Wiesel's father says not to worry about having to wear the yellow star. "You won't die of it" Wiesel asks, rhetorically, "Poor father! cont...

I am not sure this is so much an issue of adolescence and Ellie feeling an awkwardness in his relationship with his father; I think it is more an issue of tolerance of the impositions of the government and the shame of having to mark oneself as somehow different outwardly; it is degrading to have to point oneself out in the crowd, and the results of wearing this star was that you would be treated differently. This is a fate that Ellie felt was already bringing a sort of lifelessness to their existence. By saying "Of what then do you die?" Ellie means, perhaps naively, "how could it be worse than identifying me in this way, humiliating me, and limiting my rights? I am already feeling dead from this", whereas Ellie's father merely accepted the reality of the new law, because there seemed to be no use getting upset over something they could not change. After all Ellie's father was right: you don't die of wearing the yellow star, literally, you are simply marked for death. It's a figurative precursor to death, the beginning of a long road towards eventual death, most likely physical, and definitely, inescapably emotional and mental.