In the book “Night” by Elie Wiesel, he writes about his traumatic experiences as a 15 year-old Jew that is forced to spend a year in concentration camps during the holocaust. He is exposed to an abundance of death and destruction, and this causes him to completely change at both emotional and religious levels, losing his self-expression and faith to his religion. Elie symbolizes this terrorizing experience as the night, an expression for the darkness and despair that he was faced with. Yet, he was able to survive the year of “night” that he was put through, and this was only through his father. The relationship that Elie shares with his father as the story progresses is the only thing that kept Elie alive. This relationship changes drastically…show more content… The distance in the relationship is shown when Elie explains that “ his father is a cultured, rather unsentimental man who rarely ever displayed any emotion, even at home. He was always more concerned with the community rather than his family” (Weisel, 2). This explains partly why Elie barely has a relationship with his father, due to him always focusing on the community over his own family and never showing any emotion. Another reason for the distant relationship would be the multiple examples where Elie’s father disagrees with Elie’s actions or extreme religious practices. This is shown when Elie’s father tries to him that “There aren’t any cabbalists in Sighet,” and elie states that “ He wanted to drive the notion out of my head. But it was in vain” (Weisel, 2) This would show even more of a disconnect between Elie and his father. Elie’s religious faith has major significance in his life, and it’s demoralizing for him to hear that his father disagrees with this. A final example of the distance in their relationship would be when Elie’s father denied their first chance of escape because of “him being too old to start a new company in another country”(Weisel, 6). This shows that Elie’s father’s business matters more than the safety of his own son, or his own family in general for that matter. This shows the major disconnect between Elie and…show more content… Now, in this point of the story, Elie’s father is really all that he has left, and likewise for his father needing his son. An example of this would be in the multiple situations where Elie demands to stay working with his father. Whether it be through bribery or just plain begging, Elie has always managed to stay with his father so far. This shows how reliant Elie is on his father, and how he needs to be along with him anywhere in the camp for the small sense of comfort that he can get. Another situation that shows the stronger bond between the two would be the torturing that Elie’s father received from Idek. Elie goes on to state with this that “Idek knew his weak spot,” which was his father. Elie later had to give up his gold-crowned tooth to Idek just so he would stop tormenting his father. This emotion can also be seen in the beating that Elie took, which he stated after “probably hurt his father more than it hurt him.” A final example of the progressed relationship between Elie and his father would be the overall emotional reliance that Elie has for him. On multiple occasions, Elie has asked for his father’s opinion on certain matters. Elie has also shared his ration with his father in the past, further supporting the reliance on eachother. These examples proves the furthered relationship between Elie and
