Elie Wiesel's Relationship With Religion In Night

In the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, he recalls Elie and his father are brought to Birkenau, Auschwitz, Buna, and Buchenwald. And they experience starvation, abuse, and dehumanization. Wiesel reveals how disillusionment causes Elie Wiesel to change throughout the horrific experience of the Holocaust. In the beginning of the book Elie was very religious until in the middle of the book when he saw the boy getting hanged on a gallow which made him wonder where was God which made him hopeless. And at the end of the book Americans raid the camps and free the enslaved prisoners.

Elie beginning experience starts in Sighet then ends up at his liberation in Buchenwald. One example of Elie Wiesel’s changing view of God throughout the memoir was in chapter 5&6 was Elie gave himself the title of an accuser, and that God was the accused. Because he no longer pleaded for anything. He was no longer able to lament, but he felt very strong. He was “I am alone, terribly alone in a world without God, without

Don't drink water, eat the soup. I'm burning up... Why are you so mean to me, my son? ... Water... Elie is fed up with helping his father because he is mentally damaged by the images surrounding him.

This is a gradual transition that starts, first, with Wiesel’s questioning of God. The first day at Auschwitz, Wiesel witnesses babies being thrown carelessly into pits of flames, burning alive. To Wiesel’s utter disbelief, God is not present to save these poor innocent children from premature death. Wiesel cannot comprehend why his God is not showing up in the face of such adversity and starts to question whether he should worship such a God that ignores his people’s obvious pleas for help. Instead of praying to God for strength and guidance, Wiesel skeptically asks, “Why should I sanctify his name? What was there to thank him for?” (33). Instead of trusting that God is beside him through this experience and investing every last bit of faith into optimism, Wiesel infringes on God’s path for him and becomes suspicious of God’s motives and loyalty. He does not understand, “how can anyone believe in this Mercy of God”, when the Jewish people, their own people, are slaughtered daily

Elie couldn’t do anything to help his father, he just watched, he sat there and watched all of the humility and self-worth he had left in the world be taken away. “Bread, soup - these were my whole life. I was a body of a snare. Perhaps less than that: a starved

But as more days passed, he saw this more often to the point where it became the norm. Secondly, Elie supports the collapse of compassion when he wished that his father could die. The novel, asserts, “If only I didn't find him! If only I were relieved of this responsibility, I could use all my strength to fight for my own survival, to take care only of myself…” (Wiesel 106).

While at the camps the prisoners are starved causing their bodies to grow extremely emaciated. Food overwhelms their thoughts and during this time the only thing that matters to Elie is “[his] daily bowl of soup” and, “crust of stale bread.” His hunger begins to consume him as he says, “[he] [is] nothing but a body, perhaps even less: a famished stomach… the stomach alone [is] measuring time” (pg.53). This clearly demonstrates how the Nazis are starving the prisoners and in effect they become visibly swallowed by their hungry stomachs and yearn for a taste of food. Elie was so malnourished that even a small bit of stale bread sounds satisfying enough to him. This is saying something because earlier in the memoir Elie mentions he is a picky eater, so it is ironic that now he dreams about having a small ration of soup and old bread. Without receiving a large or even average amount of nutrients Elie is compelled to take anything offered to him, and the thought of treating himself to food became something constantly going through his mind. Elie’s retelling of his times at the camps contain many other remarks correlated with his fellow

“The bread, the soup-those were my entire life.” (Wiesel 52). Elie’s life had gone from caring about friends, family, and religion, to only caring about the next time he would get food. The constant hunger had pushed him and broke him down until he had no desires or thoughts left. The Nazis also liked to dehumanize the Jews through abuse.

His belief is shaken. By the end of the story Elie has lost faith in his religion and resents God for allowing so many people to perish in the camps, "It's over. God is no longer with us" (Weisel,

As I swallowed my soup, I saw in the gesture as an act of rebellion and protest against him” (66). As Elie starts to give up on being a Jew, he stops doing religious things and starts to think that everything is

The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me.” These finishing lines present the idea that the experience has, in a sense, “killed” Wiesel. This changed Elie’s behaviors because his death is primarily spiritual. Before his imprisonment, Wiesel, as a teenager, lived for his spiritual beliefs. His only goal for the future was to become more and more involved in the higher aspects of Judaism. During his time at the concentration camps, it causes him to feel as he died. Everything thing he knew and loved was destroyed because of the religion and for being the person he was meant to be. He was so surprised by how his God could let people kill innocent people and just sit there and listen to their prayers without doing anything to help them. This changed Elie’s behaviors because he no longer believes in God's mercy just his existence. Another way his behavior has changed is that Elie is a young and healthy boy at the story's beginning. He has so much of life before him. However, by the end of the story when the Allies liberate him and the rest of the camp, he tries to adjust to being free, clean and fed. It is all very difficult for him. After living in the dark all the time, it is hard for Elie to adjust to having his freedom

At the beginning of his life in the concentration camps, he refused to eat the soup provided, not knowing what was to come.He was used to the big yummy meals before Hitler's rule. But after experiencing starvation in the camps, his view deeply alternated. When talking about a period without food near the end of the war he explains, “we had not eaten for nearly six days except for a few stalks of grass and some potato peels found on the grounds of the kitchens”(Wisel 114). Elie went from refusing a bowl of soup to eagerly eating scraps of food on the ground. All men in the camp scrambled for any food they could find. This is a huge change and makes one be more grateful for his

Perhaps even less: a famished stomach. The stomach alone was measuring time.” (Wiesel 61). Wiesel see’s himself and his life as nothing but a physical body. His mental being is gone.

Unfortunately, the stay in the camps worsened thousands of people's trust in their God, including a young boy who loved his religion more than anything, a teenager named Elie Wiesel. When first introduced to the younger version of the author, he’s extremely religious. Unlike other children his age who may go play with others after school, Elie preferred to “[study] the Talmud and by night [he] ran to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the

During his time in the concentration camps, Elie’s outlook on life shifted to a very pessimistic attitude, showing emotions and actions including rebellion, forgetfulness of humane treatment, and selfishness. Elie shows rebellion early in the Holocaust at the Solemn Service, a jewish ceremony, by thinking, “Blessed be God’s name? Why, but why would I bless Him? Every fiber in me rebelled” (Wiesel 67). Elie had already shifted his view on his religion and faith in God. After witnessing some of the traumas of the concentration camps, Elie questioned what he did to deserve such treatment. Therefore, he began to rebel against what he had grown up learning and believing. Not only had Elie’s beliefs changed, his lifestyle changed as well. When Elie’s foot swelled, he was sent to the doctor, where they put him “...in a bed with white sheets. I [he] had forgotten that people slept in sheets” (Wiesel 78). Many of the luxuries that Elie may have taken for granted have been stripped of their lives, leaving Elie and the other victims on a thin line between survival and death. By explaining that he forgot about many of these common luxuries, Elie emphasizes the inhumane treatment the victims of the Holocaust were put through on a daily basis.