Before I write my final blog on Elie Wiesel’s Night, I would like to say I really enjoyed the book. When I first found out we were reading a book about the Holocaust I wasn’t too thrilled. Books like this just don’t generally interest me. That being said, I have to say this book was very well written seeing that it kept me reading. This was one of those books that you pick up and truly don’t want to put down. And since all good things must come to an end, I must write about the last section of Night.

     Throughout the book, we had seen Elie and his father’s health deteriorating. Brought about by lack of food, they both had become grossly emaciated. To most, this would be a great burden. But I was struck when Elie said he wished he had lost more weight. The scenario is the prisoners were being moved so to escape attacks. They ran for hours on end through the freezing cold. It’s during this march that Elie thinks, “I was dragging this emaciated body that was still such a weight. If only I could have shed it!” (85). I found this very ironic. To think that he had been suffering starvation for all this time and now he wished he was even skinnier. He is obviously thinking irrationally if he truly wished he was lighter.

     As I’ve said again and again, there is always at least one event per chapter that just horrifies me completely. One came when a father gets beaten for trying to grab a piece of bread that was thrown onto their train and his son goes a grabs the bread when his own father dies. Two men notice the boy going for the bread and the events that unfold are terrifying: “They jumped him. Others joined in. When they withdrew, there were two dead bodies next to me, the father and the son. I was sixteen” (102). Wiesel goes on to reflect that he hopes he never turns on his father like that had. Up until this point, I had forgotten how old Wiesel was, and I’m sure many of you are right there with me. He reminds us that he is only 16 years old and we really start to think about all the events that have unfolded.

     Lastly, I noticed a major change in Wiesel towards the very end of the book. For the first time, he was partially hoping that he wouldn’t be reunited with his father. He was becoming a burden as his health was deteriorating more rapidly. He began to really throw everything out of the way that wouldn’t aid his survival. This fits in with one of the survival traits we talked about the other day in class, detachment. He thinks to himself, “If only I didn’t find him! If only I were relieved of this responsibility, I could use all my strength to fight for my own survival, to take care only of myself… Instantly, I felt ashamed, ashamed of myself forever” (106). This experience had changed Wiesel. It may have strengthened him, but at the cost of love for his family. Separating oneself from friends and family is difficult but in a situation such as this one, it must be done in order to survive.