Effects Of Adversity On The Human Spirit

Adversity is characterized as a circumstance checked by incident, misfortune, or wretchedness. Whether generally kind or amazingly hurtful, at a few point in their lives, each individual has experienced an adverse circumstance. The hardship is moderately little for most of us, but we still have to persevere our day by day measurements of disappointment and the occasional difficulty. Elie Wiesel’s novel Night outlines this with the main character Elie Wiesel. Initially all individuals are blameless, but it's turmoil and the hardships they confront that cause the profoundly valued ideals to vanish. Not only did 15-year-old Elie have innocence at stake, at the camp Elie had lost confidence in god, and his whole family. Through the character Elie, and my past encounters, reflects the idea that the start and hardship serve as a instrument for the misfortune of self-identity and self-reliance.

In our society, a time comes in our life when innocence is lost as a result of experience or knowledge. Elie Weisel’s memoir Night illustrates this through the memories he has been carrying to this day. At the beginning of his autobiography, he was a young and innocent boy engulfed in his religion from birth. Nevertheless, as soon as the Nazis arrived in his hometown of Sighet, all the jewes in his town were packed into cattle cars, and sent to concentration camps such as Auschwitz and Birkenau. Elie was left with his father, while his sister was taken away with his mother. “Yet that was the moment I left my mother … In a fraction of a second I could see my mother and Tzipora forever… My hand tightened its grip on my father. All I could think about was not to lose him. Not to remain alone” (Page 29-30) Elie was only fifteen years old when he lost his mother and sister. While my personal adversities pale in comparison to the ones Elie was up against, it is still a considerably great example to illustrate that adversities leave a void in your mind. In your life you are faced with hardships constantly, it is what you earn or lose that decides whether the hardship should be overcome. In my past experiences, I have encountered many difficulties for example I was forced to switch high schools to foothill because they kicked me out of my old school and it was very hard trying to adapt to a new high school as a freshman but in the end I overcame the difficulties.

The exposure to the new adversities harbour the possibility of loss of self identity. While Elie could understand the cruel realities of the world and witness them, through the process he lost his entire family and his trust in the lord. My transition to my new high school made me proud and grateful of the friends I made and the things I accomplished, even if I did lose a lot of friends along the way. Adversity has the benefit of producing talents that would be latent under ludicrous situation but only at the price of more precious things.