talking. He would drift through synagogue or through the streets, hunched over, eyes cast down, avoiding people's gaze." (8) The mention of eyes, specifically Moishes', throughout the chapter helps set a tone because at the start of the chapter Moishe is depicted having wide, dreamy eyes showing his happiness and his joy of life. Towards the end of the chapter his eyes are glued to the ground and he would avoid people's gaze depicting his disappointment for the Jewish people who ignored him and his warnings when he escaped the German slave camp.

received a single letter from them. But I lied: "Yes, my mother did hear from them. Reizel is fine. So are the children..." (45) Throughout the story we see characters surviving through these labor camps and their secret is that they never give up hope and focus on taking everything day by day rather than thinking about how long this is going to last for them and how much pain they are going to have to endure. When Elie is confronted by a distant family member who is worried about his family and if they are still alive he has to lie to give him hope and give him a reason to keep fighting to be free from the German camps.

this God in whom I no longer believed.  "Oh God, Master of the Universe, give me the strength never to do what Rabbi Eliahu's son has done." (91) Throughout the last few chapters of the story we have seen Elie go through some serious doubt and loss of faith in the Jewish God and now even after all of the attempts at rebelling against his religion he is still trying to have hope that his God will keep him from being like the Rabbi's son and abandoning his father.

my father. I threw myself on his body. He was cold. I slapped him.  I rubbed his hands, crying: "Father! Father!

Wake up. They're going to throw you outside..." His body remained inert. The two "gravediggers" had grabbed me by the neck: "Leave him alone. Can't you see that he's dead?" 

"No!" I yelled. "He's not dead! Not yet!" And I started to hit him harder and harder. At last, my father half opened his eyes. They were glassy. He was breathing faintly. "You see," I cried. The two men went away." (99) This entire section of page 99 of the novel stand out to me because Elie was persistent to make sure his father did not get thrown off the train and for his father to stay with him. If Elie could not get his father to wake up then he would have been tossed onto the side of the road and they would have left him there to die and Elie would most likely lose motivation to survive.

mob. He was holding one hand to his heart. At first I thought he had received a blow to his chest. Then I understood: he was hiding a piece of bread under his shirt." (101)