Elie Wiesel's Night

Elie was discouraged to praise God’s name when he saw the crematorium, gas chambers, and hangings ahead of him. Elie thought God abandoned him and saw no great reason to pray to God at this horrifying moment. God is always present and Elie would not have ever underestimated God if he had recalled,“

In life, people go through different changes when put through difficult experiences. In the book Night, Elie Wiesel is a young Jewish boy whose family is sent to a concentration camp by Nazis. The story focuses on his experiences and trials through the camp. Elie physically becomes more dehumanized and skeletal, mentally changes his perspective on religion, and socially becomes more selfish and detached, causing him to lose many parts of his character and adding to the overall theme of loss in Night.

Through this whole time Elie has lost faith in those that he trusted. God wasn’t there for his followers that were suffering. Humanity turned a blind eye to the genocide that was happening. Elie himself was having moments of weakness where he would think about leaving his father behind. With each faith that was destroyed he grew more unfeeling and indifferent to what happened to

Fire can also be seen as a symbol of Elie’s loss of his faith in his God and in the Jewish religion. In Judaism, tradition says that the evil and wicked will be condemned to Gehenna and suffer a fiery punishment. However, Elie’s experiences reverse what he was taught by his faith. The innocent were murdered in the crematorium by the evil. This shows how Elie’s faith was strongly questioned during the Holocaust due to the experiences and how his concept of religion was changed dramatically. “Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.”

In Elie Wiesel’s Night, he recounts his horrifying experiences as a Jewish boy under Nazi control. His words are strong and his message clear. Wiesel uses themes such as hunger and death to vividly display his days during World War II. Wiesel’s main purpose is to describe to the reader the horrifying scenes and feelings he suffered through as a repressed Jew. His tone and diction are powerful for this subject and envelope the reader. Young readers today find the actions of Nazis almost unimaginable. This book more than sufficiently portrays the era in the words of a victim himself.

Night begins with the narrator, Elie, talking about Moishe the Beadle, who is described as the “jack-of-all-trades” in a shtibl (Weisel, 21). He then continues by talking about his family. He goes back to talk about his deep conversations with Moishe and their evenings spent together. One day, the foreign Jews of Sighet, where he lives, were expelled. This included Moishe. They were taken away in cattle cars by the Hungarian police. Months past and one day, Elie saw Moishe sitting on a bench near the synagogue. He tells Elie about what happened to him; how he and the other Jews were transported and forced to dig their own graves in the forest. Luckily, Moishe had managed to escape. He had come back to warn the Jews in Sighet of what to come.

Night by Elie Wiesel focuses on 15 year old Elie’s experiences during the Holocaust. Elie endures circumstances which are so extreme to the point they are almost unbelievable. Elie’s account of his experiences during his life in the concentration camps has taught readers around the world about how to appreciate everything they take for granted, how desperation can make people do crazy things, and the importance of motivation in tough times.

Strong bonds built upon trust and dependability can last a lifetime, especially through strenuous moments when the integrity of a bond is the only thing that can be counted on to get through those situations. In Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, he writes about his life spent in the concentration camps, while explaining the experiences and struggles that he went through. Although, not everything during that period was completely unbearable for Wiesel. At the time when Wiesel first arrived at the camps, the fear instilled in Wiesel and the loneliness he would have felt forced him to form a stronger attachment to his father. That dependence towards his father gave Wiesel a reason to keep on living. In turn, his

As readers, this opposition in faith is seen chapters into the novel when Elie first arrives at Auschwitz. Auschwitz was, if not, the largest concentration camp established by the Nazis during their regime. When Elie arrives he and his family are immediately separated by female/children to the right, and males to the left. Afterward, a fellow prisoner tells Elie and his father about the crematory which immediately triggers negative thoughts for Elie. The prisoners are then ordered to march toward the pits which children and adults are burned. Both Elie and his father began reciting prayers of the dead along with others who were reciting. At this point while they continued to march Elie has his first moment of loss in faith with God. “For the first time, I felt anger rising within me. Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal and

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).

In the book “night” written by Elie Wiesel, the reader is able to catch a glimpse of the holocaust and how it dangerously impacted not only the Jewish, but the whole world. Written for everyone and anyone, “Night” is an emotionally draining book designed to help the reader understand just how devastating the holocaust was.

As humans, we require basic necessities, such as food, water, and shelter to survive. But we also need a reason to live. The reason could be the thought of a person, achieving some goal, or a connection with a higher being. Humans need something that drives them to stay alive. This becomes more evident when people are placed in horrific situations. In Elie Wiesel's memoir Night, he reminisces about his experiences in a Nazi concentration camp during the Holocaust. There the men witness horrific scenes of violence and death. As time goes on they begin to lose hope in the very things that keep them alive: their faith in God, each other, and above all, themselves.

Night is a memoir written by Elie Wiesel, a young Jewish boy, who tells of his experiences during the Holocaust. Elie is a deeply religious boy whose favorite activities are studying the Talmud and spending time at the Temple with his spiritual mentor, Moshe the Beadle. At an early age, Elie has a naive, yet strong faith in God. But this faith is tested when the Nazi's moves him from his small town.

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,

This book interested me because it is a great example of what so many people went through in concentration camps throughout Europe in World War II. So many books have been written about personal accounts of war hardships suffered by the Jews but so few capture the true problems faced by prisoners. The impossible decision between survival and family was a difficult one faced by many during this time. Elie had an unfaltering will to live when his father was alive with him but once his father died the reason for living disappeared. But he once was faced with the decision of helping to keep his father alive or let him die and have an extra ration of food. How can one be stuck with a decision like this and not choose survival? Only true unselfishness can cause you to help someone