Night

     One’s fate often decides one’s struggles. In Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, his fate – to live through the darkest era of his life, the Holocaust – presents him an option between his survival and his father. Elie's indecisiveness between protecting and abandoning his father constructs the central conflict.

     When Elie’s family first arrive in Birkenau, reception center for Auschwitz – a concentration camp, SS officers separate Elie and his father from his mother and sisters. The parting surfaces Elie’s instinct to stay with his father: “I had one thought – not to lose [my father]. Not to be left alone…At all costs we must stay together,” (Wiesel 27). Within the depths of uncertainty and fear of isolation, Elie’s conscience tells him the importance of remaining at his father’s side. At the risk of death, he is willing to follow whichever path his father is forced to endure. As new deportees go though the selection, Elie made sure he walked on the same path as his father: “The baton moved to the left…If [my father] went to the right, I would go after him,” (Wiesel 29). There were two paths – one to the crematory and the other into the concentration camp. Elie does not concern himself with the destinations of the two trails; he is willing to face the outcome as long as his remains with his father. However, this is before he endures the hardships of surviving a labor camp.

     As Elie struggles to survive within the concentration camp, his mind begins to wander from the importance of remaining at his father’s side. His mind is no longer constantly concerned about his father and only through a sudden jolt does he remember his father’s declining abilities: “And my father? Suddenly I remembered him. How would he pass the selection? He had aged so much…” (Wiesel 67). Elie has become so focused on his own survival and needs that he sometimes forget to concern himself with the well-being of his father. Survival in the labor camp meant continuously resist death and the temptation to give up, and without realizing it, the importance his father has on him is slowly fading away. Elie’s temptation to fight for his own survival slowly surfaces.

     When his father falls ill, Elie tries to remain a loving son by staying beside his father and tending his needs. Elie supports his father in whichever way he can by providing water and staying behind when all able individuals were to attend roll call. However, Elie soon abandons him because trying to tend and support the sick’s survival rather than his own – even if it was his father – only decreased his own chance to survival. When his father calls for him with his last breaths, Elie ignores him: “‘Eliezer.’…[My father’s] last word was my name. A summons, to which I did not respond,” (Wiesel 106). Elie decides that it is a better choice if his father is no longer weighing him down. He abandons his father and focuses on his own survival even though he regrets leaving his father behind.

     Throughout his struggle to survive the Holocaust, Elie is forced to choose between his life and his father. In the memoir, Night, the central conflict is between Elie’s choice of survival through abandoning or trying to find a way to support and protect his father. Eventually, he decides to abandon the weight and responsibility of his father.