Pursuit of Happiness
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Having read Night by Elie Wiesel, I thought it outlined the real roots of the Holocaust. The story unfolds when the main character Eliezer, a Jewish teenager, hears about the dangers of the German army. Elie is a scholarly and religious fifteen year old boy who lives with his parents along with three sisters. Elie lives in a town called Sighet, and it doesnt take long before the Germans discover this city. The Jewish members are forced into cattle cars, where the conditions are described as being treated worse than animals. When Elies family arrives in Birkenau they immediately separate him from his mother and sisters, leaving him with his father. For the two to stick together, they decide to lie about their age and occupation. While walking to the camp, Elie thinks as though he is in a nightmare because he sees the burning of babies in a ditch, however he is not. When at the camp the male workers are shaved and showered. Elie and his father arrive at Buna where they are put to work. The conditions at the camp are described as horrific due to being malnourished, however, the prisoners do support one another to stay alive, and it is portrayed as being enslaved. It doesnt take long before the prisoners start to only care about their personal survival, including Elie who starts to turn from god. Elie eventually injures his foot and is taken to infirmary. At the same time the Nazis decide to vacate the Buna because the Russians are on the brink of liberating the camp. Forced to run to the next camp Gleiwitz, many Jews die due to the snowstorm and fatigue. Finally reaching their destination, they are again shipped about in the cattle cars. Elie and his father fight for one another keeping their self-esteem at a level where they both make it to the new camp. However, his father eventually passes away from over exhaustion and a sepsis resembling disease. As Elie lives day to day in what he classifies to be a dead body, the Americans eventually liberate the camp in 1945. Before the Americans arrived, the Germans were abiding by Hilters orders and eliminating a lot of the Jews, because they knew they were close to defeat.
One of the themes I noticed in this story is Elies attitude towards God. In the beginning of the story he is a religious boy who believes that God is everywhere, everything, and that everything is caused by the lord. However, as the story unfolds Elie starts to dissipate from his religious views. As the