Night Thesis Paper
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Suffering. A single word that that can mean so much. Throughout all of time, many people have suffered, and many people have caused that suffering. One of the worst times of suffering had to be during the Holocaust, and that is what Night is about; the suffering that one person dealt with during the Holocaust. The human spirit can endure a tremendous amount of suffering, yet can survive when surrounded by death and deprivation.
Elie Wiesel’s Night tells of all the hardships he had to endure in order to live. He tells of all the obstacles that he encountered while in the different concentration camps, and what he did to get over these obstacles. Elie’s reason for living was the thought that he and his father would be able to live together as free people. Many of the other prisoners in the concentration camps probably had the same thinking. The fact that Elie went on as long as he did, with his fathers burden, proves that if you have a will to live, you could.
Elie’s relationship with his father was not great in the beginning of the book, but as they faced the hardships together, they grew closer with each passing day. When Elie witnesses what Rabbi Eliahu’s son had done while on the long march from one camp to another, by leaving his father without even telling him he was leaving. He felt that if he should do the same, he quickly forgot those thoughts, because without him, his father would surly die, and that without his father, he would have no reason to live. He knew that if he and his father did not survive together, then they would not survive at all.
When Elie’s father is on his deathbed, Elie does everything in his power to try to save his father; including giving up his ration of soup and bread, not letting his father drink water, and trying to convince the Kapo’s that his father needed medical attention. Elie is willing to do anything just to keep his father alive. Without his father, Elie has no reason for living. Elie had endured so much suffering so his father could live. Elie had tried to teach his father how to march, so his father would pass selection, he gave up his gold crown so his father would stop having to endure extreme beatings from a foreman named Franek. Elie had once received a beating in his father’s place, because he did not want is frail father to endure it. Elie did everything he could to keep his father alive.
Elie also endured a type of suffering that was not physical, but internal. Elie had many internal conflicts throughout the book. Elie has to make many decisions that a normal kid his age would not have had to make in normal circumstances. Elie had to make life or death decisions, he had to lie about his age and occupation, he had to forget about his mother and sisters, he had only one goal…to survive. He lost his faith, he lost the most sacred of his beliefs, he lost everything. He had even lost his soul. Elie’s boots were all he had left from his life before the camps, his life in Sighet, and he lost them. His boots symbolized his soul, a soul that was gone for all eternity.
Elie was a strong believer in God before he left the ghetto; but as his life in the concentration camp went on; he started to lose his faith. After witnessing the SS throw young babies into the air and use them as target practice, which made Elie wonder what kind of God would let that happen. Another example of Elie losing his faith would be after the SS hang the young boy. “I heard a voice answer from within me answer him, �[w]here is he? This is where-hanging here from this gallows…” That quote shows that Elie feels that God is dead to him, as dead as the young boy. When Elie refuses to fast “mainly to please [his] father, who had forbidden [him] to do so” and “there was no longer any reason why [he] should fast.” Elie saw that by eating his ration of soup and bread, he was showing “an act of rebellion and protest against Him.” In all these instances, Elie defies his faith in God, without a second thought and without any doubt about what he was doing. Elie felt as though God was punishing them for glorifying His name.
Elie and all the Jews had to endure hardships even before they were deported to the concentration camps. Life in ghettos seemed okay in comparison to life in the concentration camps. The Jews were allowed to live normal lives at first, and then restriction became harsher and harsher as time went by. They were not allowed to stay out past a certain time, they were not allowed to go to the public parks, and they were then not allowed to leave the ghetto. The Jews had to live with the constant threat of death if they displeased the SS that guarded the ghettos. Some had family members in the large ghetto, while they lived in the small ghetto, which they could not see and probably