Adversity In Tuesdays With Morrie And Night

Ever since Elie was in the concentration camp, he has slowly lost faith in God as he “...did not fast. First of all, to please my father, who had forbidden me to do so. 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). By not fasting like he did before when he was not in the concentration camp, it shows his rebellion against God as he has lost any sign of hope for God. Elie also decides to eat for the sake of his health and his well being in that situation as everyone was starving even before the fasting occured. His beliefs in God has changed from his past as it affects his views on God and his beliefs about him. The concentration camp had also made Elie question his beliefs of God as he asked himself “Bless be God’s name? Why, but why would I bless Him? Every fiber in me rebelled. Because He caused thousands of children to burn in His mass graves?” (Wiesel 67). Elie processes his decision onto why he should even pray to God as he had lost hope and signs of God ever since he saw the horrifying acts made in the camps. His views had been changed him from his past as he questions his beliefs and wonders why God has not saved them from all their misery. Elie had changed his ways of viewing his

Elie endured so much mental damage at his young age that it made their mental state irreversible. Elie’s story is truly inspiring, having survived one of history’s most heartbreaking, detrimental, and antisemitic events in World History. Before he was imprisoned by the Nazis, Elie lived a very religious life. God was whom he would turn to in need, and the Holocaust altered that. The division between men and women forced Elie to stay by his father’s side for the next two years in brutal, unhumane conditions.

Elie and his father are taken to Auschwitz where they are separated from the rest of the family and first hear about atrocities such as the incinerators and gas showers. In the beginning Elie believes that everything is a rumor, a lie, that humankind cannot perform such crimes, but he soon is forced to witness the demise in front of his eyes. This is when his outlook on his faith starts to waver. While watching the smoke billow up from a crematory, Elie hears a man standing next to him begging him to pray, and for the first time in his life Wiesel turns away from God. “The Eternal, Lord of the Universe, the All-Powerful and Terrible, was silent. What had I to thank him for?” (31).

The holocaust killed over six million Jews and many other people not falling into the aryan race Hitler wanted for Germany. Elie and his family did not characterize as a part of Hitler's “Perfect” race. Taken out of their homes, thrown into ghettos and later moved to the camps, Elie’s faith is no longer the same as it was. As he used to want to learn more about his religion, he no longer wants to be a part of it. This event in history should not be turned away, we as a growing to acceptance and understanding world need to remember these events. We must remember because those who died didn't know why they were treated like this, they didn't have a choice. The holocaust resembles Darwin’s Theory, Survival of the Fittest in the sense of the strongest will live. The novel Night, by Elie Wiesel is a perfect representation of loss of faith from the beginning to end of his story. Only the strong-willed can survive the holocaust physically and mentally.

The Holocaust of 1933 to 1945 was a tragic period of time in history, killing more than 6 million Jewish people. One of its few survivors: Elie Wiesel, has written a book titled Night explaining his experiences as a prisoner of war. His novel is about young Elie Wiesel arriving in Auschwitz and beginning to labor under the Nazis’ unforgiving rule. Over the course of the book, Elie continually struggles with his relationship with God and feels conflict trying to decide between supporting his ever crippling father and his best chance at survival. Conclusively, because of his time in the concentration camps, Elie’s views of and relationship with God are challenged and his morals are changed.

Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, is about his struggle as a young Jewish boy, alongside his father, to survive the Holocaust in the midst of World War Two. Through his devastating odyssey, Wiesel witnesses how peoples’ faith diminishes over time while living in the camps, especially when people have reached the nadir of their suffering. As a result, people in the camps, and especially Wiesel, have faith that God will save them. As time passes, however, many, including Wiesel are equivocal, and question why their Almighty Creator is letting them go through this pain. Later, once they have been through hell, to them God is gone, along with their faith, and God is dead.

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary adversity is defined as “a state or instance of serious or continued difficulty or misfortune.” People often think of adversity as something life-changing like a disease, bankruptcy, or the loss of a loved one however adversity is really any situation that is difficult to the person experiencing it. Adversity is essential to development, can bring forth new opportunities and skills, can allow people to learn how to accept help from others, and can push people to become better.

Forty-two years after entering the concentration camp for the first time, Elie Wiesel remarked, “Just as man cannot live without dreams, he cannot live without hope” (Nobel Lecture 1). This means a lot from someone who endured almost two years of the terror in the WWII concentration camps. During these two years, Elie endured the sadness of leaving his former life and faith behind, the pain of living off of scraps of bread, and the trepidation of the “selections”, where he almost lost his father. He watched the hanging of innocent people, was beat by Kapos and guards time after time, and marched in a death march right after having a foot surgery. Through all of this, he survived because he remained hopeful. Hope was all the Jewish people

Due to the inhumane methods towards the Jews during the Holocaust, many lost their faith and commitment to Judaism. Jews were appalled that God, who was supposed to be their savior, abandoned them in a time where they needed him the most. Although many Jews kept their faith and did not question God’s mysterious ways, many did not have the same outlook. People assume that hard times strengthen people’s faith, but that was not always the case. During great tragedy's, people’s faith may disintegrate and become completely absent from their minds. Many prisoners including Elie Wiesel could not accept God’s silence and rebelled against their religious upbringing during the Holocaust.

Elie Wiesel experienced several horrors throughout the Holocaust. As a boy, he lost his family and his faith in his own religion because of the mass slaughter of six million Jews along with several different races and religions. Elie describes scenes that a fifteen year old child should never have to see such as frantic families lined up for a death in fire, bodies crushed all over as people ran them over, and babies being thrown into pits of fire.

Death is inevitable for all. The path each person takes towards death is a very different path with very a different meaning. For the elderly, and sometimes the young, death may be looming close by. How does one prepare for death? The elderly will surely have had more time to prepare for death, but even the elderly may not know how to plan for this journey. Some people refer to this plan or journey as the spiritual journey. The book, Tuesdays with Morrie, follows Morrie on his spiritual journey when faced with imminent death. The purpose of this paper is to share my reaction to this true story, I will also address touch and intimacy, the spiritual journey, and discuss a couple of Morrie’s quotes from the

Faith gives support people in times of difficulties. Life is full of ups and downs, people cannot change the world but they can hold onto their faith to be able to go through bad times. Elie has been a devout Jew since he childhood pass. He is taught that God is everywhere in the world, and that nothing exists without God. After Elie witnesses how Jews are exterminated to Holocaust brutally by Nazis, he loses confidence in God. “Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke…Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never” (Wiesel 34). This famous quote shows that Elie’s faith is destroyed. He wants to know why a merciful God could just stand by to see those horrible behaviors happen to His people. But soon Elie embrace to his faith because he can not survive without it. “Behind me, I heard the same man asking: Where is God now? And I heard a voice within me answer him: ... Here He is—He is hanging here on this gallows” (Wiesel 65). When his father is sick, Elie

Aphorisms are statements of observations that express an opinion or remarks of wisdom. Tuesdays With Morrie is a book about a man who’s dying from ALS, or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis which is a “progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord.” ("What Is ALS?") Morrie uses aphorisms quite frequently to accept his future and make peace with the past. The two aphorisms I chose are about making your life as fulfilling as possible. Not only can they relate to me personally in small ways, but also in bigger and deeper ways.

Adversity is any type of trial in one’s life. It is sickness, injury, family problems,

“Love each other or perish” (Albom 91). This is one of Morrie Schwartz's favorite aphorisms that he used when teaching people just some of the great lessons of life. Morrie Schwartz is an old man that has been diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease) and only has a limited amount of time to live. He taught the greatest lessons of life, as he knows from experience. Even though he has since passed, Morrie’s lessons and teachings still live on. People need to learn some of the lessons that he taught. His lessons are taught in the novel known as Tuesdays with Morrie. Many of these words of wisdom came out of his extensive experiences in life. Morrie teaches many people how to live through living a life without regrets, dying, death, and how it affects us, and money and the more important things in life.