Desensitization In Elie Wiesel's Night

Elie’s father loses his strength quickly, “his eyes [grew] dim” (46) almost immediately after arriving. The horrors which he had seen were easily enough to crush the spirit of a former community leader. His disbelief of the horrors he saw questioned the very basis of his soul, and he began to despair. His father’s eyes soon become, “veiled with despair” (81), as he loses hope for survival. The despair of camp life shrouds the human within, showing only another cowed prisoner. Elie’s father no longer can see hope, having his vision clouded by cruelty and hate. Elie’s father is eventually overwhelmed by despair; he, “would not get up. He knew that it was useless” (113). The Nazis crushed his soul, killed his family, stole his home, and eventually took his life; this treatment destroyed the person inside the body. He could no longer summon the strength to stay alive, so he gave up, and collapsed.

Elie observes and experiences many instances of indifference throughout his memoir. In the first chapter, the people of Sighet oppose Moshe the Beadle’s stories of his escape from the Nazis. They say in response to Moshe, “He's just trying to make us pity him. What an imagination he has! Poor fellow. He's gone mad” (4-5). This lack of sympathy causes Moshe to lose faith in his town and in himself. On the ride to Auschwitz, a soldier dehumanizes the Jews. He explains, “If anyone is missing, you’ll all be shot, like dogs” (22). The soldier shows no respect for the people,

Elie Wiesel reveals quite a few things when his attitude towards himself changes. The reader can be find in Wiesel's memoir, “Night” on pages 113 finds on page 113 that Elie no longer cares about anyone or anything other than survival and food at this point of his life during the Holocaust, on the very last pages of his book. For the longest time Elie only cared for his father and that was what kept his thrive to survive alive, watching over him, worrying about him, and protecting him was all he seemed to do. Once his father died, Elie had an entirely different view point set in his mind "Since my father's death, nothing mattered to me anymore. ...I spent my days in total idleness. With only one desire: to eat" (Wiesel 113). Elie only wanted

After 3 weeks at Auschwitz, they get deported to Buna, which is a turning point for the relationship between Elie and Chlomo. The camps influence Elie and give him a crooked mind focused on staying alive and nothing else. This leads to him disregarding his father. This twisted way of thinking, due to the camps, is making Elie cheer during bomb raids at Buna. He states his thoughts “But we were no longer afraid of death, at any rate, not of that death” (57). This shows that he is willing to die to see the camps destroyed. The most horrifying event that demonstrates his twisted mind is when Eliezer pays no heed to his father while he was being repeatedly beat with an iron bar. Eliezer, rather than acting indifferent and showing nothing, actually feels angry with his father. “I was angry at him for not knowing how to avoid Idek’s outbreak” (52). The new lifestyle of the camps affected Elie and his relationship with his father for the worse.

When Elie and his father first entered the camps, his father was struck and Elie did nothing to help his father: "What had happened to me? My father had just been struck, in front of me, and I had not even blinked. Only yesterday, I would have dug my nails in this criminal's flesh" (39). This shows that, although Elie did not share a close relationship with his father, he still feels that he should stand up for his fahter for the fact that they are father and son. Elie is very violent in that he would have "dug his nails in the criminals' flesh." Evidently, Elie is furious towards the offender. Unfortunately, Elie does not do anything when his father is struck because he does not want to draw attention to himself. Nevertheless, the bond between Elie and his father does strengthen: "And what if he were dead, as well? He was not moving. Suddenly the evidence overwhelmed me: there is no longer any reason to live, any reason to fight" (98-99). Elie reveals that he truly depends on his father for survival. Because he believes his father is no longer alive, he loses all hope for surviavl. Although Elie expresses anger towards his father from time to time because he is being a burden, he still feels that his survival is meaningless without his father. The strong bond that the two developed once they entered the concentration camps proves that nothing can come between them so easily.

In Elie Wiesel's memoire, instincts of self-preservation overwhelm all other human emotion. While at Auschwitz Elie and his father were transferred to new barracks were Elie's father was beaten by a gypsy inmate who was in charge for politely asking were the bathroom was. Elie describes his reaction of standing petrified and thinking "What had happened to me? My father had just been struck, in front of me, and I had not even blinked. I had watched and kept silent. Only yesterday, I would have dug my nails into this criminal's flesh. Had I changed that much? So fast? Remorse began to gnaw at me. All I could think was: I shall never forgive them for this. My father must have guessed my thoughts, because he whispered in my ear: 'It doesn’t hurt.' His cheek still bore the red mark of the hand." (3.117-120)Elie's lack of reaction showcases how the environment of the concentration camp was already conditioning Elie to put his needs of survival ahead of his human identity. Weasels description of the events show how the brutality of the camps have changed Elie's actions and thoughts because Elie knows that interfering in the encounter would mean sacrificing basic survival; love and human emotions are no longer a priority.

Elie first recalls Dr. Mengele’s “eight short, simple words” (Wiesel 27) when he enters the camps: “Men to the left! Women to the right!” (Wiesel 27) In this part of the book, Elie and his father are separated by his mother and sisters. This metaphorically kills Elie because he is very attached to his family as are they to him. A piece of Elie has been taken away from him forever. Later in his memoir, he mentions the cruel hanging of the Pipel. Previous hangings that day did not phase Elie, but when the young, angelic Pipel was hanged, Elie said his once flavorful soup “tasted of corpses.” A man near Elie was saying “Where is God now?’ And I heard a voice within me answer him: “Where is He? Here He is- He is hanging here on this gallows…”(Wiesel 62) This is a powerful quote that shows how Elie has also began to question his faith. This brings about the mindset of the death of God in Elie. Elie begins to show distrust and rebellion in his God. This is a sharp contrast to Elie’s former beliefs. When Elie’s father dies, Elie emotionally shuts his mind off. He says “After my father’s death, nothing could touch me anymore.” He had finally given up. His father was his rock tied to the balloon, his reason to keep going. Without his father, Elie gave up and became zombified like the rest of the broken souls. Elie fully turned into the emotionless man that he was set to become as a result of surviving

There are people crowded, shoulder to shoulder, expecting a shower and to feel water raining down their bodies. Sighs of relief turn into screams of terror as innocent people are gasping for their last breaths of air inside of the gas chamber. This was a daily occurrence for Jewish and other people involved in the Holocaust. This was just one horrific event of many that had happened to women, men and children. Some of the survivors have used their voice to speak out about their own background during their time spent in Auschwitz and other concentration camps. Elie Wiesel, author of the book Night, is one of the many who did so. Wiesel talks about his personal experience and shares his feelings, thoughts and emotions that he went through with others during the Holocaust.

: As Elie’s motivation to keep persevering at times began to diminish. Elie would either remind himself that god was watching over him and would eventually free him from the suffering and torture. Other times he would look over at his father and see him struggling yet still fighting with every

The reason why he thinks this is because Eli believes he is unworthy. All he looks forward to is bread and soup to eat. Dehumanization made Elie give up hope. Elie's father was beaten because other prisoners found him a nuisance. This hurt Elie and also made him not want to live anymore. Elie thinks, "One more stab to the heart, one more reason to hate. One less reason to live" (109). Dehumanization made other prisoners very hateful towards one other. This is why they beat Elie's father because they couldn't stand him any longer. Elie saw this and started losing hope of his father and also made him lose hope of living for himself. The Holocaust made Elie lose certainty in God, his self image, and losing ambition. During the Holocaust, the Germans dehumanize Eli. This made his belief in God diminish and was very angered when other Jews were praying to God. Elie believed he was undeserving of being worthy because of this, he thinks of himself as an animal. Losing ambition was the last for Eli because after seeing his father beaten while still sick, it made him realize he no longer cared what happened to him. All these events that happened during the Holocaust were a

Night Have you ever been forced to leave your your home? Sent away to a concentration camp, forced to work with little to no food? Fighting for your life hoping that you'll make it just another day? In the story Night Elie Wiesel writes about having to go through all that and more while he was in the concentration camp Auschwitz. He tells his store of a lot of the horrific things he had to witness and go through while he was there.

¨Our nerves had reached a breaking point. Our very skin was aching. It was as though madness had infected all of us. We gave up. A few young men forced her to sit down, then bound her and gagged her¨(26). When Elie was crammed in a cattle car there was a women who had been separated from her family and she had lost her mind. She would scream while everyone was sleeping or trying to have peace. Soon they could not handle it and they beat her. Another example would be when Elie was in the infirmary and the guy next to him tells him, ¨leave the infirmary before the next selection!¨(78). Elie questioned his neighbor. Maybe he just wanted Elie to leave so he had a better chance of surviving and not getting taken away by the selection, but could it get as bad to question your own family? ¨His last word had been my name. He had called out to me and I had not answered it. I did not weep, and it pained me that I could not weep.And deep inside me if I could have searched the recesses of my feeble conscience, I might have found something like: Free at last!...¨(112). Elie changed his outlook on his dad. In the beginning of the book he never wanted to leave his dad or be separated from his dad. Towards the end he began to realize his dad was becoming very ill and holding him back. Elie realized what

Yet the prisoners didn’t care about whether or not they would die, moreover, “[they] no longer feared death” (60 emphasis added). As shown when their faces lit up with joy at the destruction that lay ahead of them. Better yet, they weren’t distraught by the insanity of war, rather, they welcomed it. In addition, as their emotions were in disarray, they had to bear witness to the hangings of their fellow prisoners. In the hangings, there’s a sense of detachment among the victims, as Elie states, “I never saw a single victim weep…[they] had long forgotten the bitter taste of tears” (63).

From being a normal kid, to almost being burned alive, Elie Wiesel’s Night is a story about a boy’s time in a concentration camp. Elie is faced with many scarring challenges, and some have changed him. These events were In the book “Night” by Elie Wiesel, the main character Elie, is affected by the harrowing events in the book because he was mentally, spiritually, and physically harmed during his time at Auschwitz To start, Elie was changed mentally in the book. There were many events that caused Elie’s mental state to deteriorate, including the event where Elie was deported in the cattle car. He describes on page 24 that his world from then on as “being in a hermetically sealed cattle car.’’

The only one who he cared for the most was his father. But once he died Elie felt a sigh of relief and almost felt free that his old washed up father was finally dead. “I did not weep, and it pained me that I could not weep. But I was out of tears.