Night

The human condition is defined by positive and negative aspects of existence as a human being, where events such as your childhood, adolescence, adulthood, relationships, aging and the situations you go through, shape who you are. Wilful blindness, separation, loss of identity and faith, morality changes, loss of hope and fear can all contribute to the most basic values and beliefs that we carry through life. Being taken out of our comfort zone and put into situations that test how strong we really are can change us in irreversible ways. Fear is the most powerful factor that affects the human condition, making us do the most unimaginable things in order to stay alive. In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, several main ideas emerge, all linking to the human condition. In the beginning, the Jewish people of Sighet expressed wilful blindness through their disbelief that the Germans, could want to kill them. Even as the soldiers came and ordered all the Jews to be put in 'ghettos', where they were to live, they still had smiles on their faces and chose not to accept what their fate had in store. Realization of the reality of their situation came about when masses of them were rounded up and transported by cattle cars to various concentration camps. They were treated like herds of cattle and sheep, being rounded up by the thousands, destined for the slaughterhouse. At this point, they lost their dignity. When the masses of Jewish people reached the concentration camps such as Birkenau, many were separated from friends and family. Many of the children ended up going with their mothers, while the men were rounded up and kept together. In Elie's case the choice to stay with his father ultimately saved him, where the rest of his family was killed by gas and sent to the crematoriums. This rapid change of circumstances caused many of the Jewish children to grow up quite quickly, thus losing their childhood. After the selections, the Jews lost a part of their identity when they were given numbers instead of keeping their names. They were all viewed as the same, a people with no value. As the weeks progressed, many of the Jews began to lose faith in their God. At one point their religion asked them to fast, although some, including Elie and his father failed to do so. They began questioning why they should praise the name of their Lord and rejoice in Him when He was allowing the suffering of His people to continue. Later on, roles reversed between father and son when Elie had to take care of his dad as he became weaker and sicker. His actions to put his father before himself showed the level of maturity that the experiences they had gone through forced him to gain. During this time, the Jewish prisoners were forced to participate in the Death March. The Death March was a journey that caused the inmates to walk and run many kilometres through excruciating conditions with little food and water to neighbouring camps. Near the end of the Death March, Elie faced a change in morality when he questioned himself as to whether he should leave his father to die, or continue looking after him when his efforts really weren't making much of a difference. This change of morality demonstrated the extreme character change that people may experience when going through a very difficult time in their lives; they begin to do things that are completely opposite to what they believe and value in life. As the story progressed, Elie decided to continue on with his efforts to keep his father alive. In his mind, should his father die, then all their efforts to stay alive would be in vain. Not long after this though, his father did die. His death caused Elie to completely give up any hope he still had of surviving and being rescued. Nothing mattered anymore. Wilful blindness, separation, loss of identity and faith, change in morality and abandonment of all hope of reconciliation are linked to the human condition through their power to contribute and change who we really are. The most drastic contributor to this change in identity is fear.
"The word 'chimney' here was not an abstraction; it floated in the air, mingled with the smoke. It was perhaps the only word that had any real meaning in this place"(pg39). Out of everything that the Jews endured, the only thing they really feared was ceasing to exist. They would face the starvation, the long work hours and the mistreatment all over again before they would ever succumb to the hands of death. The 'chimney', symbolizes death, where thousands upon thousands of innocent Jewish people were burned in the crematoriums. I believe that the Jews viewed the word ‘chimney’ this way because when they were beaten or starved to the point of almost dying, there is still a chance for them to survive. Once they are gassed and sent to the crematorium, what remains of them are memories and a pile of ashes. The fact that they don't stand a chance of surviving the 'chimneys' is what I believe scares them the most. Their fear caused them to lose hope. The hope of seeing their families again. The hope of being released from the concentration camps. The hope of surviving. Reading this quote, I found myself remembering times where I have faced situations so fearsome that I too have lost hope. When I was sixteen years old, I was used to getting good grades in school. Achieving honors was easy to me, and I found I did not put as much effort into studying as my colleagues did, although I ended with marks just as good, if not better than them. Throughout my first semester of grade 11, I noticed that one of my core classes was much harder than I had anticipated. Physics became my enemy. While the material we learned seemed easy for the rest of my classmates, I spent hours a night just trying to understand and remember what we had learned that day. My grades that had started in the 90 percentile area dropped to the 70’s. I had begun losing hope that I would ever pass the course and keep my mark high enough to achieve the Rutherford scholarship. My plans for university quickly changed due to physics being one of the criteria for veterinary medicine. I felt like nothing I did would ever help to boost my mark. This class had instilled in me the fear of failure. As finals came nearer, I began studying every night, and would go for help after school. Even though I finished physics 20 with 80%, I still have that fear that I would fail if I chose to go up a level, with little hope of doing well. Out of everything, I guess the Jews and I are not so different after all. We both went through experiences that changed us through our loss of hope caused by our fears, and although our experiences were quite different, we both changed in irreversible ways. Not only do individuals and groups of people have fears, but societies can carry them as well.
Many countries have experienced some form of fearsome issue be it political, ethnic or environmentally based. Often, these fears stem from prejudices and discriminations of others points of view or cultures that we either don’t agree with, or simply don’t understand at all. Take for instance the fear that much of the world has towards those in the Middle East. We may have the right to be fearful of people from countries such as Afghanistan or Iraq from historic terrorist attacks on others, planned by select members of those countries. I believe these fears are simply due to our lack of understanding of what citizens in those parts of the world believe is right and wrong and how they perceive others. The fact that our opinions clash automatically makes them the ‘bad guy’. Back in the 1990s the United States chose to set up an army base in Kuwait after Saddam Hussein invaded Iraq. This establishment in a Holy city caused many to become angry and feel threatened by the Americans. This lead to an increase of terrorist attacks such as the bombing of the Twin Towers, the World Trade Centre and various planes. Our lack of understanding as to how people in those third world countries would respond to this invasion ultimately lead to actions that made our fear of those in the Middle East possible. Increased suspicion of those with darker skin became apparent, with more security checks at airports and restricted travelling throughout the world. The way the world views and thinks of foreigners changed dramatically all because of the fear that societies and groups of people now carry.
Ultimately, fear can instill in us a change so great that the hope of ever returning to who we used to be becomes a distant memory. Whether we go through loss or brutality like the Jews did during the Holocaust, the discriminations and prejudices that those in the Middle East experience on a daily basis or even our own experiences, we all change when we fear. We change mentally. We change physically. We change spiritually and we change emotionally. The scary situations we are put through when we exit our comfort zone change us in irreversible ways.