The Holocaust of 1933 to 1945 was a tragic period of time in history, killing more than 6 million Jewish people. One of its few survivors: Elie Wiesel, has written a book titled Night explaining his experiences as a prisoner of war. His novel is about young Elie Wiesel arriving in Auschwitz and beginning to labor under the Nazis’ unforgiving rule. Over the course of the book, Elie continually struggles with his relationship with God and feels conflict trying to decide between supporting his ever crippling father and his best chance at survival. Conclusively, because of his time in the concentration camps, Elie’s views of and relationship with God are challenged and his morals are changed. In the beginning of the novel, young Eliezer portrays traits of faithfulness and trust towards God. Day after day he would continually go deeper into his faith, trying to achieve a more rooted relationship. For example, Wiesel writes “Man asks and God replies. But we don't understand his replies. We cannot understand them” ( 5). In this passage, it is apparent that Eliezer has no doubts in his faith with the Lord and sees no reason for doubt or hesitation to appear in his relationship, even though he does not understand Him. Even when he is praying, his very soul feels compelled to seek and understand as much as he can about the Almighty. For instance, Wiesel states on page four “I had never asked myself that question. I cried because…because something inside of me felt the need to cry.
Elie Wiesel’s autobiography Night is an account of the brutality of the Holocaust faced by Elie at the age of fourteen to fifteen and the horrors he endures. Night exposes much that is wrong with human nature and reveals little that is right. During the novel, he endures loss of faith as his experience within the Holocaust becomes more difficult. The elements wrong with human nature are represented by the novel, particularly the cruelty and the ignorance. The autobiography, however, only represents little that is right, such as the memory kept in order for the events never to happen again.
Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night tells the unforgettable tale of his account of the savagery and brutality the Nazis showed during the Holocaust. Night depicts the story of a budding Jew from the small town of Sighet named Eliezer. He and his family are exiled to the concentration camp known as Auschwitz. He must master the skills needed to survive with his father’s guidance until he finds liberation from the monstrosity that is the camp. This memoir, however, hides a far more meaningful lesson that can only be revealed through careful analyzation.
The Holocaust, or a jewish sacrificial offering that is burned on an alter, largely refers to the massacre and slaughter of over 6 million european jews from 1933 to 1945. One of the largest genocides took place less than 100 years ago. A recently fresh event on the historical timeline, and yet there would be little known on exactly went on inside the camps without the testimonies of survivors. Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, produced the book “Night” as a way to cope with his time in the labor camps and to shed light on the reality of the inhumanity that engulfed numerous concentration camps across europe. After ten years of silence, the book was written by Wiesel to express his personal experiences inside the labor camps, as well as his testimony to horrifying and inhumane actions inflicted upon his beloved family and bunk mates. In “Night”, Elie Wiesel explores the evils in humanity by sharing his personal experiences and personal witness of inhumanity, and shares his own moral values of man.
“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.
“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.
As with all human beings, there are happy memories and bad memories. Some have no effect, and others can change someone’s life completely. Elie Wiesel’s autobiography, Night, writes about Elie’s external conflict of the horrors of the Holocaust’s violent concentration camps. Elie resolves this conflict by having all the hope of the world in him and enduring the evident deaths of his family members; however, Elie’s trek also illustrates his character as both enduring and dependent. Elie’s decision to staying hopeful and stay enduring also reveals the universal theme of, “The toughest and darkest of times and experience can test your hope”
Elie Wiesel faces many conflicts throughout this memoir. In the memoir, Night, by Elie wiesel, Hitler works hard to eradicate the Jewish people. Fallaciously, he forces Jews into thinking they aren’t going to be harmed. Adolf Hitler houses all Jewish people in death camps for he is indignant and he needs revenge after the World War. Also, Hitler is being hypocritical because he says the only worthy people are Aryan people, but he isn’t even Aryan. He often instructs the Nazi Soldiers to make all Jewish people despondent about life. The Germans are to have no decorum with the Jews. They are told to starve, beat, and punish the prisoners. Throughout the story, Wiesel struggles with staying alive and with helping his father stay alive in aspiration
In 2006, Elie Wiesel published the memoir “Night,” which focuses on his terrifying experiences in the Nazi extermination camps during the World War ll. Elie, a sixteen-year-old Jewish boy, is projected as a dynamic character who experiences overpowering conflicts in his emotions. One of his greatest struggles is the sense helplessness that he feels when all the beliefs and rights, of an entire nation, are reduced to silence. Elie and the Jews are subjected daily to uninterrupted torture and dehumanization. During the time spent in the concentration camp, Elie is engulfed by an uninterrupted roar of pain and despair. Throughout this horrific experience, Elie’s soul perishes as he faces constant psychological abuse, inhuman living conditions, and brutal negation of his humanity.
“Never shall I forget that smoke… Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever...Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams into ashes…”(page 34). Elie Wiesel, the author of “Night”, describes his experiences in the Holocaust. Elie experiences pain and suffering throughout his time in the concentration camp, Auschwitz, and he shares how he survived. In the book “Night” the main character, Elie, is affected by the events in this book such as loss of faith, emotional connections with his father, and his self changes mentally and physically.
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.
Many themes exist in Night, Elie Wiesel’s nightmarish story of his Holocaust experience. From normal life in a small town to physical abuse in concentration camps, Night chronicles the journey of Wiesel’s teenage years. Neither Wiesel nor any of the Jews in Sighet could have imagined the horrors that would befall them as their lived changed under the Nazi regime. The Jews all lived peaceful, civilized lives before German occupation. Eliezer Wiesel was concerned with mysticism and his father was “more involved with the welfare of others than with that of his own kin” (4). This would change in the coming weeks, as Jews are segregated, sent to camps, and both physically and emotionally abused. These changes and abuse would dehumanize
Night is a brutally honest memoir of much of Elie Wiesel’s childhood. When Wiesel was young he was very devoted to his Religion, asking questions and reading scripture. When the trains were loaded Wiesel no longer had the words to express his disdain. After setting foot in Auschwitz Wiesel felt abandoned by god and no longer believed God was not righteous. Rightful decision he watched children burn, men get shot, women disappear to never return. Despite all this Wiesel never truly lost his religion explaining “I was not denying His existence, but I doubted His absolute justice.”(45,Wiesel). As time passes faith was restored and like many Holocaust survivors Wiesel is still Jewish and was proud to tell the world about it to the day he died.
Night, by Elie Wiesel, showed the devastation of Eliezer’s childhood and illustrated the loss of innocence through the evil of others. Elie Wiesel expressed to us that one’s own faith and beliefs can be challenged through torture and ongoing suffering. The novel, Night, allowed the reader to witness the change in Eliezer from one of an innocent child who strongly adhered to his faith in God into a person who questioned not only his faith and God but of himself as well. The cruelty is shown to him while in the concentration camp forced him to wonder if there was a God and if so why would he put him and the others through such torture. Through his suffering, Eliezer’s beliefs dramatically and negatively changed his faith in God and compelled him to experience a transformative relationship with his father.
The early 1940s, an observant, young boy, and his caring father: the start of a story that would become known throughout the world of Eliezer Wiesel. His eye-opening story is one of millions born of the Holocaust. Elie’s identity, for which he is known by, is written out word for word his memoir, Night. Throughout his journey, Elie’s voice drifts from that of an innocent teen intrigued with the teachings of his religion to that of a soul blackened by a theoretical evil consuming the Nazis and Hitler’s Germany. Elie Wiesel's memoir, Night, examines the theme of identity through the continuous motifs of losing one’s self in the face of death and fear, labeling innocent people for a single dimension of what defines a human being, and the oppression seen in the Holocaust based on the identities of those specifically targeted and persecuted.
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