Night Blog Post 2

Night
By: Elie Wiesel
Pages: 48-112 (End)

Prompt:

How do Elie's experiences during the Holocaust change him as a person?

          -Identify at least two major changes, and 'prove' using textual evidence and interpretation, how Eliezer transforms by the end of his memoir.

Throughout the book Elie experiences some major changes in himself. One Major change Elie experienced was in his religious belief. In the beginning Elie narrates, "...I became convinced that Moishe the Beadle would help me enter eternity..." This shows how Elie was really into his religion and believed Moishe could help him enter eternity, at the time at least. Towards the end of the book we see some changes in Elie's beliefs. This is true because in the book Elie says, "And in spite of myself, a prayer formed inside me, a prayer to this God in whom I no longer believed." This shows how toward the end of the Holocaust Elie did not believe in God due to His lack of help.

          Another major change Elie experienced was his behavior towards his father. I see this to be true because in the beginning if the memoir Elie loved his family and never thought of being upset at them. But when Idek started to to beat up his dad he thought, "...I felt anger at that moment, it was not directed at the Kapo but at my father. Why couldn’t he have avoided Idek’s wrath?" This shows how Elie's behavior has changed towards his dad because of the concentration camps in the Holocaust. I can see why he was upset and he was just upset at the fact that his father was getting  hurt and he knew his father could defend himself.

           One last major change Elie experienced was probally when Elie he realizes that this traumatic event should be shared to prevent such actions from happening in the future. I say this because in Elie's "A God Who Remembers" he said, "anything received must be shared." This shows how after thinking about the Holocaust and what happened to him he realized that what happened need to be shared to help prevent something like the Holocaust from happening again. So basically he thought he needed to share his Holocaust experience for the better.