Night Blog

In the book Night by Elie Weisel, I noticed Elie going through many changes in his life due to The Holocaust. Night shows how the life of a person can change completely because of one event. Elie changed in many different ways, both physical and emotional. Elie transformed in his faith, empathy, and his respect for himself.

The biggest change I saw in Elie was his change in his faith. Throughout the book, as terrible things happen to Eliezer and his family and friends, Elie starts to lose faith with God. On the very first page of the book, Elie said, “ By day I studied Talmud and by night I would run to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the Temple.” Before The Holocaust started affecting Elie, he was very religious, dedicating his life to God. At this point, he never would have thought that he would turn away from God. But, he also didn't know the horrors that lay ahead for him. Once he had gone through deaths, work and malnourishment, he started to fall away from his God and give up on all he believed in before. During their fasting time, Elie said, “As I swallowed my ration of bread, I turned it into a rebellion against Him.” But, at this point, Elie still believed that God might still help. Then after many months and still no sign of his God saving them, Elie’s belief in God ended and the building anger towards God erupted. At the very end of his story, Elie said, “a prayer to this God in whom I no longer believed.” After all Eliezer Wiesel had gone through, from total pious to disbelief, The Holocaust changed him immensely.

Another major change I noticed Elie go through was his survival instinct kicking in. Part of his survival instinct is losing his empathy for others. Throughout this book, I came to the idea that as part of human nature, when humans get in danger they lose empathy and only care about their own well being. When Eliezer first got to the camp with his father, his father wa s hit and Elie barely even cared, which he was ashamed of but couldn’t help it, he was just glad it wasn’t him. Then later on, once had gone through so much more, he said,”At that moment the others didn’t matter.” If Elie was his old self, he would have cared, but not anymore.

Another way Elie changed was letting himself be dehumanized by S.S. The first instance where I noticed him letting himself not be human was when he accepted that his name is now A-7713 and he was fine with it. With him accepted that as being his name, he is letting himself be dehumanized. Before he was affected by The Holocaust, Elie was his own person, doing his own thing, with his own name. But, throughout his time in concentration camps, Elie became to accept more and more that he was no longer human. In the middle of the book, the S.S screamed at the prisoners trying to run to the next concentration camp. “Faster, you filthy dogs!” There was S.S making sure the prisoners know where their place is, not humans. Then, just a couple of sentences later, Elie says talking about him and the other prisoners, “like automatons.” Automatons are machines, not humans.” By saying this, Elie is agreeing with the S.S and declaring himself not human. During Eliezer’s imprisonment in the concentration camps, he lost his self respect and gave in to the dehumanization of the S.S.