Elie Wiesel’s “Night” and Roberto Benigni’s “ Life is Beautiful” Analysis

In both Elie Wiesel’s “Night” and Roberto Benigni’s “ Life is Beautiful” the element of chance played a major role in the outcome of each character. It impacts the paths of each family in negative and positive way’s. Throughout each family’s time in the concentration camps they are so heavily influenced by greed, anger and corruption that without the role of chance, hope and love surviving would have been impossible. With displays of unknowingly running from the enemy to randomly being selected by the enemy, chance changes their lives forever.
In the beginning of Life Is Beautiful Guido’s son Giosue refuses to take a bath for his mother. This later turns out to be a positive impact of chance on this little boy. In the concentration camp Giosue is asked to strip and take a shower which would have actually been a gas shower intending to kill him.
Instead he runs off and hides and does not get into that shower. Similarly in the book Night, Eliezer’s father is selected to be killed because of his emaciated and malnourished body in the Buna labour camp. Luckily there was a second selection among the condemned which allowed him to go back to the barracks. Both of these examples portray a positive outcome of chance that lead to their success in the camps.

When The Germans received new’s of the Russians advancing into the Buna camp they started killing everyone. At this point in the book Eliezer is in the infirmary due to a foot injury. When the Russians got even closer the entire camp was evacuated and most were slaughtered.
In fear of being killed Eliezer and his father joined the evacuation even though ELiezer was still hurt. Little did they know that if they had stayed in the infirmary they would have been rescued by the russians day’s later. This negative impact of chance prevented Eliezer’s father from surviving the holocaust.