Night Elie Wiesel Character Analysis

Something I found myself wondering while reading Night by Elie Wiesel, was how much the narrator , Wiesel, had changed from the beginning of the novel to the end? In what ways has his identity been stripped of him, warped and destroyed until he was barely recognizable by the end of the book? In the beginning, Wiesel is a young boy, around the age of thirteen, living in a village called Sighet with his family. He is devoutly religious and wants, more than anything else to study the Kabbala and his Jewish faith. While meeting with a man in town, Moishe the Beadle, and having discussions about his beliefs, he continues to pursue religious study, despite the objections of his father. However, in 1942 Moishe and all of the other foreign Jews of Sighet are taken by German soldiers and almost all of them are never seen or heard from again. …show more content…
At the beginning of the novel, he is a devout Jew and eager to study the Kabbala one day. He is ignorant to the horrors of the concentration camps, as are many of the people around him. After he is liberated, he has little desire to go on living and barely recognizes himself upon seeing his own reflection. “From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me.” (p. 115) Elie Wiesel experienced horrible things in the concentration camps, as detailed in Night, and they scarred him for the rest of his life. He suffered the loss of his family and humanity at the hands of the Nazis, and became estranged from a religion he to which he used to be devout. Although he experienced so many horrible things during his time as a prisoner, he had incredible willpower and survived, showing that despite being his identity being torn apart by unfortunate circumstance, he ended up stronger than he ever was