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Austin Bell

Mrs. Crowell

Advanced Composition

28 November 2017

Father son relationships in Wiesels Night

Night by Elie Wiesel is a personal memoir about his struggles and the struggles of people

around him in the concentration camps. Elie and his father are together throughout the various

camps they are held in. Elie and his father make it together as far as they do because they keep

each other pushing forward, because neither wants to leave the other alone. As Elies father

weakens he starts to slow Elie down, but where many other sons have abandoned their fathers

Elie did not. Although Elie constantly sees sons abandon and turn on their fathers and he fears

that he will become like them, he stays loyal to his dad and they help each other survive to the

point that Elies dad becomes a burden on Elie and he feels the guilt from his death.

Throughout Elies experience in the camps he witnessed many examples of fathers and

sons abandoning each other. Elie did not care if he lived or died, he even contemplated killing

himself at one point (33), but the fear of leaving his father all alone kept him going. Later in

Elies experience, when the front lines are closing in on the concentration camps they were

forced to run non-stop through the freezing cold. Elie says that he wanted to just give up and be

shot. He said, The idea of dying, ceasing to be, began to fascinate me. (86) Elie came to a point

where he was in so much pain and misery that he no longer wanted to live, he just wanted to give

up and feel nothing at all. After this he goes on to say, My fathers presence was the only thing

that stopped me. (86) As bad as Elie wants to give up and just die and be free of pain he will not
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do it. He knows that he feels the same way as his father. He knows that the only thing that keep

him going is his father, and likewise Elie keeps his father going. Without one the other would not

be motivated to live. In this instance Elie decides to be strong and to push through and to survive

to hopefully keep his father alive.

Towards the end of Elies experience in the camp his dad started to become weaker and

weaker. He became very sick and dependent on Elie and this began to become a burden on him.

When Elies father becomes very sick he starts giving him his rations and taking care of him to

try to nurse him back to health. One day the Blockalteste said to Elie Let me give you good

advice: stop giving your ration of bread and soup to your old father. You cannot help him

anymore. (110) Up until this point Elie and his father have successfully taken care of each

other, but now his father is dragging him down. His father is very sick, and it has become

obvious to everyone other than Elie that he will not survive. Elie, however, has hope. He

continues to give his father his rations of bread and tend to him. Because Elie is not eating and

spending all his energy caring for his dad, he is losing strength because of this. Elies first

priority is to care for his father and to keep him alive, because if he loses him he loses his whole

grasp of what he used to have before the camps. When they are on the cattle car and they started

to unload the dead Elies father was unresponsive. His eyes were closed and he wouldnt move.

This made him appear dead and the men started to grab him to throw him out, and Elie said;

Father! Father! Wake up. Theyre going to throw you outside No!, I yelled. Hes not dead!

Not yet!. (99)

In this memoir there are several other examples of relationships between fathers and sons

other than Elie and his father. When they are forced on the death march and they stop at the

abandoned factory to sleep Elie encounters a rabbi who is searching for his son. The rabbis
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name is Rabbi Eliahu, and he asked Elie if he had seen his son. Elie said No, Rabbi Eliahu, I

havent seen him (91). Elie later remembers that he did see his son. He remembered that he did

see his son noticing that the rabbi was falling behind, and he intentionally left him behind. This

experience makes Elie think. He becomes terrified that he will become like the rabbis son and

abandon his father. He says, oh God, Master of the universe, give me the strength never to do

what Rabbi Eliahus son has done. (91) This makes him more determined to stick to his fathers

side and keep him going.

Elies strength is all from his father. His drive and will power is only because he doesnt

want to abandon his father and he wants to keep him alive. If it was not for Elies father, he

probably would not have made it through the first night. As Elie sees sons abandon their fathers

he fears that he will become like them, so he stays with his dad to the point where his dad

becomes a burden on him. When his father eventually dies Elie feels guilt, but a burden lifted off

of him at the same time.

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Work Cited

Wiesel, Elie. Night. Translated by Marion Wiesel, Hill and Wang, 2006.