Elie Wiesel Night Analysis

There seems to be two different ways one could view an opposite base off what Elie Wiesel is stating in this quote. One could say that opposites are the actions or viewpoints that are different from one another and mean things that contradictory to each other. However, one could also say that an opposite is based on the level of feeling that goes into something like whether one cares or not. For example, hate could very well be the opposite of love since hate is where one dislikes a person and love is where one likes a person. On the flipside, indifference can be love's opposite in the sense that love and hate both share a level of feeling and having put thought into something. Indifference on the other hand means there seems to be an absence of feeling making it the opposite of both love and hate. This theory seems to work for all the statements except the last one about life and
death. Life is where there is action and feeling; death is the absence of both. Then indifference can also be viewed as the absence of both making death and indifference one in the same. This final statement is where I both disagree and agree. The opposite of life is not death or indifference, it is both. Death and indifference are without feeling and although the humanity of both is different, they're the same. One may be acted out when a person is alive and one may be the end of a person, but indifference is a person's glimpse into death. It is the feeling of feeling nothing which in a sense is exactly what death is.

Elie Wiesel does express the sentiments expressed in the quote throughout his writing in Night.
He shows how the Jews grew more indifferent as the tragedies that they faced grew. It started with Moishe the Beadle and his indifference after his return from escaping the Germans. He lost his love for God and simply just his will to exist. Then it moved to Wiesel and his own experiences such as when he states how he felt no pain from the beatings delivered to him. There is also an indifference that can be seen in the German citizens and the soldiers. The people witness the horrors that are placed upon the Jews, but remain indifferent. They feel no pain in knowing the pain of others and don’t care to help in any way. Finally, the guards are indifferent so that they may hurt the Jews and not care about the pain that their victims feel. Indifference is central in Night and develops into a coping mechanism for everyone to cope with what they truly must deal with. To cope they must be devoid of all love, hate, and anything else that may force them to come face to face with their true
feelings.