Compassion In Elie Wiesel's 'Night'

Sarah Church
Period 1B
November 18, 2014
Essay on Compassion

Compassion is something we all must give and receive because compassion is the one thing that makes us human. It is when somebody shows someone else that they care about them, and to stop ones suffering. In other words: love. It is not possible to have love without compassion. The two work together like clockwork. Compassion is necessary to the human experience because if someone is not shown compassion (thus not experiencing it) they will suffer. In Elie Wiesel’s novel Night it shows that after experiencing a lack of compassion on a daily basis, people to feel pain. Night is Wiesel’s account from being in the Holocaust, and the horrors he faced. Not only are the Jews being shown lack of compassion by officer’s who guard the camp, but even their own people. It is like a chain reaction; no compassion is shown to the Jews, so the Jews showed no compassion towards each other. For example, when the officers were forcing Wiesel and others to run Zalman, a young boy from Poland, fell behind because of a stomach ache. Wiesel’s reaction was “I soon forgot him. I began to think of myself again” (86). This shows the lack of compassion he felt for Zalman who suffered because of the chain of events.
In the Bible, there are also examples of compassion and lack of compassion.
In the “The Parable of the Good Samaritan” the man who was robbed and left for dead was shown no compassion by the people passing by, even by a priest. They show no interest to the man and looked the other way. That is until the Samaritan passed by and showed him compassion, and only then did then did the robbed man’s suffering stop. “[…] bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him“(34). This displays that only compassion can stop people from hurting. If no one had shown this man compassion as the Samaritan did, surely he would have
died. “On Compassion” by Barbara Lazear Ascher is an essay on compassion; one that shares an idea that works along with the concept that without compassion people cannot be happy. Ascher says “Compassion is not a character trait like a sunny disposition. It must be learned by having adversity at our windows, coming through the gates of our yards, the walls of our towns, adversity that becomes so familiar that we begin to identify and emphasize with it” (13). If someone is not shown compassion, then they cannot learn it. When someone cannot learn compassion, they become heartless and mean, which in its own way is suffering. They would think nobody loved or cared for them, so they would be suffering on the inside. As well as themselves, they would make others around them suffer because they would not know how to be capable of showing compassion. Jesus had said “Go, and do thou likewise” (37) in “The Parable of the Good Samaritan”. He telling everyone that they must do the same as the Samaritan because lack of compassion can have long lasting effects on others. Whether it is emotional or physical suffering no one deserves to feel unloved. Compassion is something that makes everyone human, so with that, compassion is necessary to the human experience because without it, you might as well be a rock.