Summary:
The Holocaust is one of the most horrific events in the history of the world. It claimed the lives of 6 million Jews, 90% of all Jews living at the time. In the middle of it all is a 15 year old boy named Elie Wiesel.
Elie Wiesel's Horrific Changes in Night
The Holocaust is one of the most horrific events in the history of the world. It claimed the lives of 6 million Jews, 90% of all Jews living at the time. In the middle of it all is a 15 year old boy named Elie Wiesel. He lived though the Holocaust but not without some drastic changes. Wiesel's memoir, Night, describes the spiritual, emotional, and physical changes that Elie went through. He changes from an innocent boy to a hardened man.
During the Holocaust, Elie struggles to hold on to his faith. He starts out in Sighet, seeking knowledge about Judaism. Elie wants to find a master that can guide him in the studies of the cabbala. He finds Moshe the Beadle, who helps him and guides him every day. Then, unexpectedly, all foreign Jews are expelled from Sighet, including Moshe the Beadle. Life continues on as usual until one day when Elie spots Moshe sitting on a bench near the synagogue. Moshe tells Elie all the horrific stories of the Gestapo killing the Jews. Moshe was lucky to get away, but everyone else wasn't. He tells Elie about how the Gestapo made the people dig their own graves, and how they used babies as machine gun targets. Moshe was just trying to warn everyone in the city, but nobody would believe him. It is after Sighet gets evacuated that Elie starts losing his faith.
Elie really starts losing his faith when he reaches Auschwitz, his first concentration camp. Elie reaches Auschwitz and he sees a flaming pit that the SS officers are throwing babies into. This is where Elie first starts questioning his faith. He thinks, "Why should I bless his name? The eternal, Lord of the Universe, the All-Powerful and Terrible, was silent. What had I to thank Him for?" (Wiesel, 31). This quote shows how Elie's faith in God is starting to waver. He looses his faith even more as time goes on, especially when he sees a hanging of an innocent child. Elie starts questioning where God actually is. He says inside of himself, " 'Where is he? Here He is-He is hanging here on this gallows...' " (62). This horrific moment signifies the lowest point in Elie's faith. He starts believing that God could not exist in such a cruel place. He loses his faith in the one person that he had grown up to trust, and that is God.
From the dreadful experiences and haunting memories of the various concentration camps, Elie experiences dramatic emotional changes. He starts out doing everything he can to keep him and his father together. He lives for his father. They know that they need to survive for each other and not give up on one another. When Elie's father makes it though the selection, Elie thinks, "Were there still miracles on this earth? He was alive" (72). But then his father's health starts deteriorating and Elie wonders why he doesn't just save himself. He thinks to himself when he goes searching for his father, " 'Don't let me find him! If only I could rid myself of this dead weight, so that I could use all my strength to struggle for my own survival, and only worry about myself' " (101). The cruelty of the concentration camps and the difficulty of survival have overcome Elie's feelings toward his father. In addition, Elie's emotions are completely shattered after the death of his father. He explains, "After my father's death, nothing could touch me any more" (107). Although Elie had mixed feelings about his father while he was alive, he was Elie's main reason for survival. After his father's death, Elie is left emotionless and worries only about his next ration of soup and bread.
Elie, along with all the other prisoners during the Holocaust, were fed inadequately, causing extreme physical change. When he is living in Sighet, Elie is like any other boy. He is in good shape and he is fed well. But at the concentration camps, Elie and the many other prisoners are fed poorly, like farm animals. They are lucky to get a good bowl of soup and a nice piece of bread every day. Elie is so hungry that he even didn't think of himself as alive any more. "[He] was a body. Perhaps less than that even: a starved stomach. The stomach alone was aware of the passage of time" (50). This just shows how humans can't survive without proper food and nutrition. When Buchenwald, Elie's last camp, is liberated, Elie sees himself for the first time since leaving Sighet. When he looks in the mirror, he doesn't see the healthy and happy boy that he was before the Holocaust, instead "a corpse gazed back at him" (109). This shows the extent that Elie was physically changed by the Holocaust.
"The look in his eyes, as they stared back into mine, has never left me" (109). Elie was never to be a boy again. Instead he was a man, hardened and changed by the Holocaust. The Holocaust had changed Elie spiritually, emotionally, and physically. There are many things that he can change back, but the horrific, unforgettable memories will haunt him for the rest of his life.
This is the complete article, containing 874 words
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