Argument on Loss of Faith In the book, Night, by Elie Wiesel is about senseless acts of inhumanity. When senseless acts occur, it can leave the victims questioning their faith. When put through traumatic experiences, people who trust and have the most faith in God tend to blame their God after a traumatic event. The point of the theme is that people who have the most faith in God can lose their faith to God and not only God, humanity too. Elie’s belief in God begins to falter at the concentration camps of Birkenau, Auschwitz when he sees the little angel boy hanging. The little boy, who had the face of a sad angel, was sentenced to be hanged. Since the child was so light, he didn't die immediately when he fell, and he remained alive, hanging …show more content…
Because on his great might, he had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many factories of death" (Wiesel 64). This suggests to Eliezer that people are stronger and forgiving than the God they pray to. As more people starve and die, more and more people start to lose all hope of surviving and escaping the camp as well as losing all faith in God. If the world is so disgusting and cruel, he feels, then God either must be disgusting and cruel or must not exist at all. Additionally, Elie also loses his faith in God when he witnessed a Jewish father and son kill one another over a piece of bread. This disturbed Elie so much until he gave up all hope and stopped believing in the goodness of God. Elie also lost his praise, quote, "Why should I bless his name? The eternal, lord of the universe, the all-powerful and terrible was silent. What had I to thank him for?" (Wiesel 31). This shows how the prisoners became predatory animals, animals that were once normal people who would not kill one another for food. Elie described them as, quote, "Wild beasts of prey, with animal hatred in their eyes; an extraordinary vitality had seized them, sharpening their teeth and nails." (Wiesel 101), having been starved for ten days, the prisoners are willing
Throughout the book Night by Elie Wiesel, Wiesel loses faith from the beginning until the end, it’s continuous. Eliezer begins to lose his faith when he witnesses the hanging of the pipel, Elie was forced to watch the corpse of kids whilst he was allowed to eat dinner. "What are You, my God? I thought angrily. . . What does Your grandeur mean, Master of the Universe, in the face of all this cowardice, this decay, and this misery?"(pg 66) This is when Eliezer loses his faith indefinitely. Throughout the book some of Elie´s peers try to help him bring back his faith in god, i´d say it did not work very well. In chapter 5 of Night a friend of Elieś named Akiba says ¨God is testing us. He wants to see whether we are capable of overcoming our base
In the book Night by Elie Wiesel.... Loss of Faith is shown through the way Elie was taken away from the rest of his family except his father and how he lost faith in god because god wasn’t having mercy on anyone.
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).
Although Eliezer is passionate, his father assumes he is too young to understand the complexity of certain topics and refuses to assist. Regardless of his dad’s disapproval, Elie successfully finds a mentor. When Eliezer reached Auschwitz, he exhibited signs of doubt and confusion. He witnessed adults, children, babies being thrown into fires and burning until they died. He questioned God, wondering why he would allow such horrifying episodes to occur.
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
People often begin to lose faith in God because of the results they faced from their life experiences. Some face things that seem cruel and unbearable while others are “confronted with the information presented from another viewpoint that rejects God” (Gospel Billboards). Elie was told by his father to never lose his faith in God, it would help him get through tough times and keep him strong. The faith is the only strong force that helped Elie Wiesel get through the Holocaust. Through experiences that involve cruel and unbearable moments, people start questioning whether God has the answers to life’s problems. This results in faith beginning to weaken, people stop communicating with God, which makes it easier for one’s faith to diminish. We encounter Elie questioning and refusing God, but also see his contradictory behavior he exhibits to praise. However, throughout the book, Eliezer witnesses and experiences things that leads him to lose his faith in his religion. The longer he stays in the concentration camps, the more he experiences and sees cruelty and suffering. Eliezer believes that people who pray to a God who allows their families to suffer and die are more stronger and forgiving to God. Elie was angry at God, he thought God didn’t deserve his praises or honors because he expected God to come save him but he never did. He observes people die and others around him slowly lose hope, starve, Elie ceases to believe that God could exist at all now. “Where He is? This
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.
The reference to the altar proves that ignorance was not the cause of his anger; instead, Elie and the other prisoners were so far dehumanized that their prior devotion is, in their eyes, no longer justified. After witnessing the horrors of the Holocaust, the prisoners are no longer devoted; instead, their faith has been replaced with anger and the instinct of survival. Being dehumanized not only results in anger at God, but also religious apathy. While in a concentration camp, Elie and the other prisoners witness the hanging of three prisoners, including a young child. The prisoners watch as both of the adult prisoners die.
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.
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
While Elie was in the concentration camp he changed the way he acted. This new behavior led him to develop new character traits. While Ellie was in the concentration camp he became angry at many things. For example “I would have dug my nails into the criminals flesh” (Wisel 39). Elie shows extreme anger when the Nazi officials are beating Elie’s father. Elie was angry because the Nazi soldiers were not treating them nicely and keeping them in poor conditions. Elie was usually not a person to display anger, but he shows this when his family members are being hurt. Elie wants to stand up for what is right and for his family members. Despite his studying, Elie wavered in his belief in Kabbalah while he was at the camp. Elie was a religious boy before he went to Auschwitz, but while in the camp, he became angry at God. In the book Elie says, “‘Where are You, my God?’” (66). Elie is wondering why God is not helping the Jews. Elie had complete faith in his religion until he experienced and witnessed such horrible suffering. He had been taught that God will punish evil and save the righteous. However, when Elie saw that God was not helping the Jews situation,
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
People at the concentration camp pray to God to help them, but God does not help them and it pisses Elie off. After the Jews arrive to the concentration camp, they are to be checked if they are fit to work. If they are not fit, they are set to the crematoria to die. Meanwhile, others who don’t know what the crematoria is they willingly pray to God thinking God will save them. Elie walks in line to the crematoria, “Master of the Universe chose to be silent. What was there to thank him?” (33). When Elie mentions, “Master of the Universe chose to be silent. What was there to thank him” means that there is no point praying to God if he will not help one. Elie questions his faith towards God and why he should keep continuing to pray. Elie loses his innocence by not caring about the people that died around him and questions his faith towards
Eliezer was taught that God is supposed to be filled with good, yet as he goes through the Holocaust, he thinks that maybe God doesn't exist at all . As he and his father are walking through Auschwitz, he sees the Nazi's burning babies in a large pit. While his father began whispering to himself the prayer for the dead, reciting "may his name be blessed and magnified...," Eliezer asks himself, thinking that he would be burned as well, "Why should I bless his name? The Eternal, Lord of the Universe...was silent. What had I to thank him for?"(Page 31) This is the beginning of his lack of faith in god. As Eliezer and his father were together in Buna, an occasional public hanging would take place. Hangings were executed not only for those that committed a crime, but also for the prisoners of the camp, in order to learn a lesson from the accused. In Buna, one of three prisoners who were hung was a little boy, who was a servant of a member of the resistance group in the camp. Once the boy was publicly hung, the boy was still alive, just hanging there on the noose for about half an hour. As the prisoners in the camp were forced to watch the hanging, they began to cry. Eliezer said that even though there were so many hangings, this was the first time everyone was crying. At that moment, a prisoner asked out loud "Where is God now?"(Page 62) and Eliezer answered to himself "Where is he?
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,