Night by Elie Wiesel

Night by Elie Wiesel

Victor Frankl’s quote, “an abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior,” has great relevance in scenes from the novel Night by Elie Wiesel.
The quote is glaringly evident in the scene in which a group of starved prisoners fight for a piece of bread. A child goes to the point of killing his own father for it. Since he is blinded by hunger, he isn’t even able to realize that he is killing his own parent. However cruel this may seem, it can be justified because a person’s, let alone a child’s, prime instinct is to survive.
Another more hidden but deeper example is Eliezer’s inner struggle to maintain his faith. In the beginning of the book, Eliezer’s life is guided by God, and he has no doubts that God’s love is unconditional. However, this soon changes after Eliezer experiences the cruelty of the Holocaust. At some points, he even believes that God may not exist at all if the world can be so disgusting and merciless. Despite this, it cannot be said that Eliezer lost all faith, because if he had, then he would not be questioning God’s intentions. Therefore, this can also be seen as an abnormal reaction to an abnormal circumstance. For who has the right to say that loss of faith in such a traumatic event is abnormal? It could be arguable that loss of faith is normal behavior in an abnormal and cruel situation.
Under abnormal circumstances, people behave in abnormal ways, as proved by true scenes in Night. The child fighting for the bread behaved in a way that could be reasoned as normal - an act for survival when being pushed to the brink of death. Eliezer lost, but also kept, his unyielding faith during the horrors he faced - horrors that any normal human being with rights and dignity should never have to encounter in their lifetime.