Home > Night Summary & Study Guide > Night Group > Question and Answer

Question:

Answers:

1. 
   akannan Teacher
   Middle School

   eNotes Editor

   Once the ordeal at Buchenwald had come to its close and the Nazis were on the run, the prisoners think only of food as they find freedom and liberation from the camp.  They do not think of anything else but survival and the barest of means to accomplish this end.  Primarily, eating bread is what constitutes the majority of their thoughts and consumes majority of their actions.  In some respects, this is highly appropriate. Throughout the work, the reader sees how Eliezer's struggle to survive is one that is shared by so many who had to endure life in the camps.  The comforting ending would be something larger, an ending that encompassed moral truths and provided ethical redemption.  However, as Wiesel himself asserts through the work, one of the most horrific elements of the Holocaust was that its dehumanization, proven when the prisoners are free and are only concerned with the basest of all instincts:  Survival and food.

   Sources:

   http://www.enotes.com/night-wiesel/summary

   Rate answer:

   • Flag as inappropriate

   Posted by akannan on Saturday October 17, 2009 at 7:49 PM