The Last "Night"

Elie Wiesel´s price winning “Night” is a story full of Contradictions and moral conflicts, where one must choose between personal benefit and survival or unity and comradeship. It was a time of war when human rights had no relevance and where God seemed to be absent. Jews had always had much faith in their God, to whom they would attribute anything that happened in their lives. But on the concentration camps the concept changed, and the main character wondered where God was on that moment of suffering. “How i sympathised with job! I could not deny gods existance, but I doubted his absolute justice (P.42)” Even his followers where doubtful about their God who seemed to be on vacation. “where is god? Where is he? Someone behind me asked (p.61).” IT was a confusing situation where many lost faith in God, but where many others, in spite of the difficulties, found this as an opportunity to grow their faith in God, to show him that they where loyal followers in all circumstances.

It was a world without mercy, where any SS officer would definitely please on shooting a Jew without hesitation.” If one of us stopped for a second, a sharp shot finished off another filthy son of a bitch (p.81)” The way in which the author uses the language to transmit emotions is very powerful, because with it he is able to transmit hope, resentment, or hate. We are able to get in the shoes of the characters, and I personally felt hate and disgust towards the Germans through the book, where Elie describes the inhuman treatment Jews received. Even war should have a minimum set of rules to follow, and everyone with a sane conscience should take that into account. From this I came to the conclusion that Hitler and his followers are crazy, simply following an idealist dream without reason or consequences.

Through the novel one of the themes that interested me the most is the relationship between a father and a son. Through the whole war the protagonist and his father rely on each other to survive. They look out for each other and struggle to stay together, to have themselves even when no one else in the world is their friend. They are able to go through most of the concentration camps together, but eventually they grow weak, and the conditions make them weak. Right before the war was to come to an end, the father becomes ill and has no strength to continue, but the son won’t let him fall behind, and sacrifices all he can afford to help his father. And when the old man wants to rest, his son won’t allow him, because he fears that his father will rest forever. “Don’t shout son…Take pity of your father… Leave me here to rest… just for a bit, I’m so tired…. at the end of my strength (p.100).” Here the roles change, and he who had been the strong and optimist character all the way is not at the end of his strength, and he who was just a kid, is now a man who must pick up his father from the floor and push him to continue.
The doctors couldn’t help him, and the kid did all he could to save his father, all in vain. The war was close to an end but his father was very ill, and all his hope and will to survive was extinguishing with time. The protagonist did all he could, for his father was all he had left in the entire world. But his father was not able to make it, the war had been too much for him to resist. “I awoke on January 29 at dawn. In my father’s place lay another invalid. They must have taken him away before dawn and carried him to the crematory. He may still have been breathing (p.106).” His father had been taken away from him while he slept; they hadn’t given him a chance to say good-bye before his father left him for good.