Resumo de Night -- Elie Wiesel As A Case Study Of Human Trauma, Analysis/

When a group of people experience trauma the individual loses concern with material possessions, with loved ones, and finally with oneself. If Elie Wiesel?s ?Night? celebrates anything, it?s the triumph of an individual?s concern for oneself, over any feeling of love or empathy they could have for someone else.
At the beginning of the book, Elie?s father buries gold in the basement of his home in the Jewish ghetto, in preparation for an exodus. When Hungarian police take the first group of Jews out of the ghettoes, Wiesel writes, Everything could be found there: suitcases, portfolios, briefcases, knives, plates, banknotes, papers, faded portraits. All those things that people had thought of taking with them, and which in the end they had left behind. They had lost all value. Though Wiesel mentions knives and plates the concerns of the Jews here, are probably for objects that would aid them and their loved ones in surviving. This is supported by Wiesel?s description of these objects in the place of their arrangement, as an open tomb. It is later revealed that Eli?s father has either taken a knife and spoon with him or obtained them by some other means. When he first thinks that he has been selected to die, he tries to give them to his son (as he himself will have no use for them). When a boy tries to take Eli?s shoes in exchange for a ration of bread and the promise of other shoes, Eli refuses. These incidents show that when traumatized in a way that threatens the individual?s life the only material things of value are those that can help preserve life.
In the barracks of Gleiwitz, Rabbi Eliahou looked for his son. Eli had seen him running at his side but he forgot to tell the Rabbi when he questioned him. Wiesel writes, Then I remembered something else: his son had seen him losing ground, limping, staggering back to the rear of his column. He had seen him. And he continued to run on in front, letting the distance between them grow greater. In the next paragraph he writes, He had felt that his father was growing weak, he had believed that the end was near and had sought this separation in order to get rid of the burden, to free himself from an encumbrance which could lessen his own chances of survival.
On the wagon on the way to Buchenwald, Berman workmen threw pieces of bread into the wagon to entertain themselves with the spectacle of a dozen starving men fighting over it. An old man comes up with a piece of the bread and eating some of it says to his son, Meir. Meir, my boy! Don?t you recognize me? I?m your father? you?re hurting me? you?re killing your father! I?ve got some bread? for you too? for you too. After the son kills his father for the bread, two other men pounce on him and kill him for it. Even Elie begins to put his needs ahead of his father?s. Wiesel writes of their time in Buchenwald, ?I went to look for him. But at the same moment this thought came into my mind: Don?t let me find him! If only I could get rid of this dead weight, so that I could use my strength to struggle for my own survival, and only worry about myself.
Though a conscious choice is sometimes made in the minds of the traumatized (In Elie?s instance): to put the needs of ones own body before or after the needs of a loved one, the first impulse (that which one really values, as a feeling rather than a choice) is always towards self-preservation. Oneself is always the last thing of value to disappear. This is evidenced by the feeling of guilt with which Eli serves his father, as guilt is a reaction to selfish desires or the effect of selfish desires. It?s right after this first thought of putting the needs of his body ahead of his father?s, that Eli writes of how he rushes to serve his father coffee and soup. www.valiantdeath.com ---- for wonderful experimental music/ art/ zines

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