Elie Wiesel, author and protagonist of the novel Night, survives through the many horrors that were the concentration camps of Auschwitz, Gleiwitz, Buna and Buchenwald. This telling of the Holocaust through Elie’s eyes starts out in the Transylvanian town of Sighet, then moves north to the reception centre for Auschwitz, Birkenau. We then follow Elie and his father, Chlomo, to Buna, Poland, and then to Gleiwitz, followed by Buchenwald, where his father dies. Elie’s kind heart, conservative nature, loyalty and love are all tried as he struggles to gain time to live for Chlomo, as well as himself, luckily managing to keep them alive for longer than he expects. This fifteen-year-old Jewish boy loses it all: his faith, his family, his love for the human race and even himself.

Elie’s kind heart and disbelief at anything out of the ordinary turns around and slaps him in the face. Moishe the Beadle, a poor religious man and Elie’s teacher of the Jewish religion, is taken and forced to dig ditches for the Germans, along with other foreign Jews. He tells of babies being used as target practice, while other Jews are shot dispassionately. But, Elie does not believe that humans can be so cruel, and turns a blind eye towards Moishe’s pleadings to evacuate while they can. The villagers pity Moishe and think him mad, not truly understanding the horror the world is coming to, therefore, sealing the fate of the entire town of Sighet.

Elie truly loves his father; Chlomo is the only living family left after his mother and sisters die. In addition to fighting like an animal to get his father some coffee, he also pleads with a doctor to save his father’s life, to help with his dysentery. Elie “protested in vain” (109) when the doctor told him and his father to leave to make room for others. However, near the end of the novel, he is aware that while giving some of his soup to his father, he “was doing it grudgingly” (107). But still, he loves him more than anything else. When his father dies in the concentration camp of Buchenwald, Elie is consumed with grief and guilt that he did not answer Chlomo when he called for Elie in the middle of the night. That morning, Elie finds him lying in his bunk, dead.

Somehow, between a combination of sheer luck and a raw determination to live, Elie survives not one, not two, not three but fourt" separate concentration camps. However, his determination to survive is not only aimed towards himself; he fights his way to the coffee cauldron “like a wild beast" (106) to get a single cup of coffee for his dying father. Among their many fellow Jewish prisoners, very few survive, Elie being among the lucky to do so. But, it is not necessarily all luck. The concentration camp rule is ‘Survival of the Fittest’. Elie just happens to be one of the fittest.

Over six million Jews die during World War Two. Elie Wiesel is one of the lucky few who manage to survive. Elie’s determination and luck keeps Chlomo and him together, and although Chlomo eventually dies, Elie stays with his father, loyally, only leaving him at the very end, when he knows that he will not survive no matter what happens. Although the Holocaust takes the innocence and pride away from many, Elie continues to be a kind-hearted and conservative young man even until the novel ends.