Changes In Night By Elie Wiesel

The holocaust ended May 8, 1945 but it took the lives of millions of people with it. Depriving millions of innocent souls of basic rights we have today. In the book Night, we are shown the experiences and transformations of young Elie from the day he arrived in the ghetto, to his last day in a concentration camp. As a result of his experiences during the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel changes from a religious, sensitive little boy to a spiritually dead, unemotional man.

"If you do not change direction you may end where you were heading". That quote was from Lao Tuz who was a religious philosopher and poet form China in 604 BC. During the book Night you could see it in not just Elie Wiesel, but you could see it in everyone. You could see change in Elie not just in his physical appearance, not emotionally, and mentally. People can or cannot say they've seen worse except for the people who survived war and the camps and which has led them to be mentally broken down. During the Holocaust Elie has changed in his faith, his struggle in the camp, and how his personality changed.

Change is an immense portion of human development that can alter a person’s character traits based off of a single experience. A time known to change man is the era of the holocaust. In the book “Night” by Elie Wiesel, the main character, Elie, changes dramatically through his unbearable events that he had experienced in Auschwitz, a death camp, known for its extreme and unusual tactics. Eli Wiesel’s book proved that he has seen the absolute worse so how has these experiences translate change throughout Eli’s life for the better, or for the worse?

One of the generalizations of change is, change can be natural or man-made. The entirety of the 1940’s change was due to man-made problems. Any memoir written by someone who lived through this decade would have included several examples of this generalization of change. This includes the book that I was assigned, Night by Elie Wiesel. Accordingly, Night clearly illustrates that change can be natural, or caused by a human.

How much can one person change/transform throughout one of the worst times in history? In this horrific story Night by Elie Wiesel it is told from his own point of view because the book is about his own experience in the concentration camps. An important character is Eliezer’s father because Elie has to take care of him a lot throughout the book. Night is about when Elie Wiesel is taken from his house and sent to a concentration camp. He faces selection and many other terrifying things that not only change his outlook on life, but how he thinks about his religion and God. In the end, the soviet union takes over the camp Eliezer is in and he is set free. Change can happen overtime or in a short amount of time. One way people can change is through traumatic events because it can change how one person can think about the world and other people.

On page 30, it says “My hand tightened its grip on father. All I could think of was not to lose him. Not to remain alone.” This was at the beginning before they knew what was happening. Sadly enough, at the end of the book on page 111 a man tells Elie that he should be getting his father's rations of bread and Elie thought, “He was right… It’s too late to save your old father… You could have two rations of bread, two rations of soup.” This shows that at the beginning of the book Elie put his father as main priority but at the end Elie only wanted his selfish needs met

In Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie tells his story of his time in concentration camps, during the holocaust. He tells the hardships and cruel chain of events that happened in this time period. Elie and his father help each other fight for their lives and encourage one another to not give up. Relationships between Elie’s father, God, and himself change throughout the novel.

He feels no life, no innocence left in him. He is simply just an empty corpse that is just living through the horrors. Another example of Elie being dehumanized is on page 115 of Night, when he described, “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.

People in today's world are more reluctant to help and stand up for others. Caring more about themselves rather than the others around them. This practice of indifference in today’s society only leads to negative outcomes. Outcomes that are portrayed in the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, and in both the articles “The Perils of Indifference” by Elie Wiesel and Indifference has been seen all throughout history and has led to many unfortunate events. One of these events was the holocaust.

As he writes on page 113, “Nothing mattered to me anymore,” in response to the death of his father. In the time after his father died, he didn’t really feel anything. All that mattered was eating and staying alive. He had no one else to think about after his father died other than himself, and nothing else to think about other than when his next meal was. Although what really showed the change in Elie was the way he felt about his father dying. At the beginning of the book Elie would do everything he could to stay with his father, stating, “All I could think of was not to lose him (his father),” (page 30), and by the end when his father died, on page 112 he exclaims, “Free at last!” The way his feelings changed from the beginning to the end prove how the way they were treated made them believe it was every man for themselves. In fact, Elie had at first been ready to defend and stand by his father in anything, but nearing the time of his father’s death had started thinking of being free of his father, and even using some of his father’s rations for himself. After his father died, he only thought of his next meal, and he only cared for himself in a way he never had

Firstly, Elie starts the book very faithful and even wants to learn more about his religion, but later on in the book he begins to lose his faith. Secondly, Elie starts

     Eli has a definite change emotionally. He thinks about the things he would never consider if he was not in Auschwitz. For example, on page 102, Elie says, “I gave him what was left of my soup, But it was with a heavy heart. I felt that I was giving it up to him against my will.” In the beginning, it was as if Elie would do anything for his father. After all, his father was older and it was Elie’s turn to look after him. After a while, his father seems like almost a burden to him. Elie felt obligated to give him the rest of his food, but if given the choice, he probably would not have given it up easily.

By the conclusion of the book everyone Elie loves and everyone he met along the way are either death or disappeared. Elie finds himself completely alone and transformed from the trusty teenager he was at the beginning of the story. His body is a skeleton he doesn’t even recognize, but his faith was shuttered as well? Elie didn’t know in what to believe or if it is anything he could believe in. When the camp comes together to celebrate Russian shauna rather from drawing strange from this celebration Elie raging asks “What does your grandeur mean Master of the universe, in the face of all these cowardice, this decay, and this misery?” Don’t be fooled, this scene doesn’t mark a loss in Elie’s faith.

In life, people go through different changes when put through difficult experiences. In the book Night, Elie Wiesel is a young Jewish boy whose family is sent to a concentration camp by Nazis. The story focuses on his experiences and trials through the camp. Elie physically becomes more dehumanized and skeletal, mentally changes his perspective on religion, and socially becomes more selfish and detached, causing him to lose many parts of his character and adding to the overall theme of loss in Night.

Elie starts out in pretty good physical condition but that changes throughout the course of Night. In the book Elie is afraid of failing the second examination after he had been in the work camp so long. (Wiesel pg.71) It’s proof his condition must have been worsened because in the beginning he passed with no problem. Him showing this fear proves he was weakened from starvation and the abuse he faced, so he might not be able to work much longer. No work meant the ultimate liberation from the bleak and dismal life that was the concentration camps. In the end of the book after the allied forces liberates Elie he is in a hospital and he looks in the mirror and says “a corpse was looking back contemplating me.” (wiesel pg 115) It provides the fact the he changed enough that he