Asmussen-Eli Wiesel as the victim

In the book Night by Eli Wiesel, Eli is portrayed as the victim throughout most of the novel. He is a young teenager who was deported to Auschwitz with his father. Eli is clearly the victim in the book because he is party of the minority group at the time. Being Jewish during the Nazi regime meant he had no power whatsoever. Besides the fact that his family wasn’t wealthy and he wasn’t well educated, the fact that he was so young was a large factor for him being as easy target to victimize.

Since he is so young he deals with the fact that he is a victim very well. He feels more protected because his father is with him and his father seems to always know what to do. His father is a well respected man in the community whose opinion is always asked for in difficult situations.At the beginning he is naive and thinks that the war will soon be over. Towards the end he has lost hope and is frightened all the time of loosing his father.

While Eli is the victim in this story, it is sometimes difficult for the reader to view him this way because of his actions. When people are going to the front and Eli and his father decide to stay back it could appear to some that Eli is making himself more of a victim than he has to be. He is deciding to be under Nazi control instead of going to combat them. He could be in a position of power but he decides not to be. One scenario in which Eli ceases being the victim is towards the end of the book when his father has given up and is laying in the snow. To the outside reader it may be hard to sympathize with Eli because it is hard to put yourself in the situation in which you would be wishing that your parent is dead. In this situation the reader can no longer relate to him and he becomes less of a victim and more of a victimizer. He has the power to do something, to help his father but he has become selfish. While he does still help him, he has changed. He catches himself wishing that he could keep the soup for himself instead of sharing it. In the end he deals with himself being a victim by focusing only on his needs. He thinks of his survival. At the end of the book however, Eli goes back to being the victim because he describes the guilt that he felt when he was thinking only of himself and not his father. Once again he receives the sympathy of the reader.