Everyday, we go through situations and experiences that affect us in someway, perhaps even change us. Different situations have different effects. The more difficult the situation is, the more of an effect it has on us. Those hard times can be called adversity. How do we, as humans, react to adversity? What are the possible effects it may have? An example of adversity is the Holocaust – Hitler’s plan to exterminate the Jews.
In the memoir, Night, we discover how Elie Wiesel changes in response to his concentration camp experiences. The separation from his loved ones and the horrible conditions of these camps affect Elie immensely. Elie is affected in the following ways: physically, emotionally and spiritually. The Holocaust had changed him into a completely different person. Physically, Elie basically changes from a healthy human being into a walking skeleton. The Jews can be described as “skin and bones.” They were also extremely weak.
Being forced to work at their labor camps must have been extremely difficult. The lack of food served at the camps, as well as the poor quality of what is being served made him that way. The Jews were only fed bread and soup. It gets to the point where everything revolves around food and each person’s own survival.
For example, on page 104, Elie’s father claims that the other prisoners were beating him. Elie’s then says ” I began to abuse his neighbors. They laughed at me. I promised them bread, soup… .” Elie knows that food is the most valuable necessity in the concentration camps.
The Essay on Food affects our mood
The way someone selects, prepares, and eats food is tied to emotional experiences. People eat different types of food when they feel sad, bored, tired, or stressed. Although it is natural for humans and other animals to eat in response to emotions, we have to identify how we feel and understand our desire to eat when we are not really hungry because the relationship between our bodies, our minds, ...
That is why he uses bread and soup in order to try to sway the other prisoners from giving his father a hard time. 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.
The spiritual change in Elie was substantial. He went from a pious, devout Jew who spent countless of hours studying his faith. He never questioned God, but that is probably because everything was always good. During his stay at the concentration camps, Elie never stops believing in God, although he does question what he is doing.
On page 64, Elie says, “Why, but why I should I bless Him? In every fiber I rebelled. Because He had thousands of children burned in His pits? Because He kept six crematories working night and day, on Sundays and feast days? Because in His great might He had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many factories of death? … .” This shows the doubt he has in God and his doubt in the reasoning behind all the suffering his people have gone through. In conclusion, Elie Wiesel changes in every aspect in response to his concentration camp experiences.
He transforms physically, by not eating proper food, losing weight and ending up skeleton-like and weak. Emotionally, he changes, because he does not seem to be the old Elie anymore. The priorities he once had, have changed and Elie is found doing things out of his character. Spiritually, Elie loses faith in God. Although he never straight out stops believing in him, doubt and questioning are present.
There is a common saying: what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. That is the result of adversity. It may alter the qualities we once had, but a definite result is being stronger in the inside.
The Essay on Night “Elie Has Two Fathers; God and Chlomo”
‘Night’ In his memoir, Night, author Elie Wiesel recalls his experiences as a young Jewish boy in a Nazi death camp. The narrative begins with Wiesel and his family living in Sighet, Romania, it is here when the plot of the story begins to unfold. It was later when the Jewish people are deported, and the horrifying events of the Holocaust are revealed. Elie starts of as a young, Jewish boy ...
