The Role Of Religion In Night By Elie Wiesel

Every man, woman, or child has his or her breaking point, no matter how hard they try to hold it back. In Night by Elie Wiesel the main theme of the entire book is the human living condition. The quality of human life is overwhelming because humans have the potential to make amazing discoveries that help all humans. Elie Wiesel endures some of the most cruel living conditions known to mankind. This essay explains the themes of chapter one, chapter four, chapter eight in Night by Elie Wiesel.

One point in the story that Eliezer questions his faith in God is when they are forced to

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?

In the concentration camp Eliezer can’t understand why God allows so much death and destruction, and even though he is angry and questions God he never loses his faith. Although Eliezer never has his questions answered he never loses his faith. Eliezers evolving relationship with God is a major source of character development for himself.

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.

Elie was a holocaust victim who was almost forced, by other jews, into a furnace, by order of the Nazis. “Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever” Elie was very religious before the Holocaust and yet on the first night at Auschwitz he lost his faith in God. He regained faith

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

“Blessed be Gods name? Why? But why would I bless him?” Elie says that on page 67 of this book. To me, when Elie says this, he shows his anger towards God and about everything that he is letting happen. He began to wonder, if he was God, why he was letting all the Germans do horrible things to them. However, this never made any sense to Elie. He was always contemplating the existence of God. On page 69 while supper

Elie’s faith before being exposed to the concentration camps is apparent and he works hard to strengthen and grow his faith. All throughout Night, Wiesel shows the eminent effect faith has on individual’s actions and attitude. At the beginning of Night, Elie’s faith is a key feature of his lifestyle and attitude. Studying under the wisdom of Moishe the Beadle, Elie can put his faith in retrospect as he says, “In the course of those evenings I became convinced that Moishe the Beadle would help me enter eternity, into that time when question and answer would become one” (Wiesel 5). It is very clear that Elie is very emotionally and physically invested in his faith. Before camp Elie was so eager to expand and connect to his faith in which he becomes, “convinced” that he fully understands his faith proving him to be a devout Jewish boy. Thus because, Moishe the Beadle is helping him “enter eternity” and build his faith. Elie’s whole life revolves

Elie's struggle with his faith to God is a major internal conflict he has with him self in the book Night. In the beginning of the book, his faith in God is completly untoched. When questiond about his faith and why he would pray to God, he ask, “Why did I pray? Why did I live? Why did I breathe?”( Winsel Pg 2) His belief in a powerful and able God is untouched, and he cannot think of living without his faith in his religions practices, as it has been one of the main guides in his life. But this faith he has is shaken by his experience during the Holocaust and the events that took place, what he lives and what he sees.

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.

In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel the main message is that many people are losing faith in each other and everything. Once someone lose their faith, they lose their faith in God and they start to just give up on what their main focus was. People can start losing their faith once they see things that should be seen. It starts to scare them and their faith is lost. Elie started to slowly lose his faith once he was separated with his mother because he was brought to a place where inhumane things were happening. Once people start to lose their faith, they start doing things that leads to the loss of humanity.

What is religion? The dictionary states that religion is: “Possessing beliefs concerning the nature and purpose of the universe and the supernatural” (A student’s Dictionary 268). Different cultures have different definitions for the word religion. However, they all have one characteristic in common, faith. The Jewish, for instance, believe in God and that the Messiah will come in the future to bring them once again to the land of Israel. They continue to wait for Him to come. Over time, the Jews were shunned by many people. Hitler pushed all the blame for his, and his people’s troubles on the Jewish people, which then started the holocaust. The holocaust annihilated millions of people many of which were Jews. Six million Jews, making up

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

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,