Loss Of Religion In The Book Night By Elie Wiesel

After living through the Holocaust, Elie lost his devotion and faith in God. To Elie, God was everything to him prior to the traumatizing experience. Every day he would pray and devoted his life to worshiping

While also making him cold, and almost unsympathetic. Elie was a smart and very religious boy. He believed God was the one thing he could count on. But soon he became a god-fearing man, who could not understand why something of such horror would happen to such an innocent family. In the beginning of the novel, the author

God had not helped Elie even after he would sing his praises, “We needed to show God that even here, locked in hell, we were capable of singing His praises.” Elie was tired of God’s silence, he did not show him mercy with all that he endured. The destruction, the death, the conditions ruined his faith and any hope he had

Elie’s action shows he no longer put his full trust in God. The most important things he holds dearly, is his father and his faith in God. To fight against the evil and protect his father, Elie needs God to answer their prayers, but He kept

At one point, Elie uttered, "Oh God, Master of the Universe, in your infinite compassion, have mercy on us. . .”(p.20). Grounded by the idea of faith in his God, that He is everywhere, and that His divinity touches every aspect of his life. However, he was forced to witness the brutal reality of evil and suffering that the Germans were doing to the Jews. When he began to question his faith in his loving God, “Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes”(p.34).

The Holocaust was an period of time where Nazi Germany committed an act of genocide against Jewish people. During the Holocaust Jews from Germany, Poland, and other countries in Europe were deported to concentration camps throughout Germany where they received brutality, dehumanization, and loss of faith everyday. Night, by Elie Wiesel is a record that recounts the atrocities he experienced during the Holocaust. The book describes the harsh conditions of the concentration camps, including the brutal treatment of prisoners and the horrific acts of violence committed by the anti semitic SS officers. Through his personal experiences, Wiesel highlights the devastating impact of systematic oppression and dehumanization, ultimately leading to a profound loss of faith in humanity.

Throughout the memoir as a result of his experiences, Elie goes through profound transformations physically since prisoners in the camp are not taken care of, emotionally as he is forcibly desensitized to barbarity, and spiritually because he questions why his God

At the beginning of this novel Elie was desperate to learn about God. " 'Why do you pray?' he asked after a moment. Why did I pray?

This describes Elie’s thoughts after witnessing the bodies of innocent Jewish children being cremated in front of him. He also doubted why he had been chosen to be alive but not others, and felt a sense of guilt. This horrific experience left Elie in shock and scarred him. It made him lose the faith in God that he once had because how could God let such inhumane events occur? Not only did he lose faith but also became dehumanized and would never be able to go back to the person he once was before.

“Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my god and my soul and turned my dreams to dust…” (pg 32). Elie did everything he could to save himself and repeatedly asked God to help him and take him out of his misery “Why should I bless his name? The eternal lord of the universe, the all-powerful and terrible, was silent… (pg 31). Elie is confused because he doesn’t understand why God could let such a thing happen. “I did not deny god’s existence, but I doubted his absolute

The most important reason to study the Holocaust is to prevent history from repeating itself and to show the importance of preserving as much peace and faith in humanity as possible. The senseless murder of five to six million innocent people is something that society can never allow. Elie Wiesel is a survivor of the Holocaust, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and the author of the book Night. In his book Wiesel gives an inside view of what it was like to live through that horrific time by vividly describing the killing, pain, and suffering the he witnessed and experienced himself. Wiesel convinces the readers to preserve any peace and faith that there is in the world.

Elie has many internal conflicts, the largest is with God. At the beginning of Night, Elie is seriously studying the Talmud, putting specific focus on the mysticism of the Jewish faith. Elie's father is not only a devout Jew, he is a person to whom people come for advice. Elie's faith is not only a comfort to him, it connects him with not only his father, but the people of his community. He takes tremendous pride in his studies because that is how he was raised and it is all he knows, which is why the horror of seeing his fellow Jews being systematically exterminated by the Nazis makes him question the very existence of God.

Perhaps with an even more rooted belief in his existence and divinity than in the beginning, sort of like he’s been shaped and steered by the egregious events in his life to a point where he finally gains “the strength to ask him (God) the real questions”(5). Elie’s journey with his faith can be described as not completely losing the belief in God’s existence, but at many times questioning and doubting his goodness. A passage describes Elie as “one of God's chosen;” and “ from the time he began to think, he lived only for God”(Foreword 3). This quote from the foreword possibly answers the question posed in the thesis. The bigger question all readers and even the characters need to ask themselves is, ‘how does one keep his faith and handle the death/resurrection of God in the soul of a child who suddenly faces absolute evil?’

Elie, once so faithful, is one of the first to lose faith in God due to the horrific sights he sees. After witnessing the bodies of Jewish children being burned, Wiesel writes, “Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever” (34). He quite understandably has begun to doubt that his God is with him following the sight of the supposedly chosen people’s bodies being unceremoniously burned. Elie, though, was perhaps not a member of the masses with this belief; in fact, some men were able to hold on to their beliefs despite these horrendous sights. Also near the middle of the book, Wiesel reflects on the faith of other Jews in the face of these events, saying that “some of the men spoke of God: His mysterious ways, the sins of the Jewish people, and the redemption to come.

Suffering not only forces people to make inhumane decisions but it also causes people to lose hope and give up on themselves. In this section of the book, Elie describes a time where he was devastated to see his father beaten and hurt in the camps. Throughout his time in the camps, Elie saw and heard the abuse that was given to people in the camp killing his hope. The biggest turning point in the story was when he saw his father getting beat. When Idek “began beating [Elie’s father] with an iron bar … [Elie’s] father simply doubled over under the blows, but then [Elie's father] seemed to break in two like an old tree struck by lightning”