In Elie Wiesel’s Night, Wiesel reflects on his childhood during the Holocaust and the year he spent enslaved at Auschwitz. Wiesel shares this disturbing experience with his father, both of them searching for a sign of life from a world of torture and isolation. Throughout the memoir, Wiesel exhibits the relationships of other fathers and sons as well as his own. While the other father-son relationships Wiesel exhibits cannot keep them alive, Wiesel’s connection with his father ultimately keeps him alive physically, but kills him emotionally with self-disgust and shame.
Wiesel's relationship with his father is stronger than the other father-son relationships he discusses throughout the memoir. Wiesel discusses the father-son relationships of Rabbi Eliahu’s son who abandoned him and the father and son fighting for bread on the train. When the Nazis evacuate Wiesel and the other prisoners from Auschwitz, they run for miles until they arrive at an abandoned village. Wiesel’s father is hanging onto life by a thread. Wiesel constantly fears what this would mean for him if he loses his father. This puts Wiesel in a state of desperation to keep his father alive. When Rabbi Eliahu, who lost his son in the commotion, asks Wiesel about his son, Wiesel says he has not seen him. But then Wiesel remembers that his son “had seen [the Rabbi] losing ground, sliding back to the rear of the column… and he had continued to run in front, letting the distance between them become greater” (91) as if he wanted to leave his father. This thought haunts Wiesel and he prays to God to give him “the strength never to do what Rabbi Eliahu’s son has done” (91) as Wiesel knows that his father is all he had left. While Rabbi Eliahu’s son makes the decision to leave his father for his own survival, Wiesel’s relationship with his father prevents him from doing the same action. Occasionally, the jam-packed trains the Nazis held the prisoners in passed through outer German towns. The German workers throw bread into the trains and watch the “dozens of starving men [fighting] desperately over a few crumbs” (100) for they would do anything to satisfy their hunger. Wiesel watches an old man yell at his son “Meir, my little Mier! Don’t you recognize me… You’re killing your father… I have bread… for you too” (101) but his words mean nothing. Hunger takes over the son’s morality and he would do anything for even a little piece of bread. For some, including the old man and his son, the Nazis were able to make survival a greater priority than family. Ironically, Wiesel’s prioritization of his father over survival is what kept him alive.
The effect Wiesel’s father has on Wiesel is shown when Elie considers taking his own life. Wiesel realizes it was “imperative to stay” (30) with his father in order to survive when he is separated from his family. This mindset is portrayed throughout the memoir. When Wiesel sees the Nazis burning human beings to death, he tells his father that he does not “want to wait. [He’ll] run into the electrified barbed wire. That would be easier than a slow death in the flames” (33) that have already devoured thousands of bodies. Wiesel prepares himself “in order to break rank and throw [himself] onto the barbed wire” to escape the torture when the Nazis order them to go to the barracks. The action Wiesel takes of squeezing his father’s hand immediately after concludes that the only reason Wiesel does not kill himself was because of his father. It also shows a promise that he will never leave his father’s side.
The death of Wiesel’s father presents Wiesel with relief that immediately turns into guilt and shame. When Wiesel wakes up in the morning daylight, the first thing he remembers that he had a father that he had now lost. At the same time Wiesel blames himself for abandoning his father, a thought appears in his mind that he “were relieved of this responsibility, [he] could use all [his] strength to fight for [his] own survival” (106) and not his father’s as well. Wiesel became disgusted with himself and “instantly, [he] felt ashamed, ashamed of [himself] forever” (106) that this thought has even entered his mind in the first place. Although Wiesel outlived many of those with him when he entered the camp, he finds himself lost without his father. Wiesel is not comfortable in a world without his father, his only support during his time in Auschwitz. It could be argued that if Wiesel is still alive, then his father was not all he was fighting for. But is a emotionless soul much different from a lifeless body? Wiesel cannot find closure without his father, and therefore he does not know what to do with himself, more so kill himself. Wiesel’s relationship with his father is essential to the creation of Night because it gave Wiesel the strength and motivation to stay alive during the Holocaust to ultimately tell his story. Night allows the horrific memories and experiences of those who lived through the Holocaust to be remembered.