Night Essay

 During ones’ lifetime, they must come face to face with challenges and above all, the conflicts that surround them each and every day. Many problems can break through in someone’s life when dealing with multiple situations. In Night, Elie faces his struggles within his troubling society.
    Although Elie’s main conflict is with his society, it branches out to the point where he has to deal with sub-conflicts. He has an ugly encounter with another fellow Jewish man named Idek. Elie catches him when he was doing wrong and for that reason, Idek gets angry. At this point, Elie’s conflict with Idek begins, “…You’re going to pay for this pretty soon,” (54). Idek was angry with Elie and his authority over him was supreme. This goes to show how Elie’s society has even had an affect on other characters including those of the same race. Idek has turned on his people by being part of the others who are against the Jews. His revenge against Elie began with a beating, “He took his time between each stroke,” (55). Elie is fighting for himself against a society that is keeping him down. The society that he is currently residing in influences people to change against their own people. This becomes an obstacle for Elie when another character, another Jewish man such as himself, becomes part of his struggle during his time being in the concentration camps.
    In between all the chaos that emerges throughout the book, Elie manages to make himself feel guilty about his thoughts on different topics. While on this stressful journey, Elie must stick with his father who is on the verge of death. At one point or another, he begins to think that without his father holding him back, he could put all his strength forward in surviving for himself only, “Don’t let me find him!...Immediately I felt ashamed of myself, ashamed forever,” (101). This shows a turn of events when Elie psyches himself out to believe that he does not need his father by his side even though his mindset in the beginning was to go on and save both his father and himself. His cruel society has brought this sort of mentality down on Elie. At first, he wanted to come out of this tragedy victorious with his father right beside him. Near the end, Elie begins to turn on his father leaving him with a guilty conscience. The brutality coming from Elie’s society has affected him when it comes to feeling self-guilt towards the one person he had planned to save the entire time.
    When Elie and the other Jews arrive at the concentration camps, they realize that the Germans will eliminate all the people who are not worthwhile. The Germans were in the process of burning people in the crematory. Elie has now experienced the evil side of his society as he witnesses the cremating of babies, “Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky,” (32). With this act of violence against the young children who never did anything wrong, Elie sees how bad his society has turned on their moral righteousness. This is one of the many breaking points for Elie just for the simple fact that he had never expected   Elie has come a long way to see his conflicts within his society.
    Night is a compelling story that demonstrates how everything has changed from how things used to be. Elie’s conflict within his society falls into other conflicts involving another character and even with himself.