Sample Essay On The Relationship Between Eliezer And His Father In Night

Night is a memoir by Elie Wiesel which tells of his experience in the concentration camp during the Holocaust. The story starts with young Eliezer, the main protagonist and narrator of the narrator, being transported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau with his family. Upon arriving at the camp, Elie got separated from his mother and three sisters forever as men were instructed to move to the left while the women were to move to the right. Elie was left with his father, holding his hand tightly, trying to stay as close to him as they face the horrors of death camps. However, as Elie was confronted with the worst he has ever seen in humanity, his relationship with his father gradually changed and forced him to confront the worst in himself as well.
Elie and his father, Shlomo, were not affectionate to each other. Elie has much respect for his father as he was a respected member of the Jewish community in Sighet, but he also resented the fact that his father was spending more time making other people happy instead of devoting it with his family. According to Elie, “My father was a cultured man, rather unsentimental. He rarely displayed his feelings, not even with his family, and was more involved with the welfare of others than with that of his own kind.” (Wiesel 4). It was apparent through the way Elie described his father that there was a lack of warmth in their relationship, but as they entered the camps, Elie found strength with his father beside him. They only had each other and he felt that it was imperative for them to stay together and “not to remain alone” (Wiesel 30). This situation illustrates that family relationship is strengthened by trials, hardships, and challenges (Hill).
As their days continued in the camps, Elie saw every worst form of suffering and savagery that the Jews were dealt with. When a Kapo beat Shlomo with an iron bar, Elie felt anger towards his father instead of the Kapo. In his young mind, he was only thinking about surviving their ordeal, but his father was making it difficult. “Why couldn’t he have avoided Idek’s wrath?” (Wiesel 54), he kept asking himself. Despite his conflicting thoughts, his father was always there to look after him, but strenuous labor and abuse brought his father immense fatigue. His father grew weak and later on became sick, making it difficult for Elie to concentrate on keeping himself alive. Despite the guilt, he felt that his father was weighing him down. “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.” (Wiesel 106). He hated himself for having such thoughts, knowing that as his father’s only son, he was the only one whom his father can rely on. A Blockälteste advised him to think of himself as there was nothing he could do to save his father from dysentry, but he continued to take care of him albeit grudgingly.
As his father’s condition got worst, there was nothing Elie could do to help him anymore. He remained deaf to his father’s pleas for water, and ignored him as an officer came to give him a blow to the face to quiet him. This time, more thant the desire to help his father, fear overcame Elie, fear of getting his own head hit by the soldier. In the end, he ignored his father’s murmurs as he went to bed. He did not see him again in the morning, and he was saddened knowing that perhaps his father was still alive when he was taken to the crematorium, that there were no prayers nor candles nor tomb given to him. He was saddened by so many things, but uppermost in his mind was the thought that finally, he was “free at last!” (Wiesel 112). Like his experience in the camps, Elie’s relationship with his father has evolved several times until in the end, he stopped caring anymore and became a living corpse.

Works Cited

Hill, E. Jeffrey. “Family Crucible: Finding Peace in Trying Times.” Marriage and Families. N.p.
2004. Web. 15 February 2015.
Wiesel, Elie. Night. Trans. Marion Wiesel. New York: Hill and Wang, 2006. Print.