Themes In Night By Elie Wiesel

There are themes that are seen throughout Night: man versus God, family, hunger and thirst. Elie Wiesel had God from the very beginning all the way to the end by questioning God and His existence for letting such horrific actions performed by the Nazis. His transformation of a resolute believe in God to being angry with God for making a child suffer a hanging to in the end when Elie is pleading with God to be able to stay with his father until the end. In a selection from Night, Elie is ranting to God, “what are You, my God? I thought angrily… why do you go on troubling these poor people’s wounded minds, their ailing bodies” (Wiesel 66). It does not make sense that an omnipotent God would allow His people to be burned, gassed, and beat if God is to be a merciful person.

A moment that presented the bond between Elie and his father was during the train ride at the end, when the gravediggers were removing dead bodies off the car to create space and Elie starts to yell at his father, “Father! Father! They’re going to throw you outside” (Wiesel 99). His father was close to dying on the cattle car since snow was piling on top of everyone and the cold killed people in their sleep, but his father opened his eyes so slightly at the last moment before he was to be thrown off the train. This was not the only traumatic event that Elie was put through on his journey, the selection that had taken place multiple times at the camp to reduce the population. Luckily, Elie had made friends like Tibbi and Yossi that tried to give reassurance and comfort to him, when Elie was scared of his father not making it through