The psychological insight of this chapter confronts the reader with the stubborn selfishness that fuels a weary body. Elie, pushed beyond his ability to cope with hunger, cold, disease, camp routine, and cruelty, loses his powers of concentration and exults in the finality of his father's protracted demise. A stark irony arises from the old man's demand for water and from his calls of "Eliezer," a Hebrew name meaning "God will help." Realism demands that Elie accept the truth that God gives neither aid nor dignity to Buchenwald's victims. In Chlomo's final days, he suffers without comfort, medication, or even safety from brutish fellow inmates. The blame Elie heaps on himself creeps through his mind in insidious fears that his father may have been breathing when he was tossed into the oven and burned to ashes. The ignoble death of a kind humanitarian, deeply loved and revered by the citizens of Sighet, gnaws at Elie, a respectful, dutiful son who regrets that he couldn't answer his father's final summons. In his imagination, the absence of prayers and candles darkens the passage of his father's spirit from Buchenwald to its final rest. On January 29, 1945, energized by release from his father's onerous care, Elie begins to live for himself.
