Elie's Relationship With His Father Analysis

Elie’s Relationship With His Father and How It Changed
When you and your family are all forced into a death camp, separated, and treated as subhuman, you tend to protect the only ones you love enough to risk your life for. In the camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau, one teenager and his father find themselves in exactly that dilemma, starving and with only each other to rely on. Elie Wiesel, a child thrown into these camps with his father, miraculously survived and went on to write about his experiences and struggles, most notably in his memoir Night. This book shows what really happened behind the scenes of Nazi Germany during World War 2, things that would not be revealed for years to come. And more specifically, it shows how Elie's relationships to his father and to the
world around him morph into thoughts that no teenager should face.

Elie had a relationship with his dad which would seem normal by today’s standards. He would focus on school and would study religion while his dad would take care of the neighborhood’s problems. In the book Night he said that he mostly stayed in his house studying because his parents told him to. He said: “As for me, my place was in the house of study or so they said” (4, Wiesel). The New York Times about his death said: "...Mr. Wiesel was able to describe his father in less saintly terms, as a preoccupied man he rarely saw until they were thrown together into Auschwitz" ( ). Elie's father didn't see his son very often, which is all too familiar in today's society. Elie was like an average 13 year old from today; for example he described himself as a child who was spoiled. When he was exiled to Auschwitz for the first time he refused to eat his bowl of soup even though it was the only food he had because he didn’t like it. He said in his book “I was terribly hungry, yet I refused to touch it. I was still the spoiled child of long ago” (42, Wiesel). Elie would also not spend as much time with his dad, who was busy most of the day, because he spent it with Moishe the Beadle “We spoke that way almost every evening, remaining in the synagogue long after all the faithful had gone…” (5, Wiesel). They didn’t have that much of a close father-son relationship when they were living freely, but all of that would change once the Wehrmacht sent them to concentration camps.

Elie’s relationship with his dad stayed basically the same until they were sent to their first camp.
When Elie and his dad were sent to the camps together, we started seeing Elie being more concerned with his dad when he said: “I glanced over at me dad. How changed he looked! His eyes were veiled. I wanted to tell him something, but I didn’t know what” (37, Wiesel). When Elie saw this he started noticing how much more his father was beginning to change throughout their stay at the concentration camps. Later on as the book goes on their relationship got stronger and therefore they took better care of one another. When the Jews were forced to march Elie’s father would have a very hard time marching which caused him to be beaten multiple times. Elie could not tolerate his own flesh and blood getting beat so he took matters into his own hands and decided to try to teach his father how to march: “I decided to give my father marching lessons in marching step, in keeping time. We began practicing in front of our block. I would command: ‘left, right!’ and my father would try” (55, Wiesel). Even though Elie tried his best to help his father, he didn’t have much success; but they stayed together until the
end. Though Elie and his father had a slightly distant relationship, they strengthened it through the crucible of pain and suffering. Both father and son fought side by side to survive the nightmarish conditions of the concentration camps. They gave one another a reason to fight and live.