Fear and Foresight - Essay

Fear and Foresight Fear is “a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger” (Webster‘s dictionary). Fear is also the best way to disrupt one’s foresight creating corrupted decisions. To achieve this level of understanding, so that one’s decisions will be made effectively, one must understand him or herself well enough to be able to cut out the emotion and think rationally. Recalling experiences from the holocaust Fear tended to come when there was no hope or faith in the novel Night, by award winning author Elie Wiesel. Within this novel, about his own experiences during the war, Elie is thrown into a concentration camp where he is whipped, beaten, fatigued, starved, deprived, loses his faith, and ultimately loses his entire family all because he was a Jew. While living in the camps Elie eventually begins to fear death resulting in the slow deterioration of his relationship with his father. This happened because his own frail humanity succumbed to the need of survival. This type of intense Fear surfaces when the optimism in one’s life does not, thus leaving behind an atmosphere of corrupted foresight ending in life altering decisions one will regret. After being put into the ghetto Elie finds strength as he still retains his faith and his family unity. The slow dissipation of Elie’s family begins when he first arrives at the labour camp but, remarkably, his faith remains intact at this point. His sister and mother are taken from him and within the camp he even says “Thank God!” (Wiesel 33) after seeing other friends and acquaintances still alive. There is still unity here and there is still faith keeping everyone’s choices and perceptions of the future clear. The beginning of fear and corruption in one’s self starts when Elie is overcome by the fear of getting hurt and not worrying about the one person that matters most to him in his life, his father; “my father had just been struck, before my very eyes, and I had not flickered an eyelid” (37). This is