In Chapter 6, how does Juliek express himself before slipping into the grips of death? Why would he choose to do this even though death is imminent?

On page 111 of the Hill and Wang publication of Night, Elie Wiesel describes his fathers death. Elie's father spends his last breaths calling to his son asking for water. If he was actually choosing to do this, and not simply reacting to death, it was his last effort to speak to his son.  It is made obvious throughout the experience that Elie and his father were all each other had, and at the end of his life his son was his last concern and last thought.

The theme of survival is prevalent here.  Another inmate tells Elie to take his father's rations.  Elie criticizes himself for even considering this.  He compares himself to the rabbi's son, who may have abandoned his father to survive. Throughout the novel, it is made apparent that normal human thoughts, feelings, and relationships are abandoned in the camps in favor of survival.  The reader very easily sympathizes with Elie in his brief moment of weakness because the reader has been desensitized by the end of the story along with Elie. His father's death is not the cataclysmic event that it seems it would be in the beginning.