Monstrosity In Night By Elie Wiesel

In the memoir Night, Elie Wiesel uses his change in faith to show that extreme conditions, such as the Holocaust, will drastically alter how one sees and takes the world in. Elie’s faith in God started out strong and prominent and was quickly questioned as the horrible experiences of the Holocaust carried on which, in the end, resulted in the death of his beliefs in God and religion.

During World War II, the Jewish race was one of the most persecuted of all the minorities harassed by Hitler and the Third Reich, and a day to day basis, Jews across Europe lived in constant fear, wondering if today would be their last. Especially in cities close to the expanding Nazi empire, there was no telling when their last breath would come. In the memoir, the closely knitted town of Sighet is controlled by the Germans, leaving anyone of Jewish descent to obey their commands in total fear of their personal safety. Elie Wiesel describes this genuine fear when he wakes up a close friend of his father, “‘Get up sir, get up!...You're going to be expelled from here tomorrow with your whole family, and all the rest of the Jews…’ Still half asleep he stared at me with terror-stricken eyes.”

“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.

​ Cruelty. Faith. Survival. In the memoir, Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie, his family, and other Jews are tricked into concentration camps and made prisoners. Here they are treated cruelly, and struggle to survive. This marks the beginning of the Holocaust for Elie but the end for a endless amount of others. When life was normal, Eli had a strong belief in god but as the conditions become less bearable he starts to question his faith and ultimately loses it.

In every religion, the holy text or the preachers ask that their worshippers believe in some form of God. Most people can blindly pursue and believe in God without question, without inquisition. Then there are those who cannot aimlessly worship a possibly fictional God. The struggle comes when there is no validation, no confirmation, of God or anything that He ever did. During the Holocaust, an estimated six million Jews struggle with their faith in every concentration camp, including Elie Wiesel. In Night, Elie Wiesel uses tone, diction, and characterization to expose his internal battle with believing in his faith and seeing the others battle with their faith as well.

The holocaust was a terrible period of punishment and abuse for many who were discriminated against, especially the jews. One of these jews was Elie Wiesel. He is the author of the book Night a autobiography on his life as a Jew in the Holocaust. Throughout the book Elie displayed many traits. Elie’s traits include loyalty, determination, and religiousness. The characterization of Elie the protagonist and the other characters plays a role in creating and supporting a theme in the novel Night. From reading the novel we can tell that Elie Wiesel's night shows that the holocaust was a very difficult time for jews and that it made them lose faith in god.

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.

There are many important themes and overtones to the book Night, by Eliezer Wiesel. One of the major themes from the book includes the protagonist, and author of his memoire, Elie Wiesel’s ever changing relationship with God. An example of this is when Moche the Beadle asked Elie an important question that would change his life forever, as the basis of his passion and aptitude for studying the ancient texts and teachings of Judaism, “When Moche the Beadle asked Elie why he prayed, Elie couldn 't think of an answer that truly described his faith, and thought, "a strange question, why did I live, why did I breathe?" (Wiesel 14).

There is one singular question that persists in humanity from the beginning of time, a question regarding the existence of perhaps the most influential figure in the universe: God. In the memoir, Night, Elie Wiesel details his experiences in the holocaust, his journey from his small Jewish community in Transylvania to the subsequent concentration camps which housed him in his later youth. In this haunting account, Wiesel explores his own journey from a devout young man to one that will question his own faith, the existence of God, and how one could still believe in a “right and just” God after witnessing such atrocities.

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 Faith is a consequential part of Elies life. When asked why he prays to God, he answers, “Why did I pray? . . . Why did I live? Why did I breathe?”(4). However Elie’s faith is subsequently altered by his experiences at Auschwitz.

On the second day at the concentration camp, Elie explains an incident in which he almost decided to kill himself and end his suffering. While walking towards a fire pit with a group of Jews, Elie says that “if [he] was going to kill [him]self, this was the time” (Wiesel 33). As he approaches the pit, he internally says good-bye to “his father, to the whole universe” and finds himself “face-to-face with the Angel of death”, conveying that Elie’s suffering has in essence killed him (Wiesel 34). Through revealing the mindset that it may be better to die than to encounter any more suffering, Wiesel illustrates that the concentration camps have broken him, shattering his identity. The suffering is so unbearable that Elie feels even death is a better option, depicting that not only has the suffering failed to make him stronger, it has weakened him to a point that living no longer feels worthwhile. Hence, Elie’s suffering throughout the holocaust makes him consider killing himself and lose the will to live, demonstrating that suffering has made him

During the Holocaust 6 million Jews were thrown into systematic camps designed to tear them apart. There were a handful of survivors and of these Jews, one of them is Elie Wiesel. Elie Wiesel is a survivor of the Holocaust and shares their experiences in their novel Night. A major topic that Elie Wiesel talks of in Night is his transformation of his belief in God. Elie before the Holocaust is praying on a regular basis and takes part in Kabbalah. However, as the Nazis advance and Elie is thrown into a concentration camps he loses faith. In the novel Night, Elie Wiesel portrayed how Nazis performed acts of hatred towards the Jews that physically and spiritually ripped them apart causing Jews to question their God and eventually lose faith.

Hitler, a German, viewed Jews as his enemies because he believed that the Jews were the cause of the first World War, which killed over 100,000 Germans. From the time period of 1933-1945, the Jewish community experienced massive genocide from the attack of the Nazis that were in favor of Hitler. In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie’s experience in Auschwitz changes his mindset because the German culture influences him to question his belief of the Jewish religion through torturous beatings creating mental scars.

The holocaust killed over six million Jews and many other people not falling into the aryan race Hitler wanted for Germany. Elie and his family did not characterize as a part of Hitler's “Perfect” race. Taken out of their homes, thrown into ghettos and later moved to the camps, Elie’s faith is no longer the same as it was. As he used to want to learn more about his religion, he no longer wants to be a part of it. This event in history should not be turned away, we as a growing to acceptance and understanding world need to remember these events. We must remember because those who died didn't know why they were treated like this, they didn't have a choice. The holocaust resembles Darwin’s Theory, Survival of the Fittest in the sense of the strongest will live. The novel Night, by Elie Wiesel is a perfect representation of loss of faith from the beginning to end of his story. Only the strong-willed can survive the holocaust physically and mentally.