Night Week of 3/30/15

Prompt: How Elie's Experiences during the holocaust change him as a person
Pages- End

      Elie's changed physically and mentally during his time in the concentration camp. He really did change from the begging to the book when he was free to the end when he was liberated from the camp. He changed a lot physically due to the lack of food and the poor living conditions but I feel that he changed a lot more mentally then physically. I say this because living in the camps was a huge change from living in a safe clean home. I mean he was so used to living in a safe place with his family and in good conditions so it must have affected him greatly. Overall the two biggest changes that I noticed in him was the belief of his religion and the relationship with his father.

      In the beginning of the book he was fully into his religion. He even went against his father because his father wanted him to focus on his studies but Elie instead wants to learn more about his religion. Elie also compared life with his religion for example when he said “Why did I pray? A strange question. Why did I live? Why did I breathe?"(Wiesel 2). This just shows that praying and his religion is as important is living and breathing. Sadly later in the book he starts drifting away from his religion and starts focusing more on trying to survive. For example when he says, "Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal and terrible master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank Him for?" (33). There is a huge difference in the two quotes from the begging and the near end of the book in the first he is a devoted Jew but in the second quote he shows no faith in god. 

      In the begging of the book Elie really docent have a strong bond with his father. Mostly because his dad sort of put his work before family so there was no strong connecting between the two. Elie’s dad was so caught up in work and his religion that he did not realize that a cousin was staying with them for four days. This is showing how caught up Elie's dad was in his own life and problems that he never really focused on his own family. Throughout the book Elie's bond with his father grows because of the situations he was put in. His father even becomes the main motivation for Elie to keep living. An example from the book is when he says, "To break the ranks, to let oneself slide to the edge of the road... My father's presence was the only thing that stopped me... He was running at my side, out of breath, at the end of his strength, at his wit's end"(Wiesel 82). This is showing how important his dad is to him and how much Elie relies on him to survive.