Theme of Empathy in Night by Elie Wiesel

Thesis: In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, Wiesel reveals the theme that empathy disappears the closer people are to death through the literary elements of mood, imagery, and setting. 

To begin, Wiesel shows the instant disappearance of empathy using the literary element mood right from the beginning of the book. In Section Two, when Elie and his family are on board the train, they encounter a woman named Mrs.Schachter. Everyone on board is suffocating from the feeling of reality setting in and the cramped space. However, Mrs. Schnater has a different reaction than most people as she experiences a vision of fire and begins shouting. Next, the second time the people on the train are awoken by her shouting, Wiesel explains the experience of, “ Once again, the young men bound and gagged her. When they struck her, people shouted in approval….. She received several blows to the head, blows that could have been lethal. Her son was clinging desperately to her, not uttering a word. He was no longer crying” (26). This quote explains how Mrs.Schanter was beaten for screaming about what she thought was real and how her son didn’t cry this time while she was being beaten. In this quote, Wiesel is showing the disappearance of empathy through everyone’s reactions to Mrs.Schnater. Furthermore, just because Mrs.Schnater was having a difficult time doesn’t mean she deserved what happened to her. Let alone have people cheer that she is being beaten. Humans don’t cheer for death unless they are experiencing it themselves. All in all, Wiesel emphasizes this point further through the fact that Mrs.Schanters own son wasn’t crying anymore. By using words such as “lethal” and “desperately” Wiesel sets the mood for this situation. It shows that the mood is pure darkness. Both of the words above don’t have happy connotations and instead leave the reader with pits in their stomachs. By setting the mood like this, it emphasizes the inhumanity that happened during that train ride. Overall, the mood of the situation above revealed the theme that death pushes people away from empathy. 

Next, Wiesel shows the removal of empathy between people in the same families through imagery. When Elie and his father decide to evacuate, they encounter a place to sleep along the way. However, going to sleep means death. Later, when Elie and his father were trying not to go to sleep, Rabbi Eliahu comes in and asks if anyone has seen his son which Elie and his father both reply no. However, Elie remembers something and recalls, “ ...His son had seen him losing ground, sliding back to the rear of the column. He had seen him. And he had continued to run in front, letting the distance between them become greater” (91). This quote explains to the reader that Rabbi Eliahu didn’t actually lose his son. Instead, his son saw him losing ground and drift to the back of everyone but his son continued to run anyway. This quote relates directly to the theme because it shows how when people are pushed to such harsh circumstances, they begin to focus on one thing only, survival. His son saw Rabbi Eliahu growing weaker and thought that if he continued to take care of him, his chances of survival would diminish. Moreover, even in families, empathy disappears. The theme is also revealed through imagery in this quote. By Wiesel using the phrases “sliding back to the rear of the column” and “distance between them becoming greater” gives the reader a vivid image of what is happening. The audience can clearly picture the conditions the Jews were in. These two phases not only represent the physical distance between them but also the emotional distance and the loss of empathy. To be able to see your own family struggling and not help them takes some serious emotional distance for that to even be a thought. As the Jews were running toward their death, there were no signs of empathy in anybody. Everyone was solely focused on surviving. As you can see, through imagery, Wiesel demonstrates that the push toward death lessens empathy. 

Lastly, Wiesel reflects on his own experience of his empathy escaping through the literary element setting. At the end of the book, Elie and his father arrive at the camp Appelplatz. Here, Elie’s father begins to get very sick with dysentery and grows weaker every day. Everyone keeps telling Elie that he should give up on his father and that he should prioritize himself. Also, Elie’s father gets beaten because he can’t get up to relieve himself and doesn’t hear what the officers are telling him. One morning Wiesel wakes up and states, “ I woke up at dawn on January 29. On my father’s cot there lay another sick person. They must have taken him to the crematorium…..No prayers were said over his tomb….I did not weep….And deep inside me, if I could have searched the recesses of my feeble conscience, I might have found something like: Free at last!” (112). This quote tells the audience that Wiesel woke up on the 29th of January to figure out his father had passed away. This also tells us that over his father’s grave everyone had given up on saying prayers, lighting candles, etc., and instead did nothing. Additionally, Wiesel recalled that he didn’t cry but instead felt freedom. This quote shows how even someone who is close to their father, like Wiesel, can feel free by his father’s death. This tells the reader that toward the end of his father’s life, his father was a burden to Wiesel and Wiesel actively knew that. Hence, the feeling of freedom that came with his death. This shows the direct connection between empathy and death. This quote shows the theme through the literary term setting. It does this by showing us how Wiesel remembers the time and date he woke up and describing what he saw when he woke up. Immediately, showing the audience a date at a time tells that something major is about to happen. Also, the word “dawn” really allows the reader to imagine the condition of what it was like when Wiesel woke up. Wiesel describes what he woke up to as another person being there instead of his father. This gives the reader an exact picture of what Wiesel is going through from the date to exactly what the space looks like. Then, this can give the reader a feeling of what Wiesel might have felt when he saw another person laying there. Clearly, the direct connection of death pushing people away from empathy is shown through the literary element setting.