Understanding Of Suffering Essay Research Paper Understanding — страница 2

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the suffering must have been like for the characters. The suffering must actually be experienced in order to fully understand it. A severe case of suffering takes place in Elie Wiesel?s Night. Wiesel wrote Night as an account of what he saw and what he endured throughout the Holocaust of World War II. The pain and suffering inflicted in the Jewish concentration camps remains as one of the greatest atrocities ever committed against man. Eliezer, the young boy in the story, witnesses this all first hand and tells us of the great suffering that occurred. There are so many gruesome instances of misery given throughout the account that they are far to numerous to give an example of each. I can only begin to crack the surface of what type of anguish the Jews were put through in his

account. First of all, the Jews were simply being disposed of as if they were not human beings at all. During his first night in the camps, Eliezer saw perhaps one of the most horrendous things a person could be made to witness. Babies were being thrown into a ditch of fire to be eliminated. Not far from us, flames were leaping up from a ditch, gigantic flames. They were burning something. A lorry drew up at the pit and delivered its load?little children. Babies! Yes, I saw it?saw it with my own eyes?those children in the flames. (Is it surprising that I could not sleep after that? Sleep had fled from my eyes.) (Elie Wiesel, Night, 30) It is simply inconceivable how something like this could happen. Working in camps with little to no food left many prisoners absolutely hopeless.

There were no happy times, only suffering and constant fear of death. This left many people doubting whether God himself even existed. As Eliezer thinks back on a hanging he witnessed, he remembers a man asking ?Where is God? Where is He?? (Night, 61). The fact that many men lost all solace in God only magnifies how great their suffering must have been. In fact, oftentimes throughout the story, a person?s desperation turns him into an animal, completely without morals. Instead of commiserating with one another, they turn against each other hoping that their taking advantage of another will help them survive. There is even a time in which a boy beats his own father to death so that he may have a chunk of bread to eat (Night, 96). Never could anyone even claim to understand the

suffering that each of these individual Jews went through. A person must have experienced the absolute horrors that occurred during the Holocaust in order to fully understand their suffering. Anyone who claims that they can understand the suffering that these people experienced is quite simply not telling the truth. Perhaps they know that it was absolutely horrible, and that it was far worse than any type of suffering that they have gone through, but they do not fully understand the pain that the Jews experienced. This is an excellent example of how only the person who goes through the suffering fully understands it. Fortunately, throughout my life I have not encountered the type of suffering that occurs in Agamemnon or the type of suffering that is contained within Night. I have

been lucky, and my suffering has only been mild. It is, however, unique to myself. In the winter of 1991 my grandfather became very ill, and he was placed in the hospital for several weeks. Unfortunately, I was only allowed to visit him once because I was still fairly young. We were very close. Because he was so ill, he was only able to squeeze my finger and rub my hand during the visit. Nevertheless, I could see how much joy I had brought him. After I left the room, he struggled to write me a short letter telling me how much he loved me. I read it over and over again when I got home from the hospital. The thought that he could actually die kept me awake the entire night crying. I still have the letter today and it brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it. About a week

later it actually happened. My grandfather died on Christmas Eve. It was only one day before I was going to see him again. I was devastated. I couldn?t believe that he was actually gone. It hurt me so deep inside that I couldn?t even approach the casket at his funeral. People can see that it hurt me badly, they can try to put themselves in my shoes, and they can even remember what it was like when their grandfather died. This, however, does not allow them to fully understand what was going on inside of my head. Only I know my feelings and only I know exactly how his death affected my life. No one person can ever fully understand what kind of suffering I went through at that time. Not Agamemnon, not Clytemnestra, not even Eliezer can completely understand it. Just as I cannot