Elie Wiesel begins his religious progression through Night with a deep passion for religion and God. Night begins in Elie’s hometown Sighet, where Elie is a passionate spiritual observer, “I was almost thirteen and deeply observant. By day I studied Talmud and by night I would run to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the Temple,” (Wiesel 3). Preceding the horrors of the Holocaust, Elie was a religious young man who was so passionate and devout, he spends his days and nights praying and studying his religion. Wiesel, as a young man, wanted to take his spiritual religion deeper, so he asked his father to seek a teacher to mentor him in the studies of the Kabbalah. Yet, Elie’s father did not approve of his quest to analyze the Kabbalah, …show more content…
But life in Auschwitz grows deadly, and Elie begins to doubt his faith in God. During his first night in Auschwitz, Wiesel describes what he felt as he slept next to the crematorium that claimed the lives of innocent people, “Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed...Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes,” (Wiesel 34). As Elie watches the ashes of small children escape into the night sky, he feels his faith in God wither. One evening in Auschwitz, Elie doubts God and religion, “Some of the men spoke of God: His mysterious ways, the sins of the Jewish people, and the redemption to come. As for me, I had ceased to pray. I concurred with Job! I was not denying His existence, but I doubted His absolute justice,” (Wiesel 45). Elie Wiesel doubts God, in the light of the fact that he deems failure in the delivery of absolute justice of God. Wiesel speculates on whether God deserves prayer when innocent children are murdered, while the Nazi live. Later in his story, when Elie finds himself working in the labor camp of Buna, he realizes what the Nazi had done to him and his faith. “I was nothing but a body. Perhaps even less: a famished stomach. The stomach alone was measuring time,” (Wiesel, 52). This sudden awareness shows the startling change in Elie …show more content…
Wiesel’s passionate response in this quote shows how much has changed for him since the beginning of his story, “Behind me, I heard the same man asking: "For God's sake, where is God?" And from within me, I heard a voice answer: "Where He is? This is where—hanging here from this gallows… " (Wiesel, 35). After the hanging of an innocent young boy, in a moment of despair, Elie’s subconscious answers to a question that he’s been asking himself ever since his journey of terror began. Elie resolves that the torture and dehumanization around him is a message of silence from God. On Rosh Hanashah a Jewish holiday for fast and prayer, Elie determines that he won’t accept God’s lonely stare of silence “And then, there was no longer any reason for me to fast. I no longer accepted God's silence. As I swallowed my ration of soup, I turned that act into a symbol of rebellion, of protest against Him,”(Wiesel 69). Wiesel’s compelling statement, leads him on his religious progression through the Holocaust. Despite his previous behavior, the Holocaust survivor does something that surprises his readers, and even himself, “And in spite of myself, a prayer formed inside me, a prayer to this God in whom I no longer believed,” (Wiesel 91). During his Holocaust journey, Elie’s faith in religion was slipping through his hands like melted gold, but on what he assumed was his last leg of
1. After the hanging of a child, Elie hears someone say, “‘For God’s sake, where is God?’ And from within me, I heard a voice answer: ‘Where He is? This is where—hanging here from this gallows…’ That night, the soup tasted of corpses” (Wiesel 65). Though optimistic at first, Elie Wiesel, along with many others at the concentration camps, began to lose faith in God.
One phenomenon, one dictator, and one country would change the life of a fifteen year old Jew forever. Stripped of his home in Transylvania and forced on copious deportation trains traveling to multiple concentration camps, Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night explores the treacherous and horrific life of a Jew during the Holocaust. Through the traumatizing punishments and lifestyle of concentration camps, a faithful and loyal boy metamorphosed into a selfish and unfaithful man. Early on in his childhood, Elie was immensely devoted to his faith, so far as “...finding a master... in the person of Moishe the Beadle”(Wiesel 4). To have a master meant that he would have a religious mentor to help him study Kabbalah, thus allowing him to interpret the Bible for himself.
The terrible experiences Elie underwent at Auschwitz altered his faith in God. In the start, Elie devoted his time and energy
One of the prominent themes in Night is Elie’s struggle with his faith. As a young man Elie was very religious as shown here. “By day I studied the Talmud and by night I would run to the synagogue.” This quotation shows how devoted Elie was to his religion. But that faith diminishes after being taken by the Germans and after seeing the atrocities of the holocaust, as shown in this quote.
Throughout history, humankind has been greatly affected by religion. It has brought people together, caused wars, and helped many people find themselves. Night, by Elie Wiesel, is a personal memoir about the author’s experience as a young Jewish boy during the Holocaust. At the mere age of fifteen he was taken from his home, placed in concentration camps, sent on death marches, and potentially had his whole life stripped from him. Throughout the memoir, Elie Wiesel uses Eliezer’s change in faith to show the importance and difficulty of maintaining faith through hardship by prioritizing Eliezer’s communication with his god over his interaction with those around him.
Elie’s first reaction is to question is, “Why, but why would I bless [God]? Every fiber in me rebelled. Because He caused thousands of children to burn in His mass graves? Because in His great might He had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many other factories of Death?”(67). Elie witnesses horror on a level the world had not seen, let alone a 15 year old child.
Elie Wiesel’s relationship with God changes during his time in Auschwitz. He becomes angry with God for letting His own creations starve, torture, and mercilessly murder His devout worshippers. Wiesel cannot understand why his creator would open “six crematoria working day and night” to slaughter human beings (Wiesel 67). He does not trust God to be just any longer, for “every fiber in [him rebels]” (67). Wiesel feels he is stronger than the God whom he was bound to for so long, and he “no longer [accepts] God’s silence” (69).
Eliezer Wiesel loses his confidence in god, family and humankind through the encounters he has from the Nazi death camp. Eliezer loses confidence in god. He battles physically and rationally forever and no more accepts there is a divine being. "Never should I overlook those minutes which killed my god and my spirit and turned my fantasies to dust..."(pg 32). Elie endeavored to spare himself and asks god commonly to bail him and take him out of his hopelessness.
Oftentimes, the effects of traumatic experiences can transcend the importance or the gravity of original beliefs. With every passing day, Elie is seeing more and more innocent infants, children, men, and women dying all around him, simultaneously. However, as the survivors around him congregate and continue to pray to God on their own volition he is thoroughly confused. With the amount of deaths around him, he questions everything, and thinks aloud.
The heart wrenching and powerful memoir “Night” by Elie Wiesel depicts Elie’s struggle through the holocaust. It shows the challenges and struggles Elie and people like him faced during this mournful time, the dehumanization; being forced out of their homes, their towns and sent to nazi concentration camps, being stripped of their belongings and valuables, being forced to endure and witness the horrific events during one of history’s most ghastly tales. In “Night” Elie does not only endure a physical journey but also a spiritual journey as well, this makes him question his determination, faith and strength. This spiritual journey is a journey of self discovery and is shown through Elie’s struggle with himself and his beliefs, his father
Screams of anguish, the smell of burning flesh, corpses lining the crimson soil—these are only a few of the horrors one would face as a Jewish prisoner in a concentration camp at the time of the Holocaust. Eliezer Wiesel, author of the memoir Night, has witnessed all of this, at the young age of 15. Over the course of the catastrophe, Eliezer shows drastic signs of spiritual change before, during, and after being held prisoner at the camps of death. Prior to the incident, Elie’s faith in his God was very strong. He describes bringing his needs to his father as, “One day I asked my father to find me a master who could guide me in my studies of Kabbalah,” (page 4).
The Holocaust was one of the most tragic events in history. It just so happened to be the cause of six million deaths. While there are countless beings who experienced such trauma, it is impossible to hear everyone's side of the story. However, one man, in particular, allowed himself to speak of the tragedies. Elie Wiesel addressed the transformation he underwent during the Holocaust in his memoir, Night.
In the memoir Night, the narrator Elie Wiesel recounts a moment when he questioned God, ¨Blessed be God’s name? Why, but why would I bless him? Every fiber in me rebelled, he caused thousands of children to burn his Mass graves?¨(Wiesel 68). Overall, Wiesel does not follow the words of God and is not believing in him anymore because he thinks God is the one thatś letting all the inhumanity occur. One theme in Night is that inhumanity can cause disbelief or incredulity.
Imagine believing so strongly in something and then being let down, or thinking that you were wrong to believe. In Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie felt as though he had lost his religion and beliefs. “I believed profoundly. During the day I studied the Talmud, and at night I ran to the synagogue to weep of the destruction of the Temple,” (Wiesel, 14). This quote shows how strongly he believed before experiencing the hardships of the Holocaust
As for me, I had ceased to pray... I was not denying His existence, but I doubted His absolute justice” (45). It is apparent here that the effect of the Holocaust on the Jewish people’s faith was delayed on some level. Elie refuses to pray to the God that apparently abandoned him. This is personified when he says he doubts that God has absolute justice.