How Does Elie Wiesel Change In Night

In Night by Elie Wiesel, the tragic, true story of a Jewish boy in the Holocaust explores a multitude of themes. Chief among them is personal change, specifically the loss of external humanity. Wiesel goes through a series of intensive mental changes that leave him externally emptied upon liberation, in stark contrast with his initial fear and emotion. In order to survive, Elie abandons most of his sense of humanity and accept mass suffering and death as normal. Despite this, he still manages to maintain his sanity in a way beneficial to his own survival. As he struggles to maintain mental stability, he must endure the complete degradation of his body into “a corpse” (115) in order to save his sanity. He effectively becomes two separate entities: mind and …show more content…
He manages to separate these two halves of himself in a way that others fail throughout the novel. Although Elie loses nearly all of his bodily health, this separation of mind and body are effective enough to allow him to will his way to survival. Initially, Elie is in complete shock that such suffering as in the Holocaust would be possible in the world. Upon his arrival at Birkenau, Elie expresses this feeling: “How was it possible that men, women, and children were being burned and that the world kept silent? No. All this could not be real.” (32). This reaction to the horrors shows Elie’s initial mental naïveté towards his future experiences, a stark contrast with his later mental strength. Here, he enters into this new world unadjusted to the suffering that awaits him. However, by the end of the memoir, Elie is no longer in shock of what he witnesses. He