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Symbolic Inheritance in Night

Summary:

In Night, Elie's father gives him a spoon and knife as a symbolic inheritance when he believes he has been selected for death in a Nazi concentration camp. This poignant gesture highlights the extreme deprivation and the reversal of normalcy in the camp, where such basic items become precious. The knife and spoon represent all the father can bequeath, underscoring the loss of dignity and familial roles under the horrors of the Holocaust.

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In Night, why did Elie's father give him a spoon and a knife?

Night is an autobiographical account of a Hungarian Jew's experience in Auschwitz and Buchenwald, Nazi concentration camps. Jews in these camps were used as forced labor and were also subjects for ghastly medical experiments; after they were no longer considered useful, they were exterminated in gas chambers. 

In this situation, the inmates of the camps had almost no possessions at all and the few they did have were extremely precious. Thus to Elie and his father, a knife and spoon represented something quite precious, a remaining shred of their human dignity and lives as ordinary people.

The Nazis went through a regular process where they selected certain inmates to be killed every few days. Elie's father hears that his name has been written on a list, and presuming that he will be executed, gives his few remaining possessions, the knife and spoon, to Elie as an inheritance. 

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few days prior to this, the camp went through a selection process. Certain names were written down. Those whose names were written down were presumably to be sent to death. Elie's father noted that he passed. But a few days later, he learned that Dr. Mengele had written his name down. Fearing that he might be sent away or to his death, Elie's father gave him the knife and spoon because he wouldn't be needing them anymore. It was also a genuine and sad gesture as this was all he had to give his son at this tragic moment. 

"Look, take this knife," he said to me." I don't need it any longer. It might be useful to you. And take this spoon as well. Don't sell them. Quickly! Go on. Take what I'm giving you!" 

The inheritance. 

That day, his father stayed at camp with the others who had been selected. Elie was treated well by everyone. They sympathized with him thinking that his father would be sent to death. Being treated kindly, Elie thought, "even now, my father is still helping me." When the workday was over, Elie ran to Block 36 to find his father still alive and gave him back the knife and spoon. 

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In Night, describe the exchange of possessions between father and son when the elder Wiesel is selected for death.

In chapter 5, another selection is issued, and Elie and his father both pass. A few days later, a second selection takes place, and the Blockälteste reads off ten prisoners' numbers that are to report to the second selection. As Elie begins to march to work, he sees his father desperately running towards him. Elie stops, and his father proceeds to frantically tell him that he was told to stay in the camp instead of going to work, because he had to report to the second selection. Elie recalls the panic in his father's voice as he says,

Here, take this knife . . . I won't need it anymore. You may find it useful. Also take this spoon. Don't sell it. Quickly! Go ahead, take what I'm giving you! (Wiesel, 100).

As a narrator, Elie pauses to reflect on the fact that at the time, he was receiving his inheritance, which was two utensils. In one of the most moving scenes throughout the novel, Elie's father struggles to speak his last words to his son before heading towards the second selection. In a display of affection and love, Elie's father gives his son everything he owns, which is only a knife and spoon. Fortunately, Elie's father survives the second selection and rejoins his son later on that day.

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When it appears that Elie's father has been selected for death, he is eager to rush over to Elie and give him what Elie ironically and with great sadness called "My inheritance." Even though this was just an initial selection, his father does not want to waste time just in case he is chosen for death and therefore will never see his son again. He gives what he has to his son in the hope that these gifts will help him in his future and to stave of death:

"Here, take this knife," he said. "I won't need it anymore. You may find it useful. Also take this spoon. Don't sell it. Quickly! Go ahead, take what I'm giving you!"

Note how the situation of their lives makes these normal objects precious gifts. When Elie returns from the day's work, he is delighted to find his father still alive, and Elie says: "He had still proved his usefulness." This statement highlights the reductionist view on human life - you could only live if you had a practical use. Elie is able to return the "gifts" to his father.

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What is the significance of Wiesel referring to a knife and spoon as "the inheritance" in Night?

There are two "word choices" in your question: the choice of "the inheritance" and the choice of "decisive selection." Since "the inheritance" is Wiesel's means of describing events surrounding his father's retention in the camp for "decisive selection" and his father's subsequent and directly related action of handing Elie his knife and spoon (Elie already has his own knife and spoon), the word choice "the inheritance" seems to be the more comprehensive and thus the more important of the two.

"Inheritance" can refer to qualities you gain from your parents at your birth, but birth doesn't fit the context of "decisive selection." "Inheritance" also, and more importantly, means property you receive from your parents (or other relative or friend) after their deaths: inheritance is set out in wills, which are read out to heirs after the writer of the will--father, mother, aunt, etc--has been laid to eternal rest during their funeral.

Elie, like all the experienced internees, knows what happens in the camps for "decisive selection": if you are still fit and can work, you are selected for labor, but if you are not fit or are old or ill, you are left behind and selected for death. Elie's father's name appears on a list of persons selected for death. The father knows that these are his last moments with his son and, in his attempt to say and do all the things he must say and do before leaving this earthly life, he hands his knife and spoon to Elie.

The knife and spoon are all that he possesses and they constitute the whole of the inheritance he can hand down to Elie. Yet, since he knows his death is imminent and since he knows Elie will soon be taken from him forever, he can't wait until after his death: he gives Elie his inheritance now, while both are still alive and breathing. The significance of the word choice "the inheritance" is that both father and son know that they must part immediately and that the father will die equally immediately: what would be given by others after burial exchanges warm hands between the fully knowledgeable soon-to-be-dead and the yet-living.  

Wiesel's word choice in describing the "decisive selection" is a way to communicate the terrible condition of life in the death camps. 

At this point in the narrative, Wiesel has established the terror that is such a part of the Holocaust.  Terms like "selection" and "indifference" help to define this reality.  Wiesel has described an inverted world.  It is one where nothing seems to make sense.  The worst of crimes is done with a striking banality, as if it is no big deal.  The idea of "selection" is twisted in how it is meant to choose who lives and who dies.  In this world, Wiesel precisely uses language to communicate horror at the lack of order.

It makes sense that this world is one where fathers and mothers cannot provide for their children. The traditional order has been inverted.  At the moment of a "decisive selection," such an existence is amplified through Wiesel's word choice.  Wiesel's father is afraid that "time was running out." The "rapid" and "confused" speech conveys the extent to which the world of the death camps defies traditional custom.  In other words, the way that Wiesel describes Eliezer's father shows how distorted things are in the Holocaust. This is underscored when Wiesel describes how the father gives the son his "inheritance."  Traditionally, an inheritance is a grand event and accompanied by elaborate displays.  However, in the world of Auschwitz, the father gives the son a spoon and knife.  When Eliezer's father insists that the son "take what I give you," it indicates that while he wishes to give his son so much more as an "inheritance," the Holocaust has robbed this from him. Parents are no longer able to do their duty to their children. The description of Eliezer's father as having "tired eyes, veiled by despair" shows the destruction of sacred and traditional bonds between parents and children is one of the true terrors of the Holocaust.

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