discuss mans nature in the face of overwhelming odds.

Man does different things. In the novella Night, Elie describes people who both give up and people who fight on. I think, however, plain luck has much to do with this equation as well. Whether a person got selected to go to the ovens, shot because a guard was in a bad mood or favoured because a certain guard shared a hometown is completely luck. Having understood that, most people do what it takes to live. This novel is so full of examples of both loss of will and tenacious will that it seems a little silly to pick one incident. It's a pretty small book, just pick a chapter and I promise you will find something!