Night by Elie Wiesel
The book Night is nothing but a novel composed of emotional and physical conflicts for the main protagonist, Eliezer. Set in World War II Europe, this semi-autobiography covers several internal struggles for not only Eliezer but his fellow prisoners of the Holocaust; dwindling faith in God, loss of hope and preserving parental bonds are among many problems encountered throughout the book. The book explains a whole new side of the Holocaust: the mental side, what the victims were thinking during the genocide and how they themselves were being eaten alive by fear, detached from the individuals they were before their time in the concentration camps.
A major conflict for Eliezer is maintaining his faith and loyalty towards God. You can note the dramatic change in his level of religion throughout the book, he starts as a devote student of the Jewish faith but it slowly fades away as he experiences more and more abuse. He had spent his life prior to his encampment believing that the world revolved around the magnificent power and divinity of God. However all these optimistic ideals are violently shaken out of place with the arrival of the Nazis and their ghettos. He began to question the benevolence of God once he witnesses the horror that a human can perform towards another with the justification of racial superiority.
That leads to the second struggle of Eliezer, survival. He would not only focus on finding food and avoiding the gas chambers, but he had to be weary of his fellow prisoners for once inside the camps, survival of the fittest was the highest virtue among those imprisoned. In the first arrival of the Nazis, Wiesel depicts them as a military power, containing the Jewish people, yet they are still written down as human beings. That changes by the end of the novel, they become violent demons, bringers of death and despair. All of the struggles that Eliezer confronts correlate and tie together as well as affect each other. This factor of human cruelty towards one another promotes his decaying faith, which only increases the depression that gnaws at his consciousness. He witnesses his fellow man rip each other to pieces over a small wedge of bread, friends taken by the hand of Adolf Hitler and even watch as sons abandon their elderly fathers to ensure their own survival.
Eliezer’s father – Chlomo - is the only reoccurring character within the story that plays a major role in keeping Eliezer alive. From the beginning you can tell that Eliezer has a very deep connection with his father and he would do anything to make sure that he stays with him during this entire ordeal. He watches as other sons beat their fathers to death and desert their father because they believe the he is holding them down. Eliezer has several instances where he contemplates these horrible deeds, but he remains strong in preserving the bond he and his father have. Even up to his father’s death, Eliezer remains by his side. But after the passing of his father, he can see a confrontation that had been present all along that would destroy the hearts of the faithful: silence and neglect from their God.
Having been spiritually devoted for his entire childhood, Eliezer saw the world as a beautiful place filled with the voice and love of God. Again his theories on the interaction of God and Earth would be stricken down by a harsh reality. He would come to question the existence of the Almighty numerous times in his sentence in the concentration camps. When a young boy was hanged, he cried out to God asking “why?” and the answer would be silence. That silence would be a key element in the destruction of faith in the interment of the Jewish people. They saw it as God was quite content with the genocide of innocent people.
Through it all, Eliezer manages somehow to survive his long trials with the Nazis. His horrific journey across Europe left him scarred and battered, his family was damaged but not as much as his remaining mind. The time spent in the concentration camps destroyed almost every aspect of his life, yet it seemed to open his eyes and allowed to see the world more clearly. The world is not the perfect little place without any flaws and humanity still has great control of its primitive side. We has human beings have the ability to create vast amounts of destruction and chaos, however love and compassion are the little lights at the end of the tunnel for those who follow the right paths.
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