Arviso 1

Myryka Arviso-Yazza
Mr. Bigelow
English 10
4/21/15
Through the Struggle of Relationships

The Holocaust was a time of hardship and struggles, this was most true for the Jews
condemned to live in concentration camps. Stripped not only of their belongings but also of their
very lives, these individuals were reduced to no more than the relationships they shared with
other survivors. These relationships were subject to change on behalf of the living conditions and
the events that took place inside of these camps. This is true Elie Wiesels memoir, Night.
Throughout Wiesels book, he reveals a growing bond between him and his father, while this is
the case, he eventually grows to resent the responsibility that comes with this relationship. The
evolving relationship highlights an important father-son theme throughout the book and reveals
how the loss of humanity may suppress individuals values towards their relationships with
others.
Although Elie gains an overall stronger relationship with his father, he eventually begins
to resent it. In the beginning of his memoir, Elie reveals a sort of distant relationship with his
father: My father was a cultured man, rather unsentimental. He rarely displayed his feelings
and was more involved with the welfare of others than with that of his own kin (4). This distant
relationship is revealed through the lack of emotional support from his father and his belief that
his father puts others before his own family. This is opposed to later in the book when Elie shows
a deeper bond between him and his father: As for me, I was not thinking about death but about
not wanting to be separated from my father. We had already suffered so much, endured so much

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together (82). Here Elie reveals that he fears separation from his father even more than he fears
death, this shows not only how attached he has grown to his father but also the growing
importance of their relationship to Elie. He explains how they endured their hardships together,
implying more of a reliance on each other than what they originally had. After his fathers death
Elie reveals an extreme change in the way he felt towards their relationship: I did not weep
And deep inside me I might have found something like: Free at last! (112). Here Elie gains
relief through the death of his father, implying that he began to see his father as more of a burden
than an actual support. While he once relied on his father and feared separation, the importance
of their relationship seems lacking to Elie as his own survival becomes more of a priority. He
turns on his father, and reveals the relief he gains from fathers death and the end of his
responsibility to keep him alive.
Through the relationship with his father, Elie highlights the father-son relationship seen
throughout the book. One example of this is the relationship between Rabbi Eliahu and his son
who had stayed close to one another Side by side, they had endured the suffering [and] the
blows (91). This is similar to the relationship that Elie shared with his own father. He too stayed
close to his father while they endured the hardships of the concentration camp, however this
relationship eventually came to an end. Later, while being relocated, Elie witnessed Rabbi
Eliahu searching for his son after losing him in the running crowd. According to Elie he had seen
his father falling behind, but kept on running without him: He had felt his father growing
weaker and, believing that the end was near, had thought by this separation to free himself of a
burden that could diminish his own chance for survival (91). Here Elie reveals that, instead of
the accidental separation that Eliahu believed it to be, his son had in fact intentionally abandoned
his father. He began to view his father as more of a burden and saw their relationship as

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something that could keep him from his own survival. This is similar to the way Elie views his
relationship with his father as he grows closer to death. In both cases, as their fathers grew weak,
each son felt the responsibility to help their father survive. However this responsibility began to
endanger their own survival, and resulted in the sons abandonment of their fathers.
Through his evolving relationship with his father, Elie also conveys that through the loss
of humanity one may lose value in their existing relationships. With his father dying and himself
starving, Elie thinks to himself: Too late to save your old father You could have two rations
of bread, two rations of soup (111). Here Elie shows both him and his father in a desperate
situation, struggling to survive. He is responsible for his fathers survival but he shows
resentment towards this responsibility by favoring food over the life of his own father. This
overwhelming feeling of hunger suppresses his desire to keep his father alive and causes him to
lose sight of what was once important to him. This lack of humanity shows up once again when
Elie describes the death of his father by the hands of an SS officer: I let the SS beat my father, I
left him alone in the clutches of death His voice had reached me But I had not moved I
shall never... forgive the world for having turned me into a stranger, for having awakened in
me the basest, most primitive instincts (xii). Here, Elie is again faced with the responsibility of
choosing his or his fathers survival. Instead of helping him, Elie chooses to avoid the SS officer
and does nothing to aid his father. He then goes on to blame the world for his own actions. He
explains that the world had awakened his most primitive instincts, it had placed him in a
situation where nothing else mattered to him except for his own survival. With the loss of
himself and of his humanity, Elie is no longer capable of caring for his father and lets him die.
In his memoir, Night, Elie Wiesel exposes a strengthening bond between him and his
father, only to reveal its burden to his own survival. The relationship he shares with his father

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emphasizes the other father-son relationships throughout his book and also. He also reveals that
the loss of humanity may cause one to lose sight of the relationships they share with others.