During the holocaust many believed that banishment from their homes was trial sent from God to be endured—a test of faith. In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, his mother and sisters are taken from him and Elie and his father are forced to work in the Nazi concentration camps. But Elie's belief in God begins to falter at the concentration camps of Birkenau-Auschwitz. Here the furnaces are busy night and day burning people and German soldiers throw babies and children into flames. The longer he stays in the concentration camps, the more he sees and experiences cruelty and suffering. Originally a devout Jew, Elie can no longer believe in a God who would permit such nightmare places to exist and begins to question his faith and views of the Almighty. In the beginning of the …show more content…
After the prayer is complete, Elie feels no need to fast,“and then there was no longer any reason for me to fast. I no longer accepted God’s silence.” (Wiesel 69). Not fasting turned, “into a symbol of rebellion, of protest against Him.” (Wiesel 69). He was challenging God into coming forth and helping the Jews and saving his family. If God did not answer he did not understand why he would continue to praise Him and fast in His honor. Elie claims that his faith is utterly destroyed, yet at the same time says that he will never forget these things even if he lives as long as God himself, after completely denying the existence of
Ever since Elie was in the concentration camp, he has slowly lost faith in God as he “...did not fast. First of all, to please my father, who had forbidden me to do so. And then, there was no longer any reason for me to fast. I no longer accepted God’s silence. As I swallowed my ration of soup, I turned that act into a symbol of rebellion, of protest against Him” (Wiesel 69). By not fasting like he did before when he was not in the concentration camp, it shows his rebellion against God as he has lost any sign of hope for God. Elie also decides to eat for the sake of his health and his well being in that situation as everyone was starving even before the fasting occured. His beliefs in God has changed from his past as it affects his views on God and his beliefs about him. The concentration camp had also made Elie question his beliefs of God as he asked himself “Bless be God’s name? Why, but why would I bless Him? Every fiber in me rebelled. Because He caused thousands of children to burn in His mass graves?” (Wiesel 67). Elie processes his decision onto why he should even pray to God as he had lost hope and signs of God ever since he saw the horrifying acts made in the camps. His views had been changed him from his past as he questions his beliefs and wonders why God has not saved them from all their misery. Elie had changed his ways of viewing his
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.
Elie loses complete faith in god in many points where god let him down. He struggles physically and mentally for life and no longer believes there is a god. Elie worked hard to save himself and asks god many times to help him and take him out of the misery he was facing. "Why should I sanctify his name? The Almighty, the eternal, and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent..."(page 33). Elie was confused, because he doesn’t know why the Germans would kill his race amongst many others, and he does not know why god could let such thing happen to innocent people. "I did not deny god's existence, but I doubted his absolute justice..."(page 42). These conditions gave him confidence, and a courage to
“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.
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.
At midnight on the third day of their deportation, the group looks at flames rising above huge ovens and gags at the stench of burning flesh. Guards wielding billy clubs force Elie's group through a selection of those fit to work and those who face a grim and improbable future. Elie and his father lie about their ages and depart with other hardy men to Auschwitz. Elie's mother and three sisters disappear into Birkenau, the death camp. After viewing infants being tossed in a burning pit, Elie is now against God, who remains silent. Elie and his father manage through all the pain and horrific sights and fight through it all. In the novel “Night” Elie Wiesel shows dehumanization in many occurrences throughout the book. Pg 13 “ The gestapo had threatened to shoot him if he talked.” Pg 36 “ He was weeping bitterly. I thought he was crying with joy at still being alive.” Pg. 53 “ Beating me in the chest, on my head, throwing me to the ground and picking me up again, crushing me with ever more
Kids tend to rebel against their parents as they grow older. In the memoir, Night, Elie Wiesel recalls his experiences with his family during World War II. His mother and sisters were taken away from him as soon as he arrived at Auschwitz, only his father remained. Elie Wiesel witnessed many terrible events during his first night at camp; the only thing that kept him in line was his father. Elie Wiesel’s father kept him from possibly killing himself. When Elie Wiesel lives in the concentration camp with his fellow Jews, he begins to question the fairness of God, who he had followed his entire life. Elie Wiesel lost faith in God, particularly the faith that He would use His divine power to help him, and he began to rely on his father instead, which gave him more reason to live.
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.
It would be common to think about God and how he was letting all of his people suffer. Elie would have eaten either way, but we for sure know that by this spot in the book he has definitely lost his faith.
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.
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).
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.
We encounter Elie’s lost of faith throughout the book. Once he was separate he was brought to an area where bodies were being thrown into a fire. He started losing his faith in humanity once he saw the cruel things that were happening. When people lose there faith, they lose their faith in God and themselves. They start looking on the negative side of life and just lose their focus for what they wanted. Elie would want to study the Cabala but his father didn’t approve of it. He would always look out for not just his family but the people around him. Elie would always pray but wouldn't know why. He fascinated with Judaism so he goes without his father’s permission to learn more. “Never shall I forget those flames, which consumed my faith forever.” on page 45 clearly tells us that his faith was lost due to the fact that bodies were being thrown into the flames. As the book
Elie’s faith is very tight at the beginning of the memoir, he had faith in God when he and the other Jews of Sighet were taken to the ghettos. “And we, the Jews of Sighet, were waiting for better days, which would not be long in coming now'' (5). This show that Elie’s faith was strong enough to believe that life would get better and the hardship would soon be over. It was not easy for Elie to have doubt in God when the Nazis were brutally oppressing the Jews in the ghettos. Once Elie and all the others were transported to Auschwitz, Elie was separated from his father and was tortured and forced to work. In the camp Elie was in, some of the youth with him were planning to take down the Nazis and said "We must do something. We can't let them kill us like that, like cattle in the slaughterhouse. We must revolt."(31). Then an
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