Miranda, Night Blog 2

Miranda

Humanities 8A

Night Blog Post 2

10/8/2017

As far as I have read in the book Night, one of the important themes I noticed was family. For example, In the very beginning some of the Jews stayed with their family until they were separated from them. Like for Elie he was separated from his mother when they were in the concentration camps and were split up by gender. Ellie was lucky and was not and still is not separated from his father, while most of the other Jews were separated from most or all of their family members. One place where Ellie and his father help each other is when Ellie tries to teach his father how to march because he was getting tormented by another Jew,

...he knew my weak spot. My father had never served in the military and could not march in step. But here, whenever we moved from one place to another, it was in step. That presented Franek with the opportunity to torment him and, on a daily basis, to thrash him savagely. Left, right: he punched him. Left, right: he slapped him. I decided to give my father lessons in marching in step, in keeping time. We began practicing in front of our block. (55)

Another thing that I noticed that relates to this theme is that when Ellie and his father had to go through selection, (when the Germans decide which Jews to keep at work and which one’s to send to the furnaces) they immediately go to see if the other had made it through. They also care for each other by sharing their food a lot of the time in particular when they survived something difficult,

With all my strength I began to race toward Block 36; midway, I met my father. He came toward me:

"So? Did you pass?"

"Yes. And you?"

"Also."

We were able to breathe again. My father had a present for me: a half ration of bread, bartered for something he had found at the depot, a piece of rubber that could be used to repair a shoe. (73)

The final example of this theme is when Ellie had just had just had his operation on his leg and had just been told that he was going to be left in the infirmaries while the rest of the Jews were being evacuated. Even though his leg had not healed yet the only thing he was thinking about was staying with his father,

\As for me, I was thinking not about death but about not wanting to be separated from my father. We had already suffered so much, endured so much together. This was not the moment to separate. I ran outside to look for him. The snow was piled high, the blocks' windows veiled in frost. Holding a shoe in my hand, for I could not put it on my right foot, I ran, feeling neither pain nor cold. (82)

No matter what happened to Ellie or his father they wanted to be together no matter what pain they felt. Similar to my family, my family travels a lot so we try to limit our time away.