The catastrophe that destroyed millions of lives
Elie Wiesel’s literary work Night touches upon one of the most disastrous catastrophes in the history of Jews that is known as the Holocaust. It is difficult to understand why the most religious nation in the world has become the victims of the Nazis and the God has not saved His subjects. Elie Wiesel depicts the theme of lost childhood in his book. The main character is Eliezer who is an innocent child who suffered from Holocaust.
The theme of lost childhood in Elie Wiesel’s Night
At the beginning of the book, Eliezer is a little child who is very religious and faithful to his God. He studies Talmud regularly and develops relationships with God. He cannot even imagine his life without the merciful God who has given life to him. Kabbalah’s teacher provides him a piece of advice to ask questions to the God that makes him closer to Him. Eliezer asks the question all his life but sometimes God is silent to his questions especially during the difficult times in the concentration camp. It is difficult for Eliezer to realize that Germans may kill Jews and the world is silent to their murders. Silence is the key concept of this work. Silence means indifference in this case.
Eliezer’s faith in God has been destroyed when his mother and little sister die in the concentration camp. He cannot understand how God may permit it. Life in the concentration camp has changed his life and his beliefs. He has to become mature as far as all his childish joy was in the past and a horrible reality steals all his happiness. His life has become a struggle for surviving.
Eliezer has to suffer the worst in the concentration camp at the age of fifteen. He becomes the victim of mental and psychical abuse. He describes his feelings about the first night in the camp: “Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed…Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust” (Wiesel 32). The life in the concentration camp resembles the life of animals who are fighting for survival. Everyone is concerned only with their self-preservation. This situation deadens all human qualities such as compassion and sympathy. Even when Eliezer’s father is dying, he does not pay attention to him and he goes to bed without any remorse. A naïve and innocent child has been changed into a hard-hearted and indifferent “man”. Nevertheless, Eliezer has been succeeded to keep some human qualities and he does not leave his father when he was alive while other children even kill their parents for bread. Having lost the whole family, Eliezer does not want to live. He says “My father’s presence was the only thing that stopped me [from allowing myself to die] …I had no right to let myself die. What would he do without me? I was his only support” (Wiesel 85). He has lost any belief in God’s mercy. Some readers may consider him to become an atheist but his relationships with God are too complicated to characterize them in such a simple world. He still believes that God exists but he has changed his attitude to Him. Nevertheless, he tries to keep the relationship with him by asking questions.
The reader may observe the whole life of Eliezer from his happy early childhood to his “death”. Firstly he is presented as a child and at the end of the work, the reader observes him s a corpse. There is no distinct line between his childhood and his growing up. Factually, he does not have a childhood, it has been lost. Life makes him grow up quickly. Eliezer’s life has been destroyed by this terrible experience. He has lost not only his childhood he has lost his life. His family is dead, his belief in God has been destroyed and he has become the witness of all dark sides of a human being including himself. He is not ready to carry out such a burden.
The image of corpses as people who are spiritually dead
The image of corpses presents not only physical death but the spiritual one in Night. When Eliezer looks at himself in the mirror he sees the corpse: “One day when I was able to get up, I decided to look at myself in the mirror on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me” (Wiesel 113). He has lost all human qualities and the belief in God that is why he is spiritually dead. He has died spiritually in the concentration camp long before his liberation. The scene when he looks at the mirror testifies to his spiritual death. More than that, this reflection means the death of his childhood and innocence. People who have had to be witnesses of such horrible events are spiritually dead. Corpses symbolize the people who are still alive, but they are spiritually dead.
From the above said, we may conclude that Elie Wiesel presents all the horrible experiences of the Holocaust that destroyed the life of millions of Jews. Children are more vulnerable to these horrible events and the concentration camps have left an imprint on them all their life. People who have survived are dead spiritually and they are like corpses who have lost everything in their life.
Works Cited
Wiesel, Ellie. Night. UK: Bantam Books, 1982. Print.