Night By Elie Wiesel Essay

Genocide, a word that has affected millions yet it’s a crime that has never been committed. Millions have been killed due to a belief that they are subordinate as a group, yet genocide has not ever been declared. With over 10 million dead, where are the survivors? What compelled them to persevere and strive towards survival? Well, Elie Wiesel lived to tell the story. Elie tells about his struggles in his novel called Night. He speaks upon what had happened to him and his family in the holocaust, and what ultimately led him to living through the holocaust. The reason he is alive today and was able to tell the story, is because of his persistence to live, his mental strength to keep going, and his overall grit to become one of the historic survivors that he is today.
The persistence of young Elie Wiesel played a large part in his endurance through the targeting and killing of him and his people. From the moment that he boarded the train that was directed towards his almost inevitable death, his persistence to withstand his fall, played its part. “[...] to merely look up to the sky and think that I am looking at
it perhaps for the last time;or even to let myself live, to indulge myself in the luxury of an idle moment.”(Wiesel 95) Elie constantly did what he could, to find the pleasures that he still had, in life. He held onto the simplest things that would motivate him to keep moving forward. Between God and his family, Elie had all the motivation that was needed to keep toughing it out, through the times he found himself caught up in.
Eliezer’s mental and physical toughness to keep going, throughout the many trials that he was put through in Auschwitz, is the reason he made it out alive.
Every day, the German soldiers would beat and torture all of the jews, including Elie. "I no longer felt anything except the lashes of the whip." (Wiesel 57) The significance of this quote is beyond words explanation. Everyday, close ones, friends, everyone was dying and that's one of the worst mournings that a human being can face. Elie says that he no longer feels that pain of anything besides the lashes of the whip. With loved ones dying and the hard reality that Elie had almost no hope of a life beyond the camps, him saying that the only pain he felt was the whip, illustrates how hopeless he was. Death was constantly tiptoeing at the dragging heels of the prisoners, but Elie consisted on moving
forward.
The determination and pure grit of fifteen year old Eliezer is what set him apart as the unique young man he was. He proved to be way more than just a tattoo on his arm, he knew that there was much more to life than giving up and letting darkness sheathe his future. Elie expresses his feeling towards the bombing of the german camps, saying, “But we no longer feared death, in any event not this particular death. Every bomb that hit filled us with joy, gave us renewed confidence.” (Wiesel 60) The bursting of the bombs reassured the jews that their hope for liberation was not forsaken. No matter what they had to go through to escape the camps, they put their all into. Young Elie put his all into everything that was asked of him so that he could live live to see another day. A day that would bring him his liberty and freedom back.
All in all, Elie and even the other jews that survived the camps, were beaten down but never brought down. The mental state that they had towards their liberation and the persistence to reach that, was not going to be brought down. They had nothing to lose but everything to gain by pushing through the circumstances that they found themselves in. In the end, heart is what kept them alive.