursue it to a teacher of the Jewish religion. He says that “...I told him how unhappy I was not to be able to find in Sighet a master to teach me the Zohar…” (5). He was stating that he wanted to branch off of his current religion and learn a new form of it, but he was limited because no one in his area also studied this form of Judaism. We can also learn that he was hopeful because you can tell that he is still trying to learn this other religion. Elie also writes that “Naturally, we refused to be separated” (20). He was speaking about his family in this quote and how he and his sisters had the opportunity to leave their mom and dad so that they could get to a safer place with the family maid. The mother did not want to go, so no one went; Instead they stuck together in the ghettos. They had an immensely strong family bond and it is shown through this passage. The children chose their family over a more certain safety. The next quote came after they were all in cattle carts, and were traveling to the new place. Elie recalls “It was as though madness had infected all of us” (27). Elie was scared during this time, but also reserved. He just kept to himself on while he was in this cart that was heading somewhere that he did not know.

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.

* “Elie even gave his dying father extra rations, despite being told to “stop giving your ration of bread and soup too your old father... in fact you should be getting his rations.”

Elie is in a concentration camp that forces him to face inhumanity everyday. Elie and the others in the camp never knew when they were going to face death, like Morrie. From day one Elie was dehumanized and treated like an animal. When he was taken from his home, he was placed in a cattle car. He was then given a number and stripped from his identity. The Nazis continually called him worthless and a “pig.” Elie questioned how anyone could be humane in a situation like this and said, "Humanity? Humanity is not concerned with us. Today anything is allowed. Anything is possible, even these crematories" (30), but despite all of the trauma and inhumanity Elie faced on a daily basis, he was humane to his father. Elie did everything in his power to stay alive for his father, similiar in a way to Mitch in Tuesdays with Morrie. Elie showed humanity to his father. In the beginning when they had to march everywhere, Shlomo, Elie’s father, struggled with it. Like Morrie, Elie taught Shlomo how to march and to not get in trouble. Elie wanted the best for his father. When Elie’s father was on his deathbed, Elie brought him food and water, even though Elie himself was starving. Elie did not give in to the inhumanity that was brought upon him. Elie chose to rise above it, just as Morrie

Because Elie was still very young when he and his family were moved to a concentration camp, he relied on his father a lot in the beginning. After being separated from his mom and sisters, all Elie “could think of was not to lose him [his father]” (Wiesel 30). However, due to his father’s declining strength and his own, Elie was required to act and think more independently. Near the

Upon waking the next morning Elie was alarmed to find another inmate sleeping on his father’s bed. He soon discovered that his father had died the night before and was taken to the crematorium. By this time, he had already endured so much that he says “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…” (Wiesel, 112). Elie had already experienced so much turmoil within the confines of the camp, that he was unaffected by the death of his own father. He was relieved that he no longer had the responsibility of keeping his father and himself alive. Elie had once been appalled at the men who abandoned their loved ones in order to ensure their own survival. He had watched in horror as a man killed his elderly father for a crumb of bread, and vowed he would never become one of those appalling men. Yet when he thinks of his father’s undeserved death, he feels relief.