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Resilience In Elie Wiesel's Night

Decent Essays

In the autobiography, Night, the prisoners obtained resilience from their family, hope, and will to live. Resilience is the ability to recover after something bad happens. Firstly, the protagonist Eli, obtained his resilience from the idea that he and his father would survive together. The novel, states, “The idea of dying, of ceasing to be, began to fascinate me. To no longer exist. To no longer feel the excruciating pain of my foot. To no longer feel anything, neither fatigue nor cold, nothing. To break rank, to let myself slide to the side of the road… My father's presence was the only thing that stopped me” (Wiesel 86). Eli wanted to give up badly so the pain can stop, but his dad stopped him. The idea that he and his dad would be together …show more content…

They have hope that the Russians will come and free them so they could return to their old lives. Their hope gave them resilience because they just went through the worst possible things they could go through and it motivated them to survive. Thirdly, resilience is seen throughout the prisoners when they show that they still have the will to live. The novel, states, “We had transcended everything—death, fatigue, our natural needs. We were stronger than cold and hunger, stronger than the guns and the desire to die, doomed and rootless, nothing but numbers, we were the only men on earth” (Wiesel 87). The prisoners knew all the horrible things that have been done to them and the knew their resilience is a way to resist. The goal of the Holocaust was to get rid of all Jews and, by remaining alive, the Jews are resisting that goal and making the Nazis fail. The prisoners used their resilience to get through the starvation, cold, and them being overworked just to show that the Jews are strong and they will remain. To conclude, the prisoners used resilience to survive all the monstrosities done to them and used it as an act of

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