Night By Art Spiegelman

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.

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

The thoughts of condemnation and lack of self-preservation wouldn’t have ravished his mind. Page eighty-six later reveals how Elie “soon forgot him” and became more selfish by “think{ing} of {himself} again. ”Throughout much of the book, Elie writes on his selflessness towards protecting and caring for his father, but after facing so much he grows more and more selfish. This quote shows the insensitive nature that Elie developed through his time spent in the concentration camps. Lastly, Elie continually confesses his personal conflict with emotional dormancy through his

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.

Ferdinand Hodler, one of the leading figures in modern European paintings, developed outside the mainstream of so-called avant-garde, and his life and work bridged the gap between XIX and XX century. At the end of the XIX century, he was the one of the leading Symbolist painter.

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.

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,

Before Elie went to Auschwitz, he possessed many positive character traits, such as being curious, responsible, and disciplined. Weitsel writes, “Together we would read over and over again the same pages of the Zohar. Not to know it by heart but to discover the very essence of divinity” (5). Studying with his tutor and mentor was something Elie loves to do. He grew up in a small town as a strict Orthodox Jew. He loves to learn and read about religion, but he longs to gain a deeper understanding of God and spent many hours with his tutor Moishe, which shows his curiosity for knowledge and discovery. Elie also shows great responsibility in these miserable and anxious times. “Go and wake the neighbors, said my father. “They must get ready…” (Weisel,14). His father asks Ellie to go warn the others in the Ghetto that they must pack their belongings and be ready to leave. Elie’s father trusts him and treats him as an adult. He is often asked to help

“My father was a cultured man, rather unsentimental.”pg.4. Elie and his father didn't have the best relationship. Elie’s father was high in his community. He didn't show his love for his family as a father would. And this brought cracks to the relationship.He was more concerned about his businesses and community than his own family.

Dementia and physical illness rendered him too weak to rely on, so rather than asking how Elie would live without his father, a new question was presented: How would his father live without Elie? Immediately after arriving to a liberation camp, the surviving prisoners were divided into various groups, so Elie grabbed his father’s hand and refused to let go. Unfortunately, exposure to such unforgiving environments had introduced Elie’s father to the kind of seductive release from pain mentioned earlier. This was confirmed through an argument the two had where Elie refused to let his father sleep, knowing quite well he wouldn’t wake up. However, the latter was obstinate, begging to rest because he was so unbearably weak. The one-sided quarrel caused Elie to admit, “I knew that I was no longer arguing with him but with Death itself, with Death that he had already chosen” (105). Elie had previously demonstrated the strength to fight for his life, because that was what survival was, a fight. However, his father was not as fortunate, and didn’t possess the same willpower as his

But further on in the novel, they drift further and further apart. At some point in the novel, Elie starts to feel that his father is a bit of a burden. Elie and his father experience a reversal in roles, where Elie takes on the fatherly role and his father takes on the child role. After their run to Gleiwitz, Elie noticed how his father had changed from the time they arrived at the camps, “He had become childlike, weak, frightened, vulnerable” page 105. When they are finally at Buchenwald, Elie and his father spend an entire night apart. When Elie wakes the next morning, he frantically goes looking for him, as a father would look for his lost son. When he locates his father, he notices that his father was just sitting their like a lost child, waiting to be found. Elie says, “Father! I’ve been looking for so long….where were you? Did you sleep? How are you feeling?” pg.106.

“I did not weep, and it pained me that I could not weep. But I was out of tears.” (112) Father son relationships can be very important, and can be put in danger in hard times. It is important to keep these close family relationships strong. Keeping family relationships close builds hope during tough times. Elie Wiesel uses the motif of father - son relationships throughout his book. Night, a memoir written by Elie Wiesel, is about his time in a concentration camp during World War 2 with his father. The book chronicles his experiences came from the year prior to its liberation by the Americans in 1945. In the Holocaust memoir Night, Elie Wiesel uses the motif of father-son relationships to convey that, especially in extreme circumstances, family

Since Elie’s father rarely shows emotion he comes across as cold and distant; also, Elie’s father advises the people of Sighet on their personal and community concerns. Elie describes his relationship with his father as one between two strangers rather than a close relationship between father and son. Since his leadership dominates his ability to show emotion to his family members, unfortunately the community views Elie’s father as more of a father figure than Elie. Also, Elie assumes that after all foreign Jews were exported that his life will return to normal, so he continues to advance in his studies, and his father continues to attend to his work and to the welfare of the community. When everything returns to “normal” Elie never mentions his father’s concern for his family’s safety as part of his father’s daily routine. This displays the truth about Elie’s feelings toward his father and what Elie considers normal for his father’s everyday routine. This unemotional relationship between Elie and his father causes tension; sometimes leaving Elie to feel empty or almost unloved by his own

“Take care of your son. He is very weak” is advice given by his cousin, Stein, to Eliezer and his father (Wiesel, 45). In Night by Elie Wiesel he illustrates his experience in the holocaust. He is put in a life or death situation with his father that puts an extreme strain on the bond, but they weren’t the only father-son relationship put to the test. The advice given to him was followed by him and by some other characters. In the novel Night by Eliezer Wiesel, the author displays how times of hardship can have a positive effect on the father-son relationships, which shows how people in times of hardship care more than those not.

This book interested me because it is a great example of what so many people went through in concentration camps throughout Europe in World War II. So many books have been written about personal accounts of war hardships suffered by the Jews but so few capture the true problems faced by prisoners. The impossible decision between survival and family was a difficult one faced by many during this time. Elie had an unfaltering will to live when his father was alive with him but once his father died the reason for living disappeared. But he once was faced with the decision of helping to keep his father alive or let him die and have an extra ration of food. How can one be stuck with a decision like this and not choose survival? Only true unselfishness can cause you to help someone