Monday, February 14, 2011

Chapter 8 (pages 104-12): The test

Why does Elie say he "had not passed the test"?

9 comments:

  1. Elie says this because he has lost the desire to fully protect and support his father. Like Rabbi Eliahu’s son, who also “had not passed the test”, he abandons his father. He carelessly leaves his father in the cold during the alert in order to sleep, the only thing that mattered to him. Only until he wakes up he realizes that he had left his father. In search for him, he secretly wishes not to find him. Elie no longer wants the responsibility of caring for his father. Instead he would like to focus on surviving on his own. When he happens to find his father, he gives him the remainder of his soup because his father had not eaten. This is when he realizes that he had not passed the test. In truth, he did not want to give his father his soup. The guilt he feels assures him that he had failed the test.
    -Nancy N.

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  2. Elie has failed. He feels that he can no longer care for his father and believes that his father is more of a burden than a father. He hasn't passed the test in which determines his loyalty and steadfastness to his father and to those he loves. For Elie no longer cares as much for his father as he would of five years ago. Before all the changes. Before all the "trips". Before being different be came a sin. when all was good Elie would pass with flying colors. The circumstances.The circumstances made him fail. The hunger that ate away at his own stomach. The thirst that gnawed at the back of his throat. Death swinging in and out of his life like a crooked pendulum. And yes he feels that he has changed and has gone down a path in which he swore he would never walk. He fears that he has done what he had feared the most. He had left his father to die and thought himself a failure for that.

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  3. Elie no longer feels compassion or sympathy for his father. He has fallen into the trap of being all for himself and caring for no one else just like the Rabbi's son. The only reason he continues to feed and nurture his father is because he knows it is what is expected of him. Deep down, he does not want his father to live and could care less what happened to him. To him, his father was a burden and he wishes to "get rid of [that] dead weight" (Wiesel 101). With his father dead, Elie would not have to worry about anything but his own survival. Elie becomes aware of these selfish feelings and decides he has failed the test. Personally, I feel Elie does somewhat care about his father. Why else would have to even think about whether he cared about him or not? A person who truly did not care would not have even thought twice about leaving their father to die. They would have just done it without any pondering. To me, Elie also shows that he does not want his father to see that he has "given up" on him and the battle for his life. Even though his father insists that he abandon him and let go, Elie refuses and still tries to give his father a little bit of hope and optimism.

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  4. His father is a dead weight to him. Without him, Elie would be able to focus on his own self and maybe find a way to escape or at least live more comfortably. His duty as a son prevents him from making his own life his main priority. Like everyone else has said, he feels as if he has failed his father. Not as a son, but as a family member. I read somewhere that a parent will always love their child in a way no one else will. Yet the child will never love their parents in that same way or with the same amount of feelings. Family members are supposed to unconditionally love and lookout for each other. So far Elie hasn't failed at loving his father, he just doesn't love him enough to look past the fact his father is an obstacle for him. I'm pretty sure if their roles were reversed, things would be extremely different.
    -Genesis

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  5. Elie once saw his father as an idol, a reason to keep moving forward. As he realizes his father is not as strong as he used to be he sees him as dead weight. Knowing that his father would not give up on him Elie feels obligated to care for his father. THen he remembers of the rabbi's son, and how easily it was for him to lose his father. Then feels guilty realizing he could have fed off his fathers rations. He seems not to care that his father dies. What he feared most has happened Elie has lost his father.

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  6. My opinion is that Elie has failed himself. He entered the concentration camp being an independent young adult but now the labor has broken him down to nearly nothing. He went from being a care free, cheerful child to having responsibility to keep himself and his father out of harm's way. He has not been selfless in this situation. He is always second guessing the sacrifices he makes for his father. He is not genuinely looking out for his father; it's his obligation. In one of the previous chapters he hoped and prayed he was not like the Rabbi's son, but he has become far worse. He has not just abandoned his father physically biut mentally and emotionally as well. He only cares about his well being. His father has become a huge burden and is jepardizing his survival. However there is some guilt in Elie's heart for losing interest in his father but in a "Do or Die" enviroment you can only do just enough for youself to get by.
    -KeAmber Green

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  7. The morning when Elie woke up without his father by his side, he did not know what to think. Some hours later, Elie noticed something: he had not passed the test. The test that he was talking about was the same test that the son of Rabbi Eliahu, Zalman, had failed. This test prooved if Elie and Zalman at one pint felt that their beloved ones, in this case both fathers, were just load on their backs. Elie said this because when he noticed his father was not with him anymore, he felt kind of happy because he would make an effort to survive for himself and not help others. Then he notices that the feelings were not that great because he had not truly thought about it, but then the memories came back and he discovered that he had just "failed the test".

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  8. Elie says he "had failed the test" because he had promised to himself not to be selfish and careless like Rabbi Eliahu's son, Zalman, but at the end he gives up. He had promised to himself during the Death March that he would always take care of his dad, but at the end he feels selfish and only thinks about himself. For example, when Elie brings black coffee to his father, Elie gives it halfheartedly, wanting to drink more for himself. He also considers helping his father after listening to what his Blockalteste tells him. "...You could have two rations of bread, two rations of soup..." (111). At the end, because of his selfishness, his father died, and he failed the test he had set up for himself.

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  9. When Elie and his father entered the camp, they would never seperated themselves from each other. They would stay together until they either became free, or died. But the terrible treatment the Nazi gave them started to make them grow more apart. Elie has "fail" because he started to see his father as a burden, just a wieght that he was carrying on his shoulders. This also happened with Rabbi Eliahu's son. He left him because he started to think on his own survival, and did not want to help an old man any more. Because of this action, later on, Elie's father dies, because nobody else was helping him survive. Elie started to think only about him self and he let his father die off, only to survive.

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