Elie faces many internal and external conflicts during the book ‘Night’. He not only faces the challenges and problems within himself but as well as battling external disputes while in the concentration camp. Consistently, Elie had to make tough choices to not only help himself survive but to protect his father. Throughout the book ‘Night’, Elie experiences trial and error while playing a game of survival of the fittest.
Throughout the book, the author Elie Wiesel records many examples of the different types of character vs self conflicts you read about in ‘Night’. In the book, Elie’s first encounter with internal conflict was when Moshe the Beadle escaped from the Gestapo and made his way back to Sighet. He told his story about the horrors he had witnessed but nobody believed him. Elie even questioned himself at one point whether he should attempt to understand Moshe’s point of view, but instead of believing him, he only ended up pitying him. For instance in ‘Night’, the book states “I did not believe him myself. I would often sit with him in the evening after service, listening to his stories and trying my hardest to understand his grief. I felt only pity for him (pg 6).” Elie’s next internal/external conflict is in chapter 2 when Madame Schachter is yelling at the cattle cars. It is an external conflict because Eliezer is trying his hardest to ignore her due to the fact that her yelling and causing chaos inside the vehicle is annoying him. Readers sense Wiesel’s distress when the book states, “Our nerves were breaking at this point...We could stand it no longer. (pg 19)” Madame Schachter’s screaming on the train is also an internal conflict because at some points they started to believe her, and even if it was only for a moment I believed they started to wonder who really was going crazy. As the memoir progresses, Elie also has a war with himself about the topic of his father. As Eliezer’s father gets sicker and closer to death, Elie compares his father to a dead weight. For instance, the book states, “Don’t let me find him! If only I could get rid of this dead weight so that I could use all my strength to struggle for my own survival (pg 77).” Elie feels as if his father is a burden to him but he doesn’t want to admit it, and even feels very ashamed for thinking such thoughts. Overall, Elie experiences and faces many internal struggles as the story progresses.
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In the book ‘Night’, Elie also has to face external conflicts as well. An example of this would be when Elie has to travel through cold weather in chapter 6. For example, when the book states “The idea of dying, of no longer being, began to fascinate me (pg 63).” readers figure that during the march in the cold weather, something altered Elie’s way of thinking. Realization sets in when Elie points out that he no longer desires to live, or had no reason to “I was walking in a cemetery, among stiffened corpses (pg 65).” The preceding external conflict is when the Jews are no longer able to wear gold, jewelry, or any items holding valuables. Everything that was required was to be handed over to the authorities or you were exterminated. Jews were also forced to wear the Star of David. Another conflict that is both internal and external that affects Elie again has to do with his father. In chapter 8 Elizer’s father won't move/get up because he has already chosen to die (pg 77). It is internal because Elie feels as if he is battling his father’s death rather than his actual father, but it is also external due to Elie yelling at his father to get up, warning him that people who stay there never get back up. External conflict is also represented in the book on the Wagon. Elie remembers this scene because he remembers it as a stampede, and a massacre, for bread. For instance, the book states, “Dozens of starving men fought each other to the death for a few crumbs. The German workmen took a lively interest. (pg 73)” Years later after this scene, when Elie witnessed a fiasco close to what he experienced, he begged the lady to stop doing the same thing which was one of the many factors that traumatized him for life. Generally, Wiesel recorded many different types of external conflicts throughout the book.
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