Lost Hope

Lost Hope
3/24/17
Cameron Egan

Night by Elie Wiesel

       After spending a long time in the camps, Elie has found that his comrades and himself are slowly losing hope as the days progress. The conditions of the camps have gotten more grim as the years have passed, and the camp leaders have progressively gotten more harsh as well. Elie has witnessed a number senseless beatings on his comrades and has also experienced these beatings himself. Overtimes these beatings take both a physical and mental tole on Elie and his Jewish comrades. Their moral has dropped severely and they only fight to live on to the next meal every day. The next meal is all these imprisoned men seem to have their minds on. Even during the most grim times, their minds are usually on when the next meal will come. Although Elie came down with an infection in his foot and was able to receive adequate medical attention in the camp, the people he saw in the medical tent were not as lucky as him and were slowly dying because their sicknesses or injuries were too severe and were not going to be adequately treated. The doctors also wanted to treat the people who they knew had a much higher chance of surviving.

      Elie is faced with a tremendous amount of adversity both physically and mentally throughout the novel. Through all the beatings, starvation, and illness, Elie is forced to try to continue his hope that once day he and his comrades will be liberated, even though his comrades have no hope at all. Most of his comrades have assumed that they are already dead, and they are just waiting for their day to come, and this challenges Elie's strong belief in hope.

     After finding two Jewish prisoners trying to steal food, the camp officers sentenced them to death by hanging in front of the entire camp to send a message to everyone. This message did not really hit home with any of the prisoners because they were more concerned with when they would get their next meal, as Elie's friend said to him during the hangings "Do you think this ceremony'll be over soon? I'm hungry...."(59). This exemplifies how numb these prisoners are to all the death that surrounds them. Although a majority of Elie's comrades did not really care for the hangings, it was much to Elie's concern because he has continued his hope that things will get better, but the hangings and all of the death that continuously surrounds Elie significantly effects him. As Elie went to eat that night, he could not help but think of the hangings and he thought "That night the soup tasted of corpses."(62). Metaphorically speaking, Elie is thinking this to show his grief for his comrades who had died because he could relate to their hunger that drove them to steal the food. Also, another factor that helped drive hope out of the hearts of the Jewish prisoners were the false hopes that some of the guards gave the prisoners. One of the guards of Elie's cell block said "Everything went off all right. Don't worry. Nothing is going to happen to anyone..."(69). The guard was talking about how he had talked to one of the Officers of the camps and was reassuring the prisoners under his watch that everyone was safe from the selection that lead people to their deaths. Unfortunately, what the guard said was too good to be true and ten of Elie's comrades were called upon for selection and a few were taken away to their deaths. There seemed to be no truth behind any hopeful word said to Elie and his comrades.

     Elie has grown up quickly if his few years in the concentration camps, which he had to if he wanted to survive. The hope that he instilled in himself has seemed to him to be lost at times, but ultimately it is his hope that keeps him going everyday. Without hope, Elie would have given up on the first day that he arrived at the camps, but he has faced some sever adversity that has challlenged his hope. With no one else believing and hoping that liberation will come, Elie along will have to continue to push himself to reach that ultimate goal of liberation. Overall, Night contains themes of resilience and hope and although this is not a war novel involving the front line battle aspects of World War II, it does bring a whole different point of view of the war. I would recommend this book to fans of the movie Defiance and other fans interested in reading about WWII or the Holocaust in the perspective of a victim. This book is more of a quick read, so if you are looking for a more developed and detailed story, then this book may not be for you.