Eliezer undergoes a moral transformation in Night that leads to the negation of faith and the absolute destruction of his hopes. He bears witness to horrific events in the concentration camp that shatter his belief in human nature. “Never shall I forget those memories that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never” (Wiesel, 32). Looming over everything is the shattering experience of losing his father, of watching as his father loses his struggle for survival and dies with his son’s name on his lips. The concentration camp stripped away the humanity of the father-son relationship and reduced it, along with everything else, to a brutal fight for survival.
Eliezer’s father had been a well-respected member of the Jewish community in the Transylvanian village of Sighet. He notes that he was a cultured, unemotional man to whom others in the village came for counsel (Wiesel, 2). After Moshe the Beadle returns from Poland, he warned the villagers of the impending danger, but Eliezer’s father refused to leave believing that he was too old to start over in another part of the world. He feels differently but his respect for his father governs him until it is too late. When the family is taken and separated, Eliezer’s relationship with his father changes as circumstances change Eliezer. The father-son tie
gradually becomes meaningless as life itself is reduced to the most basic human instinct. “Within the horrors of the Holocaust, these bonds threaten to dissolve” (Schwarz, 1998).
Another prisoner advises Eliezer to think of himself first, warning him that caring for his father will only result in both of their deaths. Eliezer recognizes the truth of this but still feels great guilt and inner conflict. Here, his great moral dilemma begins to overwhelm him. On one hand, his father is a threat to his survival. He begins to think that two rations of soup, or two of bread would increase his chances of surviving. On the other hand, his father gives Eliezer a reason to fight for life. The truth of the situation is that as long as his father is alive, Eliezer maintains a link to his humanity and to his faith, if only a tenuous link. But when his father dies, the world becomes a very different place for him. “The camps dissolve traditional morality and replace it with extreme conditions that make the struggle to survive the only value. Thus, the death of his father ‘frees’ him to save himself” (Schwarz, 1998). Eliezer sums up his feelings in one poignantly stark comment: “After my father’s death, nothing could touch me anymore” (Wiesel, 107).
With his father gone, Eliezer is free to do what he must to survive. He lives, but the cost is too high. He must live with consequences of his moral dilemma. “Alone, Eliezer desperately struggles to survive…Guiltily, he remembers that the last word his father said to him was ‘Eliezer’” (Sternlicht, 32). Guilt is a part of the concentration camp’s legacy for its survivors. With life reduced to a savage struggle for survival, there is no more God; there can be no more belief in humanity. The Nazis tore away the sanctity and mystery of life when they rendered Eliezer’s father powerless, then killed him.
References
Schwarz, D.R. 1998. ‘The Ethics of Reading Elie Wiesel's Night.’ Style. DeKalb, IL: Northern
Illinois University. 32, 2.
Sternlicht, S. 2003. Student Companion to Elie Wiesel. Wesport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Wiesel, E. 2006. Night. New York, NY: Perfection Learning.
