Theme Of Faith In Night

The Use of the Theme “Loss of Faith” in Night

The memoir Night, by Elie Wiesel provides insight into the terrors of the Holocaust, a genocide of the Jewish race and has received multiple praises and acclaims. One of the most important aspects of Night that differentiates it from other World War II novels, causing it to receive these praises, is its ability to pull readers in, making them empathize with the characters in the book. Wiesel incorporates the theme of loss of faith in God in order to create this effect, allowing readers to empathize with the traumatic experiences of Holocaust survivors. One example of Wiesel’s use of theme to achieve such an effect is the apparent change in Wiesel’s faith throughout the memoir. Night has been written
…show more content…

Joanne McCarthy has reinforced this concept in her Magill’s Choice: Holocaust Literature where she writes “Innocence died in the camps…the child of faith was journeying from mysticism to anger and doubt of God’s justice” (1), attributing Wiesel’s loss of faith to the death of his innocence. By doing so and making such a point, Wiesel provides the readers with a glimpse of the horrors of the holocaust, appealing to the reader’s pathos and getting them to empathize with the characters in his
…show more content…

In order for the readers, to properly do this and understand the feelings of the characters, the story must first have some credibility to it which in this case, is given by the theme of loss of faith in God. In the Holocaust, while it was a massacre of all non-Aryan races, Hitler particularly targeted the Jews and sought to exterminate them due to their faith. He does this by implementing a plan described by Saul Lerner in his Magill’s Literary Annual 1981 as “a comprehensive program of mass murder” (2). This plan involved first putting the Jews into ghettos, granting them nonperson status and eventually, shipping them to concentration camps. In these concentration camps, the Jews were given inhumane, brutal actions. Not only were the Jews who were not fit to work thrown into the gas chambers or shot, those that were kept alive were worked without any regards to their comfort or rights. Essentially, the Jews weren 't treated as humans due to their faith. This creates a problem in the Jew’s concept of God, a being supposedly all good and all powerful. Such a being could not have ignored the Jews when they were being persecuted due to their belief in Him. The God that the Jews envisioned would have provided help for these Jews