Personal choices help define who a person becomes. Some choices are more important than others, but they all have outcomes that can affect and influence an individual. In the memoir, Night, by Elie Weisel, Weisel writes about the many choiceless choices he endures while at the concentration camps. Weisel’s choiceless choices revolve around making decisions that determine if he and his father survive. Weisel makes choiceless choices such as: lying about his age, deciding to leave camp instead of staying behind, and choosing to feed himself or his father which develop into Weisel’s story of survival. Each of these situations build the theme of survival as Weisel shares the immoral and awful conditions at the concentration camps which he endures. …show more content…
He understands that his choice to lie about his age puts him in a position where he is forced to do hard labor work. Wiesel’s options of miserable days of hard labor or death demonstrates how this choiceless choice is not with a welcomed outcome, but to survive he must lie accordingly in order to avoid certain death at the crematorium. Another profound choiceless choice that Weisel considers is for him and his father to leave the camp after they hear that the camp is evacuating due to the Red Army moving closer. Weisel is a part of a small group of people who can stay at the camp since they are in the hospital. Weisel is in the hospital due to a foot injury that has to be operated on. After Weisel and his father hear of the rumor of the Red Army approaching, they discuss the options and conclude what will be best for themselves. Weisel ultimately decides and tells his father, “‘Let’s be evacuated with the others”’ (82). They determine that leaving the camp will be the best decision for their survival because having heard rumors that those in the infirmary may be executed is a choice they did not want to face. Although their decision ends up becoming a harder physical journey, it teaches Weisel how to become mentally stronger and not give up hope of …show more content…
Weisel’s father becomes sick and close to dying, and Elie feels compelled to provide for his father. Initially, Weisel gives his father part of his rations each day. A few days later Weisel and the Blockalteste talk about his sick father, and the Blockalteste gives him advice. “‘Stop giving your ration of bread and soup to your father. You cannot help him anymore. And you are hurting yourself”’ (110-111). After this conversation, Weisel understands the impact of such a decision. The Blockaltest assures him that if he does not start putting himself first, he will not survive either. Weisel accepts the fact that his father is not doing well, and if he, himself, wants to survive he needs to eat his own food and take care of himself. Although this choice is hard for Weisel to justify, he knows it is the strongest option to ensure his own
In Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, Elie had to make several decisions which had a severe impact on his life.. If he failed to make the correct decision it could have resulted in a darker outcome. Elie's decision to lie about his age,not fast during Yom Kippur,and him not fight for food and instead he decides to eat the scraps that were left in any. Those decisions had a significant impact on his life and his identity. As Mr.Wisel once said “Action is the only remedy to indifference:the most insidious danger of all”.
Since the Nazis try to drain the mental well-being of the prisoners, Elie Weisel loses his sense of identity within the fence of the concentration camp. During the end of the Jewish year, Weisel describes himself as, “an observer, a stranger” (68). As Elie survives the camp and sees the atrocities, he loses his faith in God. He has no more strong beliefs and is more of a bystander in life. Elie believes he is nobody.
Elie's father has dysentery and now lays in his bunk. Elie tries looking for a doctor but is told that he is better off saving his rations to increase his chance of survival. At night, Elie's father cries for water to an SS officer, and the officer beats him off. The next day, his father has been replaced by another invalid and taken to the
When Wiesel first got to auschwitz they were asked their age and either sent to the left or the right. While Wiesel and his father were waiting in line people from inside the camp yelled at them and told them that unless they lied and said they were 18 and 40 they would be sent to die. When they were asked their age Wiesel said that his age was 18 and his father said that he was 40 instead of 50. They got sent to the left which hopefully meant they had met the requirements to live, and “a weight lifted from [Wiesel's] chest. If they had not lied they might have gotten sent to the right and been
I believe that the worst part about Weisel’s experience is that he survived. Why? Because he has to live with it. He has to go through the rest of his life as a victim of the holocaust. As a
Dehumanizing the Jews There are many survivors that would describe their experience in camps as hell. They were treated quite badly. In the book Elie says that he no longer felt human, he meant that his dignity and sense of humanity had been stripped from him and things such as barbaric behavior, lack of clothing, and severe punishments caused this. Weisel was in a time where people weren’t themselves anymore, they were brainwashed servants.
In a tragic moment, Weisel witnessed his father get beaten by the Kapo, and he reacted, by saying, "I felt anger at that moment, it was not directed at the Kapo but at my father. Why couldn't he have avoided Idek's wrath? That was what life in a concentration camp had made of me..."(pg 54) This quote reminds readers of the reality in these brutal camps, where many betrayed loved ones to increase their own slim chances of survival. The idea of abandoning his father to increase his own chance of survival tempts Weisel’s mind as he writes, "If only I were relieved of this responsibility, I could use all my strength to fight for my own survival, to take care only of myself.”(pg 106) This quote explores the perplexing moral dilemmas faced by many prisoners, who, unlike Wiesel, acted upon their temptations, disregarded their morals, and betrayed their loved ones in the act of survival.
But, by the end of the book, Wiesel's views have changed drastically. Weisel had experienced the true terror, and monstrosity that humans are capable of. While Weisel was a Prisoner in a Concentration camp, his views and
Showers that are not regular will turn him into a filthy boy who no clean person would want to be around. And as Wiesel glances into the mirror for the first time in three years, he sees the true effect of Auschwitz on his body. Weisel notices the legitimate torture which he has endured. Undoubtedly, the mirror Weisel stares into at the end of this novel accurately depicts the never-ending torture he has
The decisions you make in your life always come with a good or bad ending. In the novel “night” by elie wiesel, elie has to make life and death decisions. This novel is about how elie made decisions that lead him and his family to a concentration camp and explains the horrible things they have had to experience. In the end elie was the only survivor in his family. The decisions throughout the novel Elie made impacted his life and his innocence.
Throughout the entirety of what we see in the novel Night we can observe the vastness of the struggle of life, death and decision. It is there in the camp that one decision, one action, one choice a person makes could dictate the outcome of their mortality for the future. How do you survive such a horrid period of agony? What choices can even you make to remain sane and alive? Eliezer, a young jewish boy, must make countless decisions in the course of his time at the concentration camp.
(Weisel, 23) This quote reveals the unlikable trait of selfishness Elie inhabited near his arrival to Auschwitz. Proving Weisel’s theme of one’s duty to tell their story despite how difficult it may
The actions that one may make, although necessary, will leave them with regrets. These are the choiceless choices many people are faced with throughout their lives, especially Jews during the Holocaust. In the memoir Night, the main protagonist, Elie Weisel, encounters many choices where he must make decisions thoughtfully and quickly. While neither outcome may benefit Elie Weisel, if he does not make a choice, the consequences are much superior. For Weisel, he must make choiceless choices associated with surviving,faith in God, and living with his father.
In 1944, Elie Wiesel was only 15 when his family was stripped of their natural rights and forcefully transported into the most well-known concentration camp, Auschwitz. Beginning in 1941 and officially ending in 1945, the Holocaust was a genocide of anti-semitism. In Night, Elie Wiesel shares his experience of facing extreme racism within the concentration camps by facing starvation, torture, and even death. The concentration camp ended up being survival of the fittest, only those who crave to survive survived. Though, in Night, two characters who portray conflicts with survival are Mrs. Schacter with the loss of her family and Elie stretched between picking his father or himself.
Despite everything that Weisel went through, he carried on, managing to survive. The experience of the Holocaust leaves a profound mark on Weisel. In Night, he tries to make sense of what he has seen and experienced. In doing so, he raises important questions about the nature of evil, the meaning of suffering, and the possibility of hope. Two specific ways Elie Weisel changes during his time in the concentration camps are that he lost his faith in God, and that he ultimately lost his old self.