Identity In Night By Elie Wiesel

As we all know, Elie was freed from the liberation camp. Soon after, he became sick intestinal problems and spent time in the hospital (Wiesel). While sick in the hospital, Elie wrote an outline of the events that happened during his experience with the Holocaust. Elie promised himself that he would wait ten

Elie’s physical changes throughout the story are best displayed on page 115: “From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed has never left me” (Wiesel 115). This quote is taken from the end

Throughout a lifetime, people undergo many different identities to discover their true self. Elie Wiesel, the author of the memoir Night, suffered a major event that changed his identity forever. In his experience at the concentration camps during the Holocaust, Elie had to fight to stay alive even during the most resilient moments. This event shaped his life and brought Elie to endure different perspectives in his time in the camps. Eliezer’s identity changed throughout the memoir from faithful, to fearful, to hopeless.

In the book “Night” by Elie Wiesel, he shares his story of his experience through World War Two. Through his experiences, he experiences both internal and external conflicts. The conflicts he experienced include ideas of dehumanization, loss, and physical changes.

People can change very much in bad situations like the people in the Holocaust, more specifically, Elie Wiesel, a 15 year old who got sent to a concentration camp in Auschwitz. In the book “Night” by Elie Wiesel, the main character, Elie, changed in many ways throughout the book because of the different experiences and sights he had to go through in Auschwitz.

Eliezer in the book mentions several times that the prisoners and him were no longer men. The prisoners in camp were broken down into shadows of the men they were before their imprisonment. This is because the Nazis tormented them. The Nazis treated the prisoners like animals. They put them in cattle cars, forced them out of there homes, and fed them the bare minimum they needed to stay alive. All of these things made the prisoners lose their identity as men. This helped the Nazi cause because it made the prisoners lose hope. Prisoners with no hope become easier to control, and that benefited the Nazis. Therefore the loss of identity of the prisoners helped the Nazi cause.

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!...

In the novel “Night” by Elie Wiesel the theme of self preservation and loss of identity plays a critical role in the development of Eliezer (Elie Wiesel) throughout the book. As Wiesel suffers through the tragic events of the holocaust, self preservation proves to be more difficult to keep and losing one’s character seems easy. Wiesel’s identity, faith, and his will to live start to fade as he begins to forms a new character, a character who remains silent. Losing identity means losing the values that makes up a character.

Before Elie’s experience in the Auschwitz concentration camp, he had many character traits such as being unwise, innocent, and impatient. When Elie first arrives at Auschwitz and receives his first meal, his father warns him to ration his food. For example, “I was terribly hungry and swallowed my ration on the spot” (Wiesel 44). During Elie’s first meal in Auschwitz, he gobbles it down and does not think about what might happen later. When his father starts to give him some advice, he is already finished with his meal. Elie acts unwisely and does not think ahead to what might happen in the later days. Earlier in the story, Elie and his family are waiting their turn to be put onto a train that will be sent to a concentration camp. Before they enter the train Elie asks, “ ‘When will it be our turn, father?’ I asked my father” (Wiesel 18). This quote shows that Elie really has no idea what is happening and what will happen to him. Elie has no idea that “his turn” will end up with him in a concentration camp. He is innocent and does not think about what bad might happen to him. Upon entering Auschwitz, Elie sees people being thrown into the fire and decides to die a quick death rather than suffer. Wiesel states, “ ‘If that is true, then I don’t want to wait. I’ll run into the electrified wire. . .’” (33). Elie is afraid of what is to come upon him arriving in the concentration camp. Because of this fear, his thoughts become driven by fear and cause him to think impulsive thoughts. Elie would rather die in the fence, than be worked or starved to death. Elie acts very unwisely in his reactions to seeing people killed. To sum up, before Elie changed as a person, he had traits such as being impatient, unwise, and innocent.

This being the case, Elie had been taking care of himself. Elie’s life before Auschwitz was average, yet also very taken for granted.

The early 1940s, an observant, young boy, and his caring father: the start of a story that would become known throughout the world of Eliezer Wiesel. His eye-opening story is one of millions born of the Holocaust. Elie’s identity, for which he is known by, is written out word for word his memoir, Night. Throughout his journey, Elie’s voice drifts from that of an innocent teen intrigued with the teachings of his religion to that of a soul blackened by a theoretical evil consuming the Nazis and Hitler’s Germany. Elie Wiesel's memoir, Night, examines the theme of identity through the continuous motifs of losing one’s self in the face of death and fear, labeling innocent people for a single dimension of what defines a human being, and the oppression seen in the Holocaust based on the identities of those specifically targeted and persecuted.

One significant change of Elie during the book is his loss of faith in God. As stated in the text, “He watched me one day as I prayed at dusk...Why did I pray?...Why did I live? Why did I breathe?” (Page 4). Elie is first shown to tell that he has a high trust in God and makes it a part of his life; however, as he spends more time in Auschwitz, his daily prayers and trusting God starts to go downhill for it is noted on page 64, “For God’s sake, where is God?” And from within me, I heard a voice answer: Where He is? This where, hanging here from this gallows” (Page 64). Here he begins to

At the beginning of the story, Elie was is ambitious but throughout the story he starts to lose his ambition. He was very independent and driven. He had to go through the pain of his dad dying and be separated from his sister and his mother. Elie saw some pretty horrifying things for example people being burned. After that his stability just went down.

Before Elie went to the concentration camps, he had many good character traits such as loyalty, Religious, and Impatient. For Example, on page 33, it says “If that is true then I don’t want to wait. I’ll run into the electrified barbed wire. That would be easier than a slow death in the flames” (Wiesel). During this part of the book, Elie and his dad had just arrived at Auschwitz and were being put in a line that was leading to death. Nevertheless, this shows that he is being impatient because he was facing death head on and knew that he might die so he was choosing a quick death rather than burning and slowly dying. Another trait Elie showed before the concentration camp was loyalty. For instance, on page 36, Elie stated “Please sir I’d like to be by my father” (Wiesel). In this part of the book Elie and his family were being separated at the camp and Elie lied about his age so he could stay with his dad. In contrast Elie showed loyalty to his dad by not going with his mom and sister and staying with his dad. This was a very big decision by Elie because he chose the hard way by staying with his dad even if that meant death.

In the beginning chapters of Night, it is shown that the Nazis have developed various strategies to strip the prisoners of their identities. When Eliezer and his family had arrived at Birkenau, the first action the Nazis in charge took was to separate the women from the men. By doing so, Eliezer and his father were taken away from his mother and sister. “I didn’t know that this was the moment in time and the place where I was leaving my mother and Tzipora forever” (Wiesel, 29). Eliezer’s family had been with him throughout his entire life and helped him grow into who he was at them time and separating them could have caused him losing a piece of himself. In addition, upon arrival the group saw large fires surrounding the camps they soon came