Night is a powerful memoir that recounts the experiences of a young Jewish boy named Elie Wiesel during the Holocaust. The story is a harrowing account of the atrocities that took place during this dark time in history, and it highlights the resilience and strength of the human spirit. One of the major themes that runs throughout the book is the struggle with faith that Elie Wiesel faces as he witnesses the horrors of the concentration camps. This essay will explore the evolution of the main character's faith throughout the memoir, examining the ways in which it is tested and ultimately restored. Elie Wiesel's faith is initially strong at the beginning of the memoir. He is deeply religious and believes in God's power and love. However, as he is forced to witness the atrocities of the Holocaust, his faith is tested in profound ways. He is confronted with the brutal reality of evil and suffering, and he begins to question how a loving God could allow such atrocities to occur. This struggle is particularly evident when he witnesses the hanging of a young boy and wonders how God could allow such a thing to happen. This experience shakes his faith to its core and marks the beginning of his struggle with faith. …show more content…
He becomes increasingly disillusioned with the idea of a loving God as he sees the horrors of the concentration camps unfold around him. He wonders why God would allow such suffering and why he would remain silent in the face of such evil. He also feels abandoned by God, as he watches his fellow prisoners die around him and wonders why he has been spared. This struggle is particularly evident when he loses his father and feels completely alone in the world. He wonders if there is any meaning or purpose to his suffering and whether there is any hope for the
Before he was ever sent to the camps, he was asked why he prayed to which he thought it was a “strange question,” (Wiesel 4) it was as if asking “Why did I live? Why did I breathe?” (4) as he explains. Though later experiencing such terrors in the camps, he often compares them to hell on earth. Through the novel he switches from blaming his god to humanity for such horrors, he early on claims that he will never “forget those moments that murdered my god and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.”
Since the Nazis try to drain the mental well-being of the prisoners, Elie Weisel loses his sense of identity within the fence of the concentration camp. During the end of the Jewish year, Weisel describes himself as, “an observer, a stranger” (68). As Elie survives the camp and sees the atrocities, he loses his faith in God. He has no more strong beliefs and is more of a bystander in life. Elie believes he is nobody.
However, when he witnesses the horrific events inside of the camps all he can think of doing is to question why. Questioning as for what have the Jews done to deserve such severe punishments, why were so many of his people being massacred,
He is having a hard time staying true to his faith while going through such pain. Before the Holocaust, he only saw God as a forgiving and merciful God. He said to himself, “How could I say to Him: Blessed be thou, Almight, Master of the Universe, who chose us among all nations to be tortured day and night, to watch our fathers, our mothers, our brothers end up in furnaces” (67). He does not realize God can be a harsh and challenging God as well.
He came upon so many experiences that it made him come from being very religious to doubting if God even existed. I talk about his faith because, to me, this is the most impacting way of losing his humanity. He starts to lose it when he first saw the hanging of the young boy, in front of all the other Jews who also questioned God’s existence. “What are you my God? I thought angrily…
Furthermore, while living in a concentration camp named “Buna”, Elie bears witness to the heartless hanging of a young boy whose death left sadness in the eyes of many. Overhearing a man say “For God’s sake where is God ?” Elie’s innervoice said “Where He is ? This is where-- hanging here from this gallows...”(65). Wiesel, utilizing the cruelty of the Nazis, portrays that the killing of the young boy evokes such raw sadness and pain that it causes Elie to feel as if the Nazis had killed God himself.
Many of the relationships change throughout the novel. One of the relationship he has that changes is with God. As he realizes what is happening to all of the people in the concentration camps he grows farther and farther away from god. He questions himself why didn 't God stop all of this murdering and torture.
Witnessing the atrocities committed by the Nazis and experiencing the loss of his family and friends, Eliezer begins to question the existence of a benevolent God. He reflects on this internal struggle, stating, "Blessed be God's name? Why, but why would I bless Him? Every fiber in me rebelled. Because He had thousands of children burned in His pits?
The journey of Elie Wiesel in Night is not just a story about survival, but also a story of alteration as he grapples with the underlying questions of identity, religion, and faith. The holocaust was a genocide that sadly killed 6 million Jews. Luckily, Elie Weisel was not one of them. Even though Elie’s beliefs concerning his relationship with god varied throughout the novel, He overcame the harsh conditions and got liberated. As a result of what Elie undergoes during the Holocaust, the changes in his religious beliefs demonstrate the transformative power of trauma.
Going through hard experiences in life can transform a person’s relationship with God. In Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, he writes about how his faith in God is altered as a result of his experience in the Holocaust. Before the war, Elie’s relationship with God is straightforward: He has absolute, complete faith in God. Over the course of the memoir, he develops a more mature relationship with God, in which Wiesel continues to believe in God but expresses his anger and doubt.
The author shows how terrifying it was to be in the camps but also how faith can help you get through those tough times. Religion and faith can shape a person's form in different ways either a good or bad way. The book shows how these camps can use a person's humanity, and How it can affect their religion. Eliezer and his family got captured and taken to camps, while some died and others were injured. Eliezer had to use his faith in god to know they would come out alive even if he had second thoughts.
When faced with a crisis, most people lose faith in everything they have. This is what took place in Jewish lives during the Holocaust. Those who were forced into concentration camps were starved, worked to death, beaten, tortured, and many of them were unable to survive. Even though they went through hell and back, there were people who sustained their faith and helped others. Most prisoners in the concentration camp shut down because they were pushed way beyond their comfort zones, while others continued to fight because they decided that their will to live was much stronger than the threats they faced.
He informs them of what was going on in the holocaust, while persuading them to change their mindsets to help those who are being treated like animals and being slaughtered or tortured for their satisfaction. To tell people not to just stand by while people get treated unfairly due to race or anything for that matter and stand up to the injustices that people were facing. “Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a response. Indifference is not a beginning; it is an end.
Because of how he behaves in the narrative, particularly how he was kidnapped from his home and imprisoned in death camps, he establishes his orphan status. He also endured all the sufferings brought on by the Holocaust. Sadness overwhelms him, and all he wants is to get back home. “ Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned
Within a world that has endured so much tragedy, and so many crippling hardships, people are often forced to consider how exactly they are going to handle the adversity that they are faced with. Do they run at it head on and recklessly attempt to deal with it? Do they lose faith with their religion and their God? Or do they simply pray, and hope that amongst all of their misery that something good will come of it and a light will be found in the end? Those are the hard decisions that people are forced to make on the daily, and maybe the questions that we have, or the lack of faith we endure is what makes us stronger at the end of the day.