Holocaust was one of the most devastating periods in human history when Nazi Germany murdered Jews, and many authors created their stories to share those terrible experiences. Night is a powerful memoir about life in concentration camps between 1941 and 1945 written by Elie Wiesel. By sharing his memories, the author cannot ignore the fact of personal changes that happen to people in a particular environment. Wiesel’s Night is a way of transformation from a boy who believed in God and was obsessed with teaching Kabbalah to a man who lost his faith because of separation and brutality.
One of the first stages in the main character’s Eliezer transformation is his childhood and the desire to study Talmud and Kabbalah at a young age. The boy meets Moishe the Beadle, who explains the importance of “pray to the God… for the strength to ask Him the real questions” (Wiesel 5). Among a variety of Jews’ strengths, their belief in God and His teachings is remarkable because it makes them strong and goal-oriented. At that moment, Eliezer is not ready to answer all questions about the worth of human life, but he wants to enhance his awareness through books, personal understandings, and family relationships. This character’s childhood turns out to be a solid background for inevitable changes.
The next period in the boy’s life touches upon his dramatic experiences in the concentration camp and the observations of cruelty and innocent deaths. When Eliezer sees a child being hanged on the rope but still breathing, the answer to the question is evident: “where is God?… This where – hanging here from this gallows” (Wiesel 65). This episode symbolizes the inability of the character to maintain his religious beliefs and expectations that God could save them. It is not enough to underline the cruelty of the Germans and no respect for damaged human lives. Additionally, this experience involves external factors and the environment and breaks human souls. Eliezer’s transformation continues with the re-evaluation of virtues and the inevitability of resisting the Nazi order.
Finally, the feeling of loss and separation greatly impacts Eliezer and completes his transformation process. Despite the intention to survive in those environments, the family faces new challenges with “one more stab to the heart, one more reason to hate. One less reason to live” (Wiesel 109). At the end of the story, the main character has to accept the last truth that his father loses his strengths and died in suffering. What is more, he has already been separated from his mother and sister, and now, his father is gone forever. The only way to cope with grief and hatred is to find another reason to live, which becomes a new wave in his transformation.
Wiesel’s memoir is full of negative but frank emotions about real human experiences that explain how a beloved boy with faith in God becomes a man with no beliefs, family, and hope. The character’s transformations are gradual, with special attention to what he wants to be, what he has to survive, and what he needs to live with after losses and separation. His religion is insufficient to understand the cruelty observed in the concentration camp and the necessity of losing his family. In addition, Night is one of those stories that make the reader feel a lump in the throat because of multiple strong sentiments about the period in history that took so many innocent lives. Most of Eliezer’s changes are inevitable, but instead of treating them as something regular, it is high time to recall the events and understand that every human life is priceless.
Work Cited
Wiesel, Elie. Night. Translated by Marion Wiesel. Hill and Wang, 2006.