Knight By Eliezer Wiesel: Literary Analysis

He was once kind, thoughtful, and caring of others. But, as his sufferings increased, he becomes heartless, filled with hate, and begins to abandon all that he once held dear. He stops praying early during his imprisonment, and in general becomes selfish. His only concern is himself, and how he is going to eat and survive until the next day. Once concerned about others, he is now focused on himself. Wiesel also feels “free” when his father dies, presumably because he no longer has to look out for or take care of anyone but himself. Wiesel also details another example of changing behavior in the camp, as he tells the story of a son who killed his father simply for a piece of stale bread. These and other behavioral changes describe the kind of environment Wiesel and others were exposed to in the

Wiesel’s faith changes from being a strong believer in faith before the war to losing faith while during the war, he goes on to talk about him losing faith by saying “Some of the men spoke of God: His mysterious ways, the sins of the Jewish people, and the redemption to come. As for me, I had ceased to pray. I concurred with Job! I was not denying His existence, but I doubted His absolute justice.” (Pg.63). This quote goes on to demonstrate the loss of faith by Wiesel when being tortured by the Germans with the rest of the millions of Jews. Wiesel also loses faith when he says “Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes .”(Pg. 34) When Wiesel say this it implicates that his faith is being lost, and also he feels that his faith is basically being robbed from him by the German Nazis party. This fully show that he had lost faith but this shows what harshness and cruelty can do to a

Eliezer hears a rabbi ask desperately, “Where is the divine Mercy? How can I believe, how could anyone believe, in this merciful God.”(Wiesel 73) Wiesel no longer knows what to have faith in anymore. He’s hoping for any proof of God, any validation that the God he used to pray to would help him, but always ends up disappointed. Wiesel is feeling extremely desperate and betrayed, especially when he heard that Rabbi Eliahou had lost faith. When seeing that Rabbi Eliahou’s son tried to get rid of his father “in spite of [himself], a prayer rose in [Eliezer’s] heart, to the god in whom [he] no longer believed in.”(Wiesel 87) Although Wiesel continues to claim that he no longer believes in God, a small part of him still hopes that he is out there and will save Eliezer and the rest of the Jews. He feels reassurance and secureness when praying to God because it was an instinct and brought him back to the days where he was very devout. He still believes God is out there and will eventually help him in the end. Eliezer continues to believe that God is not merciful and good, but still turns toward him in times of difficulty.

In Elie Wiesel’s Night, he recounts his horrifying experiences as a Jewish boy under Nazi control. His words are strong and his message clear. Wiesel uses themes such as hunger and death to vividly display his days during World War II. Wiesel’s main purpose is to describe to the reader the horrifying scenes and feelings he suffered through as a repressed Jew. His tone and diction are powerful for this subject and envelope the reader. Young readers today find the actions of Nazis almost unimaginable. This book more than sufficiently portrays the era in the words of a victim himself.

Wiesels faith in god went on a rollercoaster during the Holocaust. At the beginning of the book Wiesel mentioned how him and his friends stayed in the synagogue during all hours of the day, meaning that his faith in god is very strong. On page 27 wiesel was very thankful for his relationship with god. Wiesel mention that his “god was murdered” during the middle of the book Night (Wiesel 34). On page 77 Wiesel said something along the lines of why should he be merciful to god as he is “a simple creature of flesh and bone”. Around page 35 Wiesel was thanking god though which was confusing to me, as on page 34 he talked about his god being murdered.

When Elie Wiesel was a kid, he had extreme faith in his religion. Moshe the Beadle is the first person to question Wiesel’s faith. Moshe the Beadle asks Elie Wiesel why he prays; after pondering the thought, Wiesel replies, “I don’t know why” (p. 2). Elie Wiesel does not know the reason why he prays to God when he doesn’t receive anything back. His faith now seems weaker, despite the hours he devotes to God. God gives him Moshe the Beadle when he wants to study the cabala, and his father won’t help him, but once Wiesel arrives at the concentration camp, God shows no such help as he did at that time. Although God may have left Wiesel, his father stepped up to take care of him and show him that all

The Holocaust, yet another unpleasant time in history tainted with the blood and suffering of man. Human beings tortured, executed and starved for hatred and radical ideas. Yet with many tragedies there are survivors, those who refused to die on another man’s command. These victims showed enormous willpower, they overcame human degradation and tragedies that not only pushed their beliefs in god, but their trust in fellow people. It was people like Elie Wiesel author of “Night”, Eva Galler,Sima Gleichgevicht-Wasser, and Solomon Radasky that survived, whose’ mental and physical capabilities were pushed to limits that are difficult to conceive. Each individual experiences were different, but their survival tales not so far-reaching to where the fundamental themes of fear, family, religion and self-preservation played a part in surviving. Although some of these themes weren’t always so useful for survival.

The greatest change to Elie Wiesel’s identity was his loss of faith in God. Before he and his family were moved to the camps, Wiesel was a religious little boy who cried after praying at night (2). When the Hungarian police come to force the Jews to move to the ghettos, they pulled Elie from his prayers (13). Even on his way to Auschwitz, stuffed inside the cattle car with other terrified Jews, Wiesel gave thanks to God when told he would be assigned to labor camps (24). After a few days in Auschwitz, Elie Wiesel heard about the crematory and the fact that the Nazis were killing the sick, weak, and young. In his first night in the camp, Wiesel experienced his first crisis of faith: Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. …Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust (32).

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 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.

Wiesel struggled a lot with his faith in Night. Before the Holocaust he had full faith in God. But his faith and trust in God started to slip throughout his time in the concentration camp. The breaking point in where Wiesel completely lost his faith in God was when the young pipel was hung. After witnessing

The rhetorical question shows how Wiesel cannot stand God’s silence any longer and doesn’t want to venerate him anymore, or even be connected to him. Before this phrase he kept hinting that he was losing his faith in God, but this now reveals the final moment in which he feels alone and lacks all faith. This is the one sentence in the entire book that truly represented how he felt, considering there were others who were losing faith, even the one rabbi that said “‘It’s over. God is no longer with us’” (76), but he never said anything about no longer praying to him.

In this passage Wiesel has become more overtly angry with God. He no longer hides behind the reverence he has grown up knowing. Rather he is openly charging God with not only the destruction of the Jewish people, but also with continually plaguing their thoughts. Having the false hope that God may one day save them seems like a cruel joke. Wiesel seems to be saying that if God has already decided not to save them, than the least He can do is quit allowing the people to pray to and follow Him.

The author demonstrates that an adverse atmosphere can cause a person to relinquish their faith. The author establishes the purpose through the sufferings of Moishe the Beadle, Wiesel’s torment and plight of other prisoners in the concentration camp.

While Elie Wiesel, a Jewish boy subjugated to the violence of the Holocaust in Night, embarks on his atrocious journey in struggling to survive the brutality perpetrated on him, he loses his innocence in the traumatic circumstances. Wiesel’s main aspiration of writing about his development from childhood to adulthood is to showcase how cruelty within society can darken innocents’ souls. As Elie grows throughout the story, he starts to understand that he has changed from a pure, little child to a young man filled with distress and thoughts of danger. He reflects over what kind of individual he has evolved into because of the all the killings and torture he has witnessed: “I too had become a different