After experiencing life similar to hell on earth for nearly a year very few people could truthfully say that their faith is unscathed. Even in the modern world, people who have not been starved and pushed to work beyond their limits find themselves questioning whether or not there is a god, and if he is a just one. Throughout Night, a Holocaust memoir, it is shown that faith does not only refer to religion, but also the belief that humanity is sympathetic and warm-hearted. Elie Wiesel, author of Night, demonstrates how he loses his faith and watches those around him lose their confidence in God, and each other. Wiesel shares his thoughts with the readers writing how from a very young age he believed profoundly yet within a few months Wiesel finds himself questioning “Where is God?” (61). Loss of faith only propels Wiesel to find the strength within himself to persevere until his day of liberation. …show more content…
As others around him continue to pray and hope, Wiesel finds it pointless. He focuses his energy on staying alive, not praying to a cruel god who does not seem to care about the millions of people dying for no good reason. Among the continuous believers is a Jewish prisoner named Akiba Drumer. Drumer wants to believe so strongly that rather than admit he is starting to give up hope that God will save him, he offers himself to the SS officers. Wiesel says of Drumer, “He could only repeat that all was over for him, that he could no longer keep up the struggle, that he no longer had any strength left, nor faith” (72). Drumer’s dying wish is for his fellow prisoners to recite the Kaddish for him in 3 days, when he is no longer alive; no one remembers. Akiba Drumer’s death demonstrates how Elie Wiesel’s loss of faith may have saved his life. If Wiesel would have had the same thought processes as Drumer, he would have also offered his neck to the SS officers and would not have made it past …show more content…
Prisoners of the Holocaust spoke not only of religious faith disintegrating, but also how their faith in humanity depleted. Wiesel recounts how one prisoner said, “I’ve got more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He’s the only one who’s kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people” (77). The only person that the prisoners can put any of their trust into is the one who is slowly killing them. Another instance of loss of faith in humanity is when Wiesel witnesses the son of a rabbi he knew run away from his father. The son tries to escape his dying father so that he no longer has to take care of him and can selfishly live on. After watching this Wiesel finds himself praying to a god he no longer believes in, “My God, Lord of the Universe, give me the strength to never do what Rabbi Eliahou’s son has done” (87). No matter how tough it is to go on, Wiesel will not give up. He will continue to live through the miserable conditions of the Holocaust just so that he does not give up on his father, the only person he has faith left
In Night Wiesel struggles with his religion through the genocide process of the Jews, instituted by the Nazis. Though Wiesel loses his faith in God, he does not however stop believing in God. He loses faith that God is an all loving God. This is demonstrated when Wiesel says, “I was not denying His existence, but doubted His absolute justice” (45). An incident in Night where Wiesel also demonstrates that God is not the all-loving God he ounce thought is when a young boy is strangled on the gallows, and a group of Jews are lined up to watch as the boy struggles between life and death for more than half an hour. When a man had asked, “Where is God” (65)? Someone answered, “Where He is? This is where, hanging here from this gallows” (65). In that moment, the God whom Wiesel adored and his
Wiesel’s faith changes from being a strong believer in faith before the war to losing faith while during the war, he goes on to talk about him losing faith by saying “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.” (Pg.63). This quote goes on to demonstrate the loss of faith by Wiesel when being tortured by the Germans with the rest of the millions of Jews. Wiesel also loses faith when he says “Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes .”(Pg. 34) When Wiesel say this it implicates that his faith is being lost, and also he feels that his faith is basically being robbed from him by the German Nazis party. This fully show that he had lost faith but this shows what harshness and cruelty can do to a
Night is a dramatic book that tells the horror and evil of the concentration camps that many were imprisoned in during World War II. Throughout the book the author Elie Wiesel, as well as many prisoners, lost their faith in God. There are many examples in the beginning of Night where people are trying to keep and strengthen their faith but there are many more examples of people rebelling against God and forgetting their religion.
“I have not lost faith in God [despite] moments of anger and protest; sometimes I have been closer to him for that reason.” Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel explains the struggle of his changing beliefs in God during the Holocaust in his memoir Night. In Night, Elie Wiesel, a religious boy, is taken to several concentration camps along with other Jews, and separated from everyone in his family except for his father. He and his father live dangerous lives in the concentration camps, from being beaten, watching other prisoners die, and being close to death, until eventually Elie’s father dies and the camp is liberated. As Elie Wiesel’s time in the Holocaust lengthens, his devoutness in God begins to diminish.
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.
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 Elie Wiesel was a kid, he had extreme faith in his religion. Moshe the Beadle is the first person to question Wiesel’s faith. Moshe the Beadle asks Elie Wiesel why he prays; after pondering the thought, Wiesel replies, “I don’t know why” (p. 2). Elie Wiesel does not know the reason why he prays to God when he doesn’t receive anything back. His faith now seems weaker, despite the hours he devotes to God. God gives him Moshe the Beadle when he wants to study the cabala, and his father won’t help him, but once Wiesel arrives at the concentration camp, God shows no such help as he did at that time. Although God may have left Wiesel, his father stepped up to take care of him and show him that all
In the memoir Night, the narrator Elie Wiesel recounts a moment when he loses faith in God. ¨But there were those who said we should fast, precisely because it was dangerous to do so. We needed to show God that even here, locked in hell, we were capable of singing His praises¨ (Wiesel 69). Wiesel is losing faith in God and not believing in him. Wiesel believes that he could still pray for God, even though he thinks God does not answer his prayers. Two significant themes related to inhumanity discussed in the book Night by Elie Wiesel are losing faith in God and disbelief.
The greatest change to Elie Wiesel’s identity was his loss of faith in God. Before he and his family were moved to the camps, Wiesel was a religious little boy who cried after praying at night (2). When the Hungarian police come to force the Jews to move to the ghettos, they pulled Elie from his prayers (13). Even on his way to Auschwitz, stuffed inside the cattle car with other terrified Jews, Wiesel gave thanks to God when told he would be assigned to labor camps (24). After a few days in Auschwitz, Elie Wiesel heard about the crematory and the fact that the Nazis were killing the sick, weak, and young. In his first night in the camp, Wiesel experienced his first crisis of faith: Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. …Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust (32).
As their time in the concentration camp continues, the conditions there worsen. The prisoners are soon forced into a treacherous forty-two mile run in the icy cold, which makes them struggle between life the death. During this march, one thing keeps Wiesel’s will to live alive and that is his father. This shows one of Wiesel’s weakest moments, where he contemplates giving up numerous times. Exhaustion takes over his body, and the only thing he can think about is the pleasures that death would bring him. Wiesel’s mind overpowers him and he reflects, “Death wrapped itself around me till I was stifled. It stuck to me. I felt that I could touch it. The idea of dying, of no longer being, began to fascinate me” (82). However, his father needs him, and that is truly what drives him to keep pushing until the end. They stay alive for each other, which shows how much they really care about the other. While Wiesel rests in the shed after the run, Rabbi Eliahou, a very well-liked man, comes in looking for his son. He and his son have been sticking together for three years. Wiesel expresses that he has not seen him, without realizing that this is false. The Rabbi’s son purposely left him, to strengthen his own chances of survival. Wiesel is taken aback by this, and astonishingly begins to pray. He thinks, “My God,
Everyone experiences emotional and physiological obstacles in their life. However, these obstacles are incomparable to the magnitude of the obstacles the prisoners of the Holocaust faced every day. In his memoir, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, illustrates the horrors of the concentration camps and their mental tool. Over the course of Night, Wiesel demonstrates, that exposure to an uncaring, hostile world leads to destruction of faith and identity.
Thesis Statement: The hardships that Elie Wiesel faced in the concentration camps lead him to lose faith, until after when realizing it was crucial to keep faith in God despite the horrendous events of the Holocaust.
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 author demonstrates that an adverse atmosphere can cause a person to relinquish their faith. The author establishes the purpose through the sufferings of Moishe the Beadle, Wiesel’s torment and plight of other prisoners in the concentration camp.
In the memoir, Night, author Elie Wiesel portrays the dehumanization of individuals and its lasting result in a loss of faith in God. Throughout the Holocaust, Jews were doggedly treated with disrespect and inhumanity. As more cruelty was bestowed upon them, the lower their flame of hope and faith became as they began turning on each other and focused on self preservation over family and friends. The flame within them never completely died, but rather stayed kindling throughout the journey until finally it stood flickering and idle at the eventual halt of this seemingly never-ending nightmare. Elie depicts the perpetuation of violence that crops up with the Jews by teaching of the loss in belief of a higher power from devout to doubt they