Research Paper On Night By Elie Wiesel

Maintaining Faith Through Extreme Cruelty The struggle to remain faithful while experiencing the cruelty that was present during the Holocaust can be a daunting task; maintaining this faith can be what keeps one alive. In his memoir Night, Elie Wiesel describes the innumerable cruelties that he experienced, and how those experiences contributed to his slow loss of faith in the God which he previously believed in so wholeheartedly. Elie Wiesel is a young boy who plans to dedicate his life to the study of the Torah and the Jewish religion. He surprisingly goes against the will of his father and enlists a local mystic, Moche the Beadle, to assist him in his studies. Moche is Elie’s first glimpse into the cruelty that the Jewish people faced. When Moche miraculously returns to the little town of Sighet after being deported, he comes bearing news of Nazi soldiers who are violently murdering innocent men, women, and children. Of course, none of the townsfolk believe him. Elie notes that “He no longer sang. He no longer talked to me of God or the Cabbala, but only of what he had seen” (Wiesel pg. 17). Moche does not have the same unshakable faith in the God he once worshipped so dedicatedly. Elie’s faith remains constant, for now. Everything begins to take a turn once

After witnessing acts such as the hanging of children and public beatings, the once devout Akiba Drumer loses his faith; therefore, his will to live is also lost. After Dr. Mengele chooses Akiba to go to the crematories, Elie doesn’t mourn. He instead thinks, “Poor Akiba Drumer, if only he could have gone on believing in God, if he could have seen a proof of God in this calvary, he would not have been taken by the selection” (Wiesel pg. 83). Elie knows that the key to surviving something as traumatic as this is having something worth living