The Theme Of Optimism In Night By Elie Wiesel

Life is full of good and bad experiences, but you don’t always have control of what happens. That can be scary sometimes and it depends on how you handle it as to whether you get out of that situation. In the memoir Night written by Elie Wiesel, Eli, a teenager had been taken away from his home and taken to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Night is the scary record of Elie Wiesel’s memories of the death of his own family and the death of his own innocence as he tries to fight his way out of the concentration camp. Over the course of the book, Eli changes from a believer in God living in bearable conditions to someone who has become profane because of the situation he’s been put in. This is important to the book as a whole because it connects to the theme of optimism. The change is apparent when life isn’t going in Eli’s favor, and the life of his father is taken away from him. Deep inside he feels a sign of relief but guilt at the same time.
Eli spends a lot of time praying showing that he is religious. At the start of the book Eli is praying, but he is crying. His friend asks him why he’s crying. “Why do you cry when you pray? He doesn’t have an answer. Eli says, “ I don’t know, I had never asked myself that question. I cried because… because something inside me felt the need to cry.” This moment shows that Eli does believe in God. He is in an emotional state and doesn’t have answers to his friend’s questions but does believe. This shows that he is religious and a