Examples Of Believing In Night By Elie Wiesel

Elie loses complete faith in god in many points where god let him down. He struggles physically and mentally for life and no longer believes there is a god. Elie worked hard to save himself and asks god many times to help him and take him out of the misery he was facing. "Why should I sanctify his name? The Almighty, the eternal, and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent..."(page 33). Elie was confused, because he doesn’t know why the Germans would kill his race amongst many others, and he does not know why god could let such thing happen to innocent people. "I did not deny god's existence, but I doubted his absolute justice..."(page 42). These conditions gave him confidence, and a courage to

At first glance, Night, by Eliezer Wiesel does not seem to be an example of deep or emotionally complex literature. It is a tiny book, one hundred pages at the most with a lot of dialogue and short choppy sentences. But in this memoir, Wiesel strings along the events that took him through the Holocaust until they form one of the most riveting, shocking, and grimly realistic tales ever told of history’s most famous horror story. In Night, Wiesel reveals the intense impact that concentration camps had on his life, not through grisly details but in correlation with his lost faith in God and the human conscience.

In 1933, the German fascist party started exporting European Jews from their homes to concentrations camps to ethnically cleanse (in the eyes of Hitler) Europe. Elie Wiesel, a boy at the time, writes of his struggle to survive during the time he spent in German concentration camps. Elie Wiesel embodies the true essences of fear, optimism, and loyalty through his autobiography Night.

In the novel Night, Elie Wiesel talks of what he had experienced within the concentration camps in WWII. Wiesel consistently portrayed faith throughout the novel showing hope and people stray away from their faith and what they have thought and believed. Elie is a 12 year old boy who is taken to Auschwitz, a concentration camp in Poland where most Jewish prisoners knew if they were sent there it was a sentence to death. Elie has a lot of faith which he slowly starts to question as he endures the hardships within the camp.

Elie Wiesel wrote the novel Night to tell of his journey and experience inside concentration camps during World War II as a young boy. Throughout being separated from his mother and sisters, losing his father, and fighting desperately for life, Elie slowly lost faith in not only God, a previously very important aspect of his life, but also in himself and his fellow man. He responded dramatically by losing his faith because he blamed God for the injustice he was seeing, and developed a resentment for him. Like Elie, faith can be destroyed, but years later, one can grow and use their experiences to help others. When adversity puts a person in a very vulnerable position, some take the opportunity to grow their faith and improve as a person, while others lose faith in what they believe.

During the holocaust many believed that banishment from their homes was trial sent from God to be endured—a test of faith. In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, his mother and sisters are taken from him and Elie and his father are forced to work in the Nazi concentration camps. But Elie's belief in God begins to falter at the concentration camps of Birkenau-Auschwitz. Here the furnaces are busy night and day burning people and German soldiers throw babies and children into flames. The longer he stays in the concentration camps, the more he sees and experiences cruelty and suffering.

Elie’s faith is very tight at the beginning of the memoir, he had faith in God when he and the other Jews of Sighet were taken to the ghettos. “And we, the Jews of Sighet, were waiting for better days, which would not be long in coming now'' (5). This show that Elie’s faith was strong enough to believe that life would get better and the hardship would soon be over. It was not easy for Elie to have doubt in God when the Nazis were brutally oppressing the Jews in the ghettos. Once Elie and all the others were transported to Auschwitz, Elie was separated from his father and was tortured and forced to work. In the camp Elie was in, some of the youth with him were planning to take down the Nazis and said "We must do something. We can't let them kill us like that, like cattle in the slaughterhouse. We must revolt."(31). Then an

Elie demonstrates abandoning his belief in people as a result of the brutal circumstances during the Holocaust. For instance, Jews were being separated from their families, and death was a couple of steps away for some people. Many people were being incinerated; Elie could not believe his eyes. Elie suggests his doubt, "Still, I told him that I could not believe that human beings were being burned in our times; the world would never tolerate such crimes" (Weisel 33). Elie demonstrates his disbelief at the atrocities the Nazis are considering against the Jewish population throughout the Holocaust.

Over the course of his time there, he is worked hard and witnesses horrific deaths. Because of all the traumatic events that occurred, he lost faith in the God he once believed in unconditionally. John Roth, author of In the Beginning, explained that the holocaust could only have happened if there was no God (35). However this is not true. In actuality, Eliezer explains that there is a God, he just does not believe in His power anymore. Elie does not say that he has become an atheist or that God had died as many people believe” (Brown 72). Elie simply does not believe in Him because of all the events that occurred while he was in the concentration camps.

“Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever” (Wiesel 34). This quote was written by Wiesel in remembrance of the furnaces in Auschwitz where his mother and little sister, along with thousands of other Jews, were burned. It serves as a haunting reminder of the atrocities committed during the Holocaust and the personal impact it had on Wiesel. In Night by Elie Wiesel, Wiesel suggests that enduring hardships challenges one's ability to maintain one's religious faith. He shows this by questioning why God hasn’t brought justice to the Jews and why he should bless God when it was He who allowed the Jews to be slaughtered.

Another way Elie shows determination is when he he was beaten by the Kapo named Idek. He painted on a brave face, sucked up for the pain and took the beating. He was beaten for no reason but didn’t shed a tear, didn’t cry out in pain. He was determined to survive this and overcome the torture and he did. “He took his time between lashes.

The experience Elie goes through during this time period changes his perspective on his faith and beliefs greatly. Before being taken by the Natzis Ellie cared highly about his faith and wanted to pursue the study of God. However, when captured by the Germans, he starts to question where his faith lies. After witnessing and undergoing the concentration camps, Elie loses all faith and hope in God, as he is left with nothing to believe in anymore. The holocaust is one of the most important events to be aware of in our history and the effect it had on so many people and on an individual as well, as shown in the way it changed Elie and his faith forever.

Though faithful as they enter the horrific camps of Auschwitz, Bergen Belsen, Buna, Birknau, Dachau, and Buchenwald, the Jews become capricious. They start losing grip and begin falling down the slippery slope of death the Germans set up for them as more horrors of the camps become unveiled. Soon after arriving in the camp and being told about the crematoria, he felt “anger rising with me [Elie]. Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent” (33). This is the first time that his faith is challenged. After a few days in Auschwitz he “had ceased to pray. I [Elie] was not denying His existence, but doubted His absolute justice” (45). As seen, Elie is beginning to have doubts about God and therefore his belief and faith in him. Finally, when Elie is looking for God to come though he doesn’t and he asks,

Faith is like a little seed; if you think about the positive aspects of a situation, then it will grow, like a seed grows when you water it. However, if the seed does not receive water anymore, it will die, which serves as a parallel to the horrors and antagonism of the concentration camps that killed Elie’s faith. After the analysis of the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, the reader can visualize the horrors and slaughter of millions of innocent people that occurred in concentration camps. Throughout the book, Wiesel explains how his faith in God was tested, as he was forced to leave his home, separated from his family, and observed the death all around him; he even witnessed children being thrown into huge ditches of fire alive. Elie felt abandoned, betrayed, and deceived by the God that he knew who was a loving and giving God. It was then he started to doubt His existence. Elie tried to hold on to his faith, but the childhood innocence had disappeared from within him, and he lost his faith in God completely.

When one experiences that he cannot tolerate, he doubts his religion and his God's existence. Elie Wiesel's Night, a memoir of the author's experience of the Holocaust, shows that this hypothesis was true. In contrast to the beginning where Elie Wiesel considered praying as an unquestionable action, throughout his memoir, his faith in God gradually vanished as he experienced the "Hell". Elie Wiesel confided his change of the faith in God by the usage of dialogue, repetition, and irony.