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Night and Day:
Elie Wiesel's Descent into Darkness versus Viktor Frankl’s Discovery of Light
Imagine. Over the course of a few days, your identity as a human being has been
stripped, and all friendships, family relationships and professional successes are gone.
Everything you once knew has disappeared and has been replaced with agony. This was reality
for the people who suffered through the Holocaust. In the book, Night, Elie Wiesel recounted
how he lost his family and experienced other horrors while he was imprisoned in the ghetto and
in concentration camps as a fourteen-year-old. Similarly, in the book Man’s Search for
Meaning, Viktor Frankl described being a neurosurgeon with a family one day and being treated
like an animal the next. Although Elie Wiesel and Viktor Frankl both recounted similar
experiences while imprisoned in concentration camps, their outlooks on life underwent very
different transformations during the beginning, middle, and end of their imprisonment.
At the beginning of their experiences, both Wiesel and Frankl went through periods of
denial. When first confined in a ghetto, Wiesel had a naive outlook on life. While he knew that
evil existed and the war was raging, he maintained the mindset that nothing terrible would
happen to him or his family. To illustrate, Wiesel mentioned that “little by little life returned to
‘normal’”, and people thought that “[they] would remain in the ghetto until the end of the war”
(Wiesel 12). Although the world was collapsing all around him, Wiesel convinced himself that
everything was going to be all right. After the fact, Wiesel said, “The ghetto was ruled by
neither German nor Jew; it was ruled by delusion” (12). In other words, Wiesel, although a
prisoner, had been able to maintain his previous happy-go-lucky nature up to this point. This
delusion played a large role in Wiesel’s eventual loss of hope and faith in God.
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While Frankl was also in a state of denial at the beginning of his imprisonment, he
nevertheless had an underlying understanding of what was really happening. Initially, Frankl and
all the other prisoners went through a state in which “nearly everyone in our transport lived
under the illusion that he would be reprieved, that everything would yet be well” (Frankl
11). Like Wiesel, Frankl thought that everything would be all right and that he would be saved
at the last second. However, in contrast to Wiesel, Frankl developed an underlying understanding
of his situation. He explained this while being forced to shower: “the illusions some of us still
had were destroyed one by one, and then, quite unexpectedly, most of us were overcome by a
grim sense of humor” (29). At this moment, Frankl realized that while he still was slightly
ignorant of his situation, the problem was far more serious than anyone had thought. In contrast
to Wiesel, however, Frankl found coping mechanisms such as humor in otherwise difficult
circumstances.
As the war progressed, both Wiesel and Frankl’s outlooks on life changed rapidly but
differently. Wiesel began to lose his fundamental faith and his hope in life. At the beginning of
his imprisonment, he would often pray in an attempt to find solace. However, when he
witnessed a hanging of two men and a boy, he said, “Where is [God]? This is where--hanging
here from this gallows...“ (Wiesel 65). As a boy who previously had strong faith, this statement
has significant weight. Divine love and goodness had died a violent death in Wiesel’s
eyes. That night, after the hanging, Wiesel described how “the soup tasted like
corpses”(65). Food for prisoners was a precious commodity, and the fact that he was equating
one of his final comforts as tasting like death conveyed an utter loss of hope. After witnessing
death and having all disillusions dissipate, Wiesel saw the world in a different and negative light.
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On the other hand, midway through Frankl’s imprisonment, he began to find joy in small
things. While he likewise witnessed death and other terrible occurrences during his time in
concentration camps, Frankl could find hope, unlike Wiesel. Frankl illustrated this ability when
he was forced to do hard labor at Auschwitz. While working, he soon found that if he could
remember his wife, he was filled with light and hope although he realized she might be dead. He
stated, “nothing could touch the strength of my love, my thoughts, and the image of my beloved”
(Frankl 50). In this moment Frankl showed he could find hope and escape even while being
forced to complete arduous tasks. While Frankl’s situation was still bleak, he was able to
maintain a form of positivity which turned into hope.
Finally, at the end of the war and their time in prison, Wiesel and Frankl had experienced
drastic paradigm shifts. In the final stages of his imprisonment, Wiesel had sunk into night,
having lost his faith in God and ability to feel basic human emotions. He expressed this many
times both verbally and through his actions. For example, when he was first imprisoned, Wiesel
was relieved to have his father with him, as everything else from his former life had been
stripped from him. However, as Wiesel’s time as a prisoner progressed, his father’s company
swiftly changed from a comfort to a burden. Wiesel saw his father as hindering his own survival,
as his father would consistently get in trouble with the German guards and capos for petty things
like not working hard enough. After his father died, Wiesel said that all he could feel was his
father’s death had made him “free at last!” (Wiesel 112). At this time, Wiesel had lost all moral
sense since the death of his father came as a relief. He had no hope for his future. Wiesel’s
goodness had been squeezed out of him by the end of the war, and his inability to find a
consistent source of hope left him empty as he struggled for survival.
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In contrast, Frankl had learned to find meaning, hope, and purpose in life by the end of
the war. Even after all he had seen and experienced, he realized that if he could simply find a
purpose, he could endure the trials and survive. Human joy was relative to the situation one was
placed in. Frankl illustrated both these points when he offered solace to his fellow inmates
towards the very end of their imprisonment: “I had to make the effort and use this unique
opportunity. Encouragement was now more necessary than ever” (Frankl 89). Frankl didn’t have
to help those around him, but he took it upon himself to be a light and to offer hope to his fellow
inmates. By doing so, he was in reality helping himself because it helped him maintain his moral
compass. Even though he had been numbed by the atrocities in concentration camps, Frankl had
found light in the darkest times.
Wiesel and Frankl both experienced inhumane treatment and the loss of identity while
they were prisoners. However, the main difference between the two was their ability to rebuild
themselves over the course of their experiences. Wiesel and Frankl had both lost all that was
important to them, but Wiesel could never rise above the darkness. On the other hand, Frankl
realized that while his circumstances were extremely tough, he could choose his attitude about
how he was going to respond to the difficulties he faced. He chose to find hope, which brought
light into his bleak life. This ability to create a purpose and generate hope rather than be
overwhelmed by circumstances can help a man survive morally and physically even when
stripped of all that is important to him.
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Works Cited
Frankl, Viktor E. Man's Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy. Simon &
Schuster, 1984.
Wiesel, Elie. Night. Translated by Marion Wiesel, Hill And Wang, 2006.