Alive but Dead – Term Paper

Character Challenges

In Englander’s Free Fruit for Young Widows and Wiesel’s Night, Tendler gets imaged as one personality who got affected by most cruelty thus leaving him to act by instinct. The story Wiesel’s Night also brings into picture Eliezer whose faith and beliefs got shaken by the hostility faced at the camp. Therefore, both the two stories mainly depict how life experiences may change of life. Further justification on this point gets founded on the story line of both stories; the line revolves the challenges faced by the characters as a result of the hostility of life and cruelty of the war.

Free Fruit for Young Widows presents Professor Tendler as a person who had experienced much from life (Brooks, Geraldine, and Heidi, 285) especially that of the concentration camps during his early years. He mirrored a walking body without a soul, and his life seemed to lack direction. His loss of hope in life also got accompanied by frustrations. The story mentions that before the personality became a professor, he once shot all his commandos in the head thus proving his loss of humanity (Brooks, Geraldine, and Heidi, 281). Many of his critics would argue that his actions got driven by the instincts without the consideration of other people’s feeling. His deprivation of humanity can equally get drawn from the action; he seemed more of a robot than a walking being.

On the other hand, the aspect of how cruelty or a hostile world leading to the destruction of faith and identity gets noted in Eliezer’s questioning of his faith and beliefs. The assertion for the dis- belief mainly gets pegged to the exposure of life hostility. The story notes that child in the noose struggling for between life and death while dying slowly of agony. The tongue was not glazed with his eyes still red. Eliezer questioned the presence of God something he had never done before (Wiesel and Marion, End of Fourth section). The aspect symbolically imaged the death of Eliezer’s innocence faith. The aspect also showed his loss of identity in Christianity because his faith in God was something he never questioned the way he did while leaving the camp. 

Son of Rabbi Eliahou

While struggling with faith, another issue comes to light. The son of Rabbi Eliahou sought for separation from his father because he thought the end was near and the father was becoming weak every single day. Eliezer is heard praying to God to help him not to do according to Rabbi’s son, in his prayer he refers to God as the immortal being in which he no longer believes. The scenario visualizes how a person can get broken when exposed to life hostility. The situation can equally assist in drawing a contrast of the beginning of the story line and the end. At the start before experiencing any cruelty, the character in discussion invested faith upon his father and God, but at the end, the unexpected happened.

Even with the cruelty that the two stories presents, an idea of hope get pointed out in Free Fruit for Young Widows. Tendler gets noted as optimistic of a haven where he can reform and become human again. The Haven seems to be the nanny’s home where there are his families, cows, and goats. He thinks of the farm, the children and every person within the households. Another thought also comes up of the cows still producing milk and the goats chewing the garbage. According to him, that was family, and maybe they still await him (Brooks, Geraldine, and Heidi, 286). Many critics would argue that even with such consideration of having a second home, the nanny seems to have killed that while he treasured. He is, therefore, likely to die the second death because there was nothing left for him. 

The two stories, therefore, qualifies to portray how the hardship which the two characters went through influenced their reasoning and way of doing things. They both lost faith and identity and became empty beings with only souls. Tendler became inhuman, and Eliezer lost trust in God after all the things he witnessed in the camp. The stories also allow us to recognize how cruelty and hostility can break or change the faith of a living being. 

Conclusion

In summary, the two stories In Englander’s Free Fruit for Young and Wiesel’s Night demonstrates how the exposure to cruelty and hostility may interfere with an individual’s faith through the use of two different characters. For example, the first story uses Tendler as its principal character to unfold how the cruelty he went through interfered with his life and ended up becoming a cruel, ruthless person. His cruelty and ruthlessness get depicted in the paper when he shot all his commandos on the head. Wiesel’s Night also uses Eliezer as the main character who underwent hostility, a situation that made him lose faith and trust in both his father and God. Considering how the two stories presented these two characters, it can be concluded that their authors succeeded in conveying their primary intent as discussed in the entire paper.

Works Cited

Brooks, Geraldine, and Heidi Pitlor. The Best American Short Stories 2011: Selected from U.S. and Canadian Magazines. Boston, Mass: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011. Print. 

Wiesel, Elie, and Marion Wiesel. Night. New York: Hill and Wang, 2012. Internet resource.