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Night by Elie Wiesel - The Unbreakable Bond of Father and Son

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The relationship between a father and a son is a long and complicated one. Many trials can break the bond amongst predecessor and descendent, however, only a genuine, unsettling evil can bring the two together more closely than ever before. In Eliezer Wiesel’s book Night, Elie has a complex, yet loving relationship with his father. “It had been his last wish to have me next to him in his agony [] yet I did not give him that wish” (Wiesel, “Preface” xi). By speaking this truth, Elie has come to terms with what transpired in the concentration camp and what ensued between him and his father. Chlomo and Elie’s relationship intensifies and completely reverses, from a father and child, to equals, and finally Elie taking full care of his father. In Eliezer Wiesel’s night, Elie’s relationship with his father grows and strengthens. The book begins with a relationship much like an ordinary father son relationship with Elie, not desiring to leave his father, Chlomo, once they reach Auschwitz. Once their cattle car arrives there, Elie thinks to himself, “My hand tightened its grip on my father. All I could think of was not to lose him. Not to remain alone” (Wiesel Night 30). This quote perfectly depicts Elie’s internal and private thoughts concerning his goal once he accesses the concentration camp, Auschwitz. Elie wishes not to be isolated from his father, and although he does not know it, it is his father that will desire the identical thing later in the book. “The main hope that motivated Wiesel in the first days he spent in the camp was his desire to remain close to his father []” (Cunningham 26). Lawrence Cunningham portrays that Elie’s only request once inside Auschwitz is to be with his father. “I want to stay with my father” (Wiesel Night 48). Elie is reminiscing when a tent aide was questioning him on which Kommando Elie would fancy existing in. This thought reinforces the point of Elie and his father’s relationship is dependency near the beginning of the book. Ellen Fine supports that Elie is entirely dependent on his father by disclosing that “During the “leveling” process, as he is being stripped bare of all possessions, he is fixated on one thought- to be with his father” (Fine 55). Ellen is simply restating that it is Elie who makes the relationship weaker, not his father, throughout the start of the book. During the beginning of the story, Elie is completely dependent on his father for protection and support. Chlomo and Elie regard each other as family, but not as necessary to survival. This relati

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