Elie’s spiritual and emotional journey during his transformation throughout the Holocaust made him a stronger person.
During his time at the concentration camp, Elie started losing faith in God, family, and humanity which gave him challenges on his spiritual and emotional journey. On page 34, Elie was thinking, “Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank him for?” This is when Elie first starts to question his faith. He wants to know why God is letting them go through this pain and suffering. In this instance, Elie loses faith in his family. On page 29, the SS commanded, “Men to the left! Women to the right!” Elie started to lose faith in his family once his mother and sister were parted at the beginning of camp because he thought he would never see them again. He then
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In the beginning, Elie’s father was stuck right in front of him and Elie just stood there, this can be found on page 39. He did not do anything because he was scared that the Gypsy would hurt him too. An example of his development would be on page 100 when he said “please don’t throw any more coins.” This shows that he changed because it reminded him of a negative experience he had with the bread in the cattle car, and he wanted the lady to not repeat that experience. As a result, Elie developed mentally from the beginning to now. Also, Elie’s body physically changed. On page 17, Elie went a day without food, and the hunger did not set in just yet. This showed that he was still well nourished. Elie went from being well fed to small rations. He noticed this change in the end when he looked at himself in the mirror. On page 115, Elie looked in the mirror, and he saw a corpse contemplating him. He could barely recognize himself. These examples show Elie’s physical and mental
When Elie was separated from his mother and sister at the beginning of the book Elie was only left with his father. When things got tough, they continued pushing for each other. They made sacrifices for each other and always made sure the other was ok. Elie had lost the rest of his family so his father meant the world to him. At the end of the book this is also taken away from him.
He is afraid if he searched his soul long enough, he would find something to show, but it might be how happy he is that this burden is finally lifted from his shoulders. Elie still does not want to admit to himself he is happy his father died. He can tell that deep within himself, the horrors of the Holocaust have torn him down and stripped him of his emotions, but he doesn’t want to admit it to himself. He is afraid of who he has become. This proves how torn Elie is about his father, and how the terrors of the holocaust have deprived him of his emotions, destroying the bond between him and his
The only thing keeping him living, was his will to help his dad survive. He cared for his dad and his self preservation, while he started as a person that cared about everything, including his full family, not just his dad. He cared also for the jewish religion in the start not the end. In other words, Elie changed because he lost his faith.
Elie, at the start of the book, was completely devoted to God and studied him day and night. He even found a homeless man to teach him about their religion. But when he struggled through the concentration camps, he started to wonder, how could a just god stay so quiet during all the atrocities at the camp. As Elie started to question his faith, he states”For the time, I felt anger rise inside me. Why should I sanctify his name?
(pg 115) Elie had become dehumanized by the Nazi’s and his experience within the camps and was forced to solely focus on the things barely keeping him alive. Due to this, he resembled a skeleton, severely malnourished and ill-looking. He was tattooed with “A-7713” which became his
Elie becomes weak both mentally and physically over the course of the book. His experiences and the death of his father affect him mentally so he believes that, “nothing matters [to me] anymore” (113). The holocaust affected him so much that Elie believes nothing mattered after his father died, what happened to him hurt him so much that he no longer wants to live, and he no longer has hope. Elie is also physically ill, in that he is pale and emaciated from the undernourishment in the camp, he compares himself to a corpse after he sees himself again. The holocaust changed Elie from an unaware child, to a weak young man who had never expected what he experienced.
(Wiesel 7- 8). In these first few pages of the book Elie has lost his
Elie Wiesel, born September 30, 1928 in Sighet, Transylvania, was changed drastically as a person during the events of the Holocaust in Germany. Before the Holocaust began he was just like any other boy living in Romania. How ever his childhood did not last nearly long enough. There are multiple ways a person could be changed during this horrific experience and he was affected by most of them. He changed emotionally, spiritually, and physically.
In this book Elie speaks of his hardships and how he survived the concentration camps. Elie quickly changed into a sorrowful person, but despite that he was determined to stay alive no matter the cost. For instance, during the death
Why should I sanctify His name? The almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank Him for?” (33). Elie held these thoughts in his mind as he saw many being burned alive or killed in other forms around him.
Survival of the fittest The theme of survival of the fittest is shown throughout the memoir Night. Night was written by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. In this memoir Elie explains as well as shows survival of the fittest, by sharing his story of his struggles along with countless other Jews during the holocaust. He illustrated the theme of survival of the fittest in the memoir night through the situations of Elie lying about his age during selection, the Rabbi's son leaving his father, during the death march, and the son killing his father over a crust of bread.
Decision Making by Elie in Night The decisions made by Elie Wiesel in the book Night both positively and negatively impacted his life. These were decisions that the author thought were best for him or for his mother, sister and father. However, the particular decisions made by the boy in Night affected his identity, innocence, and significantly changed his view of life during his experience in the holocaust.
During the holocaust Elie had to overcome a whole lot of things and mature quickly to survive. Then he had to think of things to keep him going; “For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.” Thoughts to keep his head still staying up and to not to be quiver, but to be strong, independent, emotionless. He was trying to stay strong to stay alive and keep going on.
Elie became independent from God and refused to view him as omnipotent, and therefore, Elie and the other inmates believed that“ [they] were masters of nature, masters of the world” (87). With the daunting experience that Elie had undergone, he felt that the camps had utterly devoured his identity and his soul, but because he suffered blisteringly and managed to abide, even if “ [he] was nothing but ashes now, [he] felt [himself] to be stronger than this Almighty to whom [his] life had been bound for so long” (68). Although Elie was at last, liberated from the concentration camp, the rigorous conditions and brutal treatments from the camps has weakened him physically, mentally, and spiritually. Elie, bereft of his faith and soul, looked into mirror for the first time after his liberation, and “from the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating him” (115). Through tormenting sufferings and witnessing the mortifying decimation in the Holocaust, Elie’s faith is eventually dismantled
Chapter One Summary: In chapter one of Night by Elie Wiesel, the some of the characters of the story are introduced and the conflict begins. The main character is the author because this is an autobiographical novel. Eliezer was a Jew during Hitler’s reign in which Jews were persecuted. The book starts out with the author describing his faith.