Andrew Blog Post #4

Hopelessness In Night

Andrew B.

In Night Elie Wiesel experiences some of the worst acts in recent history. He, unlike many survives these events and goes on to help others never forget the holocaust. In Night Elie often recounts the hopelessness of his life, and of the lives of all the inmates in Bercau. It’s clear how he could come to that mentell state. He has very little control over his life and of the basic freedoms that he had always experienced. By the end, though he had much more faith in the future and was keeping a more positive mindset, this is what probably allowed him to keep going and survive the whole ordeal. In the concentration camps the strength at which you came in did not matter, the thing that would divide the strong and the weak was what they had to live for and their ability to maintain hope against all odds and see that there is hope and a way through all of this struggle and a way to live after. Elie does not do as well as some, he loses faith in his god, he loses faith in the ability of the world to hold the Nazis accountable for what they have done. He does do better than many though, he never at least states that he sees no way out, no way further and no future past the holocaust. He very well could have thought these things but never narrated them but that doesn't seem likely. He always has someone besides himself to worry about, his father. His father for almost all of the book is in worse condition mentally or physically than he is. Elie may have been a unforchunate advantage in this way, he always had a person close to him be in worse condition than himself, he always has to worry about his father. This always him to never really worry about himself the same way he worries about his father. He always sees how things can be worse, how things can go down hill and how he is relatively luckey. Elie never says that he feels lucky, he probably didn’t feel lucky. He probably felt that he was in a hopeless circle to his death. Only later did he learn what allowed him, an average person, to survive what so many did not survive. It was his care for his father and his care for those less fortunate than him that allowed him to put himself second to others and survive.