Character
Elie and his father, Schlomo, carried one another through the horrific times of the Holocaust. Elie feels as though he did not do enough to keep his father alive. It was not Elie’s fault that his father passed. Elie did as much as he could especially under the circumstances, yet that is not how Elie feels about it. By the end of “Night,” Elie reflects on how he treated and cared for Schlomo, and he immediately feels disappointment in himself. Elie feels like he did not take care of his father, but he did much more than most.
Elie and Schlomo started this terrible journey attached at the hip. Elie would not leave his father’s side. Every time something happened or Elie needed anything he would automatically look for his father. Elie’s father took very good care of Elie and guided him to stay alive. Later into their struggle of trying to survive the Holocaust, Elie and his father have were beaten and starved. Elie then slowly stops relying on his father’s guidance. Since they were deprived of nutrients and worked half to death, both Elie and his father are very weak. Elie ia much younger than his father so he stays a little healthier and stronger. Schlomo is growing much wearer by the day. Elie’s father starts to depend on Elie to get him
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Since Schlomo is so weak, he becomes very sick. Elie needs to keep moving to stay alive, but his father is constantly needing his help, so Elie starts to think of his father as a burden. Once his father is so sick, he cannot move, Elie caters to everything his father wants and needs. The guard beat Schlomo when he was ill and all his father can do is call out “Elie’ for help. As his father was beaten, Elie was not able to help, so Elie felt very guilty. So once Elie’s father died he just felt worse about not helping. Elie was extremely disappointed in himself about the way he treated his
“Eliezer experiments with the possibility of becoming an adult while his father gradually slips away, all the while giving his son what space he can to let him try out a new role” (Sanderson). “Eliezer's march toward a pseudo-adulthood continues, while his father seems to be regressing. (Sanderson). Elie’s father starts to get sick and is becoming an annoyance for Elie. When Chlomo sinks into a snow bank during a forced march to the next death camp, too sick to move, Eliezer begs his father to stand up and continue moving” (Sanderson). Elie also felt no remorse for his father as he was being beaten by a S.S guard. “At first my father simply doubled the blows…I felt angry at that moment… Why couldn’t he avoid Idek’s wrath?” (Wiesel 54). Even when his father was being beaten for not marching right he still became annoyed with is dad. He also gave up his soup with a heavy heart. “I gave him what’s left of my soup.” I was aware that I did it groggily” (Wiesel
In a couple parts of the story Elie’s dad in many ways was jeopardizing Elie’s well being. For instance, when his father was sick. “Instead of him taking the extra bread he had gotten he gave it to his dad” There was no point because his father was gonna die either way so he basically wasted it. Another example of why family isn’t always the best thing to have during a crisis. Is when the “rabbi's son left him when they were forced to run away from the Americans/ Russians”. He did this because he thought his father was dragging him down so he slipped away and left him to ultimately die alone. Which still doesn’t justify what he did, but i’m sure he did it to save his own life because his father was slowing him down. Another example would be when they were on the train the second time and a SS officer threw a piece of bread into the cart just to watch the men fight over it. While they were fighting Elie describes a point where “a man actually beats his own father for a piece of bread”(Wiesel Pg.105). These are just two of many instances throughout the
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
I chose essay question number 3. I chose this question in particular because there is a couple parts of the book Night that really stand out to me because they seem very emotional and very challenging. And just because I thought it was a very good part of the book. The parts I really liked were the big run the Jews had to run on, the time Elie and his father were in the cart for a couple of days and when Shlomo (Elie’s father) was very ill and Elie had to take care of him.
Do you ever feel like your parents slow you down? In Night by Elie Wiesel, Wiesel’s developed devotion to his father portrays through the motif of father son relationship, that his father holds him back by making poor choices, taking Elie’s rations of food, and his constant need for Elie’s help. Would Elie be better off without him? Elie’s father made some poor choices that could have resulted in Elie’s death.
Elie’s father, Shlomo, was with Elie through his hardest times. Elie cared for his father, loved him and lived for him. When Elie’s father got sick towards the end of the book took care of him and defended him until his death. Another example of when he cared and defended his father is when they were transported by the cattle cars, corpses were being removed. Elie’s father was identified as dead during his sleep, and the two “gravediggers” came over and tried to grab him. Elie tried his hardest to wake him up by repeatedly hitting to prevent him from being thrown out. Shlomo was a key factor in Elie’s survival. On page 86, Elie said,” My father’s presence was the only thing that stopped me. He was running next to me, out of breath, out of strength, desperate. I had no right to let myself die. What would he do without me? I was his sole support.”. Even though Elie’s father was so important to him, he also caused Elie some trouble. This goes along with what Rabbi Eliahu’s son when he left him because he saw his father as a burden. The SS targeted Shlomo in the punishment of Elie. For instance, they knew Elie’s father couldn’t march in step, so the SS beat him and that affected
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.
Most people believe that family helps build you up and make you stronger, even through tragic events; this isn’t always true. In Elie Wiesel’s book, Night, he explains the hardships he and his father, Shlomo, experienced while in concentration camps. In the book, Elie and his dad went through many tough situations together: starvation, beatings, and health issues. As more and more horrific events occurred, Eliezer's relationship with his father began to fade. As Shlomo grew weaker physically, Eliezer grew weaker emotionally; the intense trauma numbed his heart. Because of these many difficulties, Eliezer was shaped into an independent young man who no longer relied on his family but on his own strength for survival.
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.
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.
During the years prior to Elie's Wiesel's experience in the Holocaust, Elie and his father shared a distant relationship that lacked a tremendous amount of support and communications but, eventually, their bond strengthens as they rely on each other for survival and comfort.
In night there were many times when Elie and his dad wanted to give up but they did not because they had each other. They used family to get through the terrible things that were happening to not only them but millions like them. Before the concentration
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.
Throughout Night, the bond that Eliezer has with his father Chlomo passes through a rocky course, but eventually becomes stronger due to the isolation and ultimately the death of Chlomo. This rocky course has events that that go from being inseparable in Birkenau, to feeling as though he is a burden. In between, there are times where Elizer’s relationship is clearly falling apart and then being fixed. The camps greatly influence the father-son relationship that Elie and Chlomo have, sometimes for the better, and sometimes for worse. Originally in 1941 when the Wiesel family was living in Sighet, Eliezer took Chlomo for granted, as any child would. Little did he know that their relationship would permanently change forever.
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.