Introduction of the novel
The novel “Night” written by Eliezer Wiesel, based on his true experience of surviving the Holocaust, keeps making strong impressions on people of all generations. When Wiesel has just finished his work on the book, and tried to find a publisher for it, no one would agree to do this work, the book was called too dark and too morbid. Many publishers were wondering, why the author wrote this novel. Wiesel keeps asking himself the same question.
Maybe he was trying to understand what kind of power would force so many people to become so mad, maybe he wrote his novel as a message for the future generations, to warn them about making horrible mistakes, or maybe he wrote it so that his miraculous survival had a meaning. “I must confess, I do not know, or no longer know what I wanted to achieve with my words” (Wiesel 9). The author knows for sure one thing – without this novel, his life would never be the way it is now.
Fight for morals
First appearance of Eliezer Wiesel shows us a shy teenage boy, “fascinated by the mystery of God’s transcendence” and spending a lot of time praying (Berenbaum 11). The war is happening somewhere far away, and neither the boy, nor his neighbors and family believe that it could ever become dangerous for them. When the first signs of the future threat come to the Jewish society, no one takes them seriously. Young Eliezer always sticks with his family, in the beginning he percepts the starting tragedy through his parent’s behavior.
The events escalate quickly; very soon his family is separated forever. The boy clings to his father, Shlomo. They are always holding hands. Bloom notices, that the father and the son take it as their moral obligation to help each other to survive (25).
At first, Eliezer relies on God, but the more sufferings and deaths he witnesses, the more his illusions start to crumble down. He is shocked to see his father cry, he never expected such a thing from his parent. The boy and the father are both struggling to survive in horrible conditions, at the same time remaining human beings. They fight for their lives and for their morals. They both watch many other people break under the pressure, become self-focused, betray the moral rules and concentrate on surviving. The boy prays to his no longer existing God to have enough power to remain a devoted son.
Breakdown
It takes Eliezer almost a year of constant suffering and pain, hunger and cold, to start noticing signs of a selfish survivor in himself, he starts seeing his old father as a burden, keeping him from fully concentrating on saving his own life.
Every time such thoughts appear in his head, Eliezer is ashamed badly. But old Shlomo is getting weaker day by day. Other prisoners start noticing to Eliezer that he should not give his bread to his father, as it’s pointless, they tell the boy to take away his father’s food instead. Shlomo became too sick to walk, by the end of his life he only cried and begged for water, which he was forbidden to drink due to his severe dysentery. Soon the old man dies, after being beaten up by a guard, he dies calling Eliezer, but the son does not respond.
Eliezer, just like many others, broke down and let go of his last remains of humanity – his love for the father. The only dreams and desires he had after that were about food.
Works Cited
Berenbaum, Michael. Elie Wiesel: God, the Holocaust and the children of Israel. Springfield, NJ: Behrman House Inc. 2004. Print.
Bloom, Harold. Elie Wiesel’s Night. New York, NY: Infobase Publishing, 2010. Print
Wiesel, Elie. Night. Trans. Marion Wiesel. London: Penguin Books Ltd, 2008. Print.