Themes 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.

Eliezer spent all him time with his religion and strengthen it, everyday he seeks knowledge of what he wanted the most to understand his religion and God. He wanted and deepest connection he could get by “ We would read , over and over again, the same page,” the reason he would do this is to understand and “discover the very essence of divinity”. HIs religion , his relationship with God taught him the way to live life ; by that it helped to escape from reality and just focus on one thing.

As mentioned before, Wiesel wrote elsewhere, “My anger rises up within faith and not outside it.” Eliezer reflects this position, which is particularly visible throughout this passage. Despite saying he has lost all faith, it is clear that Eliezer is actually struggling with his faith and his God. Just as he is never able to forget the horror of “that night,” he is never able to reject completely his heritage and his religion.

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,

In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie and his family are Jewish and in turn get sent to Birkenau. They were sent to Birkenau because Adolf Hitler had come to power just before World War II. Elie gets separated from his mother and sister who had been sent to the crematory. Elie had been fortunate enough that his father was sent to the same side as him. Wiesel writes about the death of God and his own disgust with humanity, reflected in the inversion of the father son bond, as his father declines to a helpless state and Wiesel becomes his resentful teenage caregiver. The motif is night as a symbol of death. This is shown through his experience at the concentration camp and times on the train.

Imprisonment. Faith. Emotionless. In the memoir, Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie and his father were kept prisoners in a concentration camp in Auschwitz for being Jewish. This time period was called the Holocaust. Elie and his father were distant but later they become closer and depend on one another.

In the beginning of the book, Night by Elie Wiesel, Eliezer’s faith was very devout. “Why did I pray? Strange Question. Why did i live? Why did I breathe?””(4). Eliezer prayed when in need and looked to God for answers, just like when the jews were evacuated to the ghettos. “Oh god, master of the universe, in your infinite compassion, have mercy on us...”(20). While in Auschwitz 1, Eliezer was starting to feel changed. He still believed in the existence of God but ceased to actually pray to him. “Some of the men spoke to God..but I doubted his absolute justice”(45). Eliezer then went on growing more questionable about God and his abilities.

In Elie Wiesel’s book Night, there are several themes throughout the entire book. Some of these themes are emotional death, struggle to maintain faith, keeping dignity despite inhumane conditions, and self-preservation vs. family commitment. I feel like self-preservation vs. family commitment is shown the most throughout the book. Many charters throughout the book showed family commitment over self-preservation. The first example is when they first got to Auschwitz during the first selection.

When condemned to torture and inhumanity self-preservation will begin to arise. In his memoir Night, Elie Wiesel, a holocaust survivor discusses the pain and struggle he and millions of Jews endure. Nazis acts of cruelty upon people in concentration camps bring out a theme of every man for himself. Wiesel shows readers through his point of view how he deals with others and himself succumbing to self-preservation.

Eliezer describes himself as someone who believes profoundly. His faith at the beginning of the book was really strong until the Germans took him. None of the Jewish people expected the Holocaust to happen.

Unfortunately, once the Holocaust started, Eliezer and his mother father, two older sisters, and his younger sister were all sent to a concentration camp. The hardships experienced in the concentrations camps lessen Eliezer’s trust in God. At the start of the story, Eliezer is extremely religious, with immense faith in God, but after seeing many beatings, surviving the midnight

Throughout life people experience difficult times that are nearly impossible to make it through, but the presence of family helps one survive these troublesome experiences. The novel Night by Elie Wiesel is a story of the author's own experience growing up in the holocaust, and being in the concentration camps. A novel with equal hardships is Sold by Patricia McCormick, and tells about a girl named Lakshmi who gets sold into child trafficking. By examining the novels Night and Sold we can see Elie’s and Lakshmi’s connections to their families kept them alive throughout their tragedies, which is important because it shows that strong family connections can greatly help a person survive difficult times.

A theme in Night by Elie Wiesel is, when someone is treated like an animal for so long, they become one. These animals are enveloped in darkness and rage with a fading conscience. They care about one thing, surviving. The first example of Elie showing this is when he feels pure rage and considers strangling a doctor. “To strangle the doctor and the others! To set the world on fire! My father’s murderers,” (Wiesel 109). Elie is so angry at this moment he wants the whole world to perish because of the actions of a few. No one is showing sympathy or care because they are now animals. Another example of this is when Elie explains what he and the other prisoners do once they are free. “ Our first act as free men was to throw ourselves into the