Optimism In Night By Elie Wiesel

1166 Words5 Pages

People’s actions have a significant impact on an individual's perception of life. Whether in verbal, or physical form, it can completely alter one's beliefs and optimism. In Night, Elie Wiesel explores the devastating impact of the Holocaust on the faith of the prisoners; It illustrates how the dismay of the concentration camps and the cruelty of the Nazi regime can shatter even the strongest of beliefs in God, humanity, and oneself. Incipiently, the acts of hatred endured by the prisoners cause them to doubt how God could allocate such ongoing terrors, leaving them weak and justiceless. Once a very faithful individual, Eliezer refuses to pray to a God that he feels is driving the Nazis in their acts of hatred taking place in the inhumane …show more content…

Elizers faith in himself has washed away in the flames he witnessed in the center of all the horror, “The student of Talmud, the child I was, had been consumed by the flames. All that was left was a shape that resembled me. My soul had been invaded—and devoured—by a black flame” (Wiesel 34). Significantly, the flames serve as imagery of when innocent individuals' bodies are being burnt in the crematorium. The flames of the fire symbolize the burning of Eliezer's faith in himself as that is the fate he is picturing for himself. Black represents darkness and he feels devoured by a black flame; it illustrates that Eliezer feels a great sense of darkness devouring his soul. Similarly, after witnessing the tragedies of the horrors he’s undergoing, Eliezer feels ready to give up into eternal rest, “I saw myself in every stiffened corpse. Soon I wouldn't even be seeing them anymore; I would be one of them. A matter of hours”. (Wiesel 89). Eliezer is tired of fighting, he is starting to envy the corpses he sees as they were no longer undergoing any torture. Any sense of optimism that he had to make it out alive was drained, when thinking about his fate, all he sees upon himself is death. He no longer views himself as an individual with a bright future, but rather, as a lifeless object about to get consumed by the flames and the hatred of the

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