Examples Of Adversity In Night By Elie Wiesel

From the time where Elie had to decide to fight for his father’s life, to the time where he questioned his beliefs, Elie has had to make many life-changing decisions. As some of his decisions left negative consequences, some were left a positive outcome. In the end, all the decisions Elie had made in the camps has made his life miserable or at its best. For better or for worse, the events that Elie encountered makes his life unforgettable as realizes there was more to life than he had thought of

This shows Elie’s change in his thoughts on God and having faith. At the beginning of the story, Elie strives to be a spiritual kid and is fascinated by learning about God. He goes behind his father's back to learn about God with Moishe the Beadle, and has intense prayers everyday which he cries during. However, he becomes bitter towards God, angry about all the pain he has inflicted on the Jewish race. This change in perspective was brought on by the torture, abuse, and inhumane treatment by the Nazis. It causes Elie to question how God, who is supposed to be helpful and good, could ever allow such horror. This connects to loss, and how the traumatic

Another time Elie questions God and his faith is around Rosh Hashana, the new year. All the Jews gathered together to say prayers to God. He questions God for allowing all these terrible things to happen to them when they live their lives for Him.

“To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering” (Nietzsche). This quote, said by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, describes the desire to survive that was inside of Elie Wiesel in his story. The book describes Elie’s late teen years when he was sent to a concentration camp by the German government. In the book, he is separated from his whole family except for his old father, and both are put to work inside of the camp. As Elie suffers through the camp, his faith and his life face many tests and trials. There are many instances throughout the book when people die or when somebody loses their faith. The theme of the book Night, written by Elie Wiesel, is survival, as shown by the death of many Jews during the Holocaust, people willing to do anything to survive, and people’s faith not surviving the traumatic experiences of the concentration camps.

God challenges people in times of hardships, however, it depends on the person if they can take upon the challenge and keep faith in God. Eliezer Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and author of the memoir Night, is one of these people who have to take this test. Elie demonstrates faith is tested in times of trouble through the use of character relation, change in setting and the conflicts that he witnesses.

Elie’s faith before being exposed to the concentration camps is apparent and he works hard to strengthen and grow his faith. All throughout Night, Wiesel shows the eminent effect faith has on individual’s actions and attitude. At the beginning of Night, Elie’s faith is a key feature of his lifestyle and attitude. Studying under the wisdom of Moishe the Beadle, Elie can put his faith in retrospect as he says, “In the course of those evenings I became convinced that Moishe the Beadle would help me enter eternity, into that time when question and answer would become one” (Wiesel 5). It is very clear that Elie is very emotionally and physically invested in his faith. Before camp Elie was so eager to expand and connect to his faith in which he becomes, “convinced” that he fully understands his faith proving him to be a devout Jewish boy. Thus because, Moishe the Beadle is helping him “enter eternity” and build his faith. Elie’s whole life revolves

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 world both have faced many different types of adversity and plenty of different ways. In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie was facing adversity in every step he took. Every day was a new challenge to live. Every camp was just as worse as the last. Jews were forced to work in camps every day of their lives and live with little food and resources, yet through it all he still lived in the camps even when death and religion were on the line.

Do you believe your life is yours and only yours? Is indifferent of evil more evil than evil? Elie Wiesel believes that our lives do not belong to only one person, but to all of those that desperately need them and that indifferent of evil is worse than evil. There are people in need and it depends on the decision of other people to be of service to others; also, indifference of evil is worse than evil since it demonstrates people who do not care about cruelty, which means evil is prolonged. So why or how are our lives not just completely ours and why indifference of evil is more evil? Let’s find out.

After experiencing the holocaust, Elie can no longer make sense of his world. His lack in faith results from his painful experience with Nazi persecution, but also from the cruelty he sees fellow prisoners inflict on each other. Elie also becomes aware of the cruelty of which he himself is capable of. Everything he experiences in the war shows how humanity is lost people allow cruelty to show itself. “Our

“Man can live about forty days without food, about three days without water, about eight minutes without air, but only for one second without hope.” (Unknown) People’s lives are plagued by loss, disease, and tragedy. How they surviving such adversity shapes who they are as individuals, but more importantly, it brings out their inherent ability to step up to the challenges life presents. When given a cause to fight for, one can survive through grim calamities that would otherwise be fatal.

The most confident people are those to have known failure and misfortune. It is evident that adversity elicits our talents that successful situations could not elicit. However, overcoming obstacles can also elicit our character flaws. Through my study of the memoirs Night and The Glass Castle as well as personal observation, I agree with Horace in that adversity elicits character talents but adversity can also extract our character faults.

Norman Cousins, a political journalist for the Saturday Review, once said, “The tragedy of life is not death, but what we let die inside of us while we live”. This can be found true in Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night. Elie Wiesel was a survivor of the Holocaust, who dedicated his life to bringing awareness to the horrendous, and cruel actions that took place at the concentration camps in the time of Nazi Germany. He endured many physical challenges, as well as many mental challenges throughout his time in the inferno, Auschwitz. Although, he was surrounded by death, the death inside of him seemed much greater.

When Elie arrived at the first concentration camp, he was a child, but when left he was no longer human. Elie’s character changed through his encounter of the Holocaust. Elie idolized his religion, Judaism, one relevant identification for him. Elie spent hours praying and learning about Judaism, but it was the reason he and his family were tormented for. Elie was so intrigued by Judaism, that he wanted someone a “master” to guide in his studies of Kabbalah, an ancient spiritual wisdom that teaches how to improve the lives (Wiesel 8). Furthermore, he loses hope in God and in life. Elie only had a few items when he arrived in the camp, one being his family, but that would soon be taken from him. When Elie and his family arrived at the camp in Auschwitz, he was kept by his father. He always gazed after his father, caring for him until his death.

As known to be of human nature, it is common to go through hardship; Some so extreme, that faith with in whatever deity that person believes in, can be weakened or totally broken and break that person, as well. This is exactly what Elie Wiesel explores in his autobiography, Night. In the narrative based off his hellish experiences in the concentration camps, Wiesel vividly discusses his constant alertness that his and his father’s lives were in jeopardy. One simple indication of weakness could have easily been a death sentence to the both of them, as it was for some many of Jewish people (man, woman, child) during the Holocaust. The thought that a god would let some much injustice and maltreatment of a people go unwarranted did not sit well with the author, as he was so devoted to his The theme of identity is existent in the narrative as the author struggle with the rapid changes and challenges that has occurred over a relatively short, but detrimental part in his life—kidnapping him from his lifestyle, losing his faith as a result of mental and physical torment, and being a free man with nothing familiar, not even himself.