The night was just like any other night in a concentration camp for Eli and the others, with only one difference, three men where hanged. After the hangings everyone except the three dead men ate dinner and no one thought about them. Then another night a little boy was hanged. Eli along with everyone else was shocked and no one who ate that night enjoyed their meal. It was such an atrocity, for such a little angle of a boy to be hanged.
When the three men were hanged Eli really did not care to watch them die. It was not that he was heartless, it was that he thought the three men deserved to be hanged. They stole soup from everyone else. If those men stole soup every night there might not have been enough soup for everyone else. After the three men were hanged all of the prisoners had to look each of them in the eyes as they walked to the cafeteria to receive their rations. The soup tasted like it did any other night, except that it was thicker than normal, and this was good to have thick soup.
This was different than the night the little boy, that everyone loved, was hanged. The boy was nice to everyone. He never hurt any of them. He had been accused of stealing arms. So they hanged him. Eli and the other prisoners were shocked when they saw who was going to be hanged that night after they arrived from the daily labor. When everyone saw the boy they started to ask, " Where is God?". The boy was so light that when they pulled the chair out from under him, his body was not heavy enough to break his neck. So he hanged there until he was strangled to death. This took so long. After he finally died, everyone had to walk past the boy and look him straight in the eyes. This was horrible for everyone. They all had to look into the nice beautiful young boys face.
After the hanging the soup tasted like corpses. Eli could not help but to see the little boys face in everyone’s eyes that night. None of them could stop thinking about what had just happened. An innocent little boy had just been hanged. If someone as nice as that little boy could be hanged, then any of them could be hanged.
In Eli’s mind, the difference between the two different hangings was that the three men deserved what they received as their punishment. The little boy did not deserve any of it. It was like he was being punished for the Germans losing the war. It was literally done in cold blood just like the mass murders. The three men stole from all of the starving men. Yes maybe they were starving too, but so was everyone else. It was not right for the little boy to be hanged, because instead of removing someone like the three stealers from the camp, they removed a young boy who liked and loved everyone else. Eli could not understand why this had been done because instead of helping, they hurt the camp by taking such a nice boy away from it.