Analysis of Elie Wiesel's Night Essay Example

Elie Wiesel was living in Sighet, Transylvania with his family when Germans came and put him and other Jews in ghettos. After the ghettos, Elie and his family were sent to the concentration camp, Auschwitz. As the author of the memoir Night, he wants the reader to understand that being powerless can affect your relationship with others.  

When Elie was living in Transylvania, he and his father never had a traditional father son relationship, his father didn't talk about his feelings, and his father was well known around town. One example from the text is, " “My father was a cultured man, rather unsentimental. He rarely displayed his feelings, not even within his family, and was more involved with the welfare of others than that of his own kin"(Wiesel 4). Elie's father was focused more on being a support system to his community than his family. As Elie sees changes around him, he asks "I had asked my father to sell everything, to liquidate everything, and to leave. "I am too old, my son," he answered. "Too old to start a new life. Too old to start from scratch in some distant l a n d … " (Wiesel 9). Elie and his father aren't on the same page. Elie wants his family to be safe, but his dad is focused on himself. Elie never really had a bond with his father because his father was busy with everybody else. 

After being at the camp for a while things start to get worse and Elie and his father's bond gets stronger. According to the text it says "he punched him. Left, right: he slapped him. I decided to give my father lessons in marching in step, in keeping time"(Wiesel 55). Elie didn't want to see his father getting beat but knew he couldn't fight back so he tried teaching his father how to march. After so long Elies father became weak, in the text it states "FOR A RATION OF BREAD I was able to exchange cots to be next to my father. When the doctor arrived in the afternoon, I went to tell him that my father was very ill"(Wiesel 108). Elie is putting his father before him self; Elie traded his source of food to be by his father in his time in need. Elie is still trying to hold onto his father even though he knows he has to let go. 

In the end, the traumatic experience Elie and his father went through shows how events can affect your relationship with the people around you, Elie Wiesel wants people to know that just because he suffered doesn't mean he wants other to suffer to.