Family Bonds And Self-Preservation In Elie Wiesel's Night

“I spent my days in total idleness. With only one desire: to eat. I no longer thought of my father, or my mother. From time to time, I would dream. But only about soup, an extra ration of soup.” (Wiesel 76). The author/character tells us something about what he felt at a concentration camp. He no longer thought of his relatives. Only to preserve himself. Elie Wiesel, author of the book “Night”, talks about his experience of the holocaust. He also talks about the concentration camps and how the Jews were treated by the Germans, or the Nazis. But two main topics I noticed throughout the book were family bonds and self-preservation, which was constantly shown throughout the entire book. Family bonds, for example, usually show characters helping each other through tough times and staying together, feeling sympathy for each other. …show more content…
Self-preservation is basically a counter to family bonds. To self-preserve is only for yourself, you don’t want to care for others, so family bonds get in the way. This is shown in the book when Mier killed his own father for a piece of bread because he was so hungry. Mier later then died for eating the bread that the other men wanted. Two ideas that will be addressed in this body of this essay are family bonds and self-preservation, which were introduced in the above sentences. So here’s a question: “Will going through a difficult event like the holocaust cause someone to change their behavior and adapt to their new environment? And how will it change them?”. Going through a difficult event can cause someone to change their behavior and adapt to their new environment by gaining traits that will help them survive and getting rid of traits that will hinder them from