How Does Elie Wiesel Change His Father's Relationship

Relationships grow and change in numerous ways during a hardship. The struggle causes some people to grow distant from one another, yet forces other relationships to grow stronger from working together to brave the difficult times. The change positive and negative changes in relationships holds true for the prisoners of the Nazi concentration camps of World War II. Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner, writes about the hardships endured by prisoners in his memoir Night. The daily hardships caused some relationships among prisoners to flourish and others’ to crumble. Throughout Wiesel’s memoir, he describes the severe physical and emotional pain they endured daily and how this affected his relationship with his father. Wiesel and his father grew more dependent on one another, and the stress they withstood caused the father and son roles to reverse themselves. Wiesel and his father are not always close. In fact, when they are …show more content…
Wiesel becomes very lost and distant without his father similar to how a parent feels after the lose of a child. Furthermore, Wiesel makes known his life is meaningless without his father by not including anything about his life in the concentration camp from the time of his father’s death until liberation. Reflecting upon the time Wiesel spent without his father, he explains, “I have nothing to say of my life during that time. It no longer mattered. After my father’s death, nothing could touch me any more” (107). Wiesel is crushed and lacks emotion in his life. He is numb to all feelings similar to how a parent feels after the lose of a child. Despite all of Wiesel’s efforts to protect his father from harm, it is not enough. Because Wiesel’s father’s mental and physical health takes a turn for the worst even Wiesel’s parent-like acts cannot save his father’s