Turning Point In Elie Wiesel's Night

This shows Elie’s change in his thoughts on God and having faith. At the beginning of the story, Elie strives to be a spiritual kid and is fascinated by learning about God. He goes behind his father's back to learn about God with Moishe the Beadle, and has intense prayers everyday which he cries during. However, he becomes bitter towards God, angry about all the pain he has inflicted on the Jewish race. This change in perspective was brought on by the torture, abuse, and inhumane treatment by the Nazis. It causes Elie to question how God, who is supposed to be helpful and good, could ever allow such horror. This connects to loss, and how the traumatic

The Jews are then marched to Auschwitz, where Elie witnesses many horrendous things happening. Elie and his father are put to

Elie’s faith in his Lord and his instinctive love for humanity are put to their final tests as the novel approaches its climax and conclusion. After witnessing the malicious, brutal hanging of an innocent child, Elie comes to the

Leaving because of an attack, Elie and the rest of the inmates struggle trying to keep up with orders, running in the cold and deep snow. “In my pocket, I had two pieces of bread. How I would have liked to eat them! But I knew I must not. Not yet. Our turn was coming: Block 53 … Block 55 … “Block 57, forward! March!” It snowed on and on.” After running through the snow in the cold night, Elie is set back again by his weakening father. A quote in the book that represents this states, “He had become childlike: weak, frightened, vulnerable. “ Father,” I said, “ you cannot stay here.” I pointed to the corpses around him; they too had wanted to rest here.” Using the diction in the first quote, the author gives us a sense that Elie is mentally preparing himself for the harshness of what will soon to come using the ellipses’ and pushing past his limits. With the use of dialogue, Elie is motivating himself and his a father in a way that will put fear into dying. Talking more and more about this situation keeps a person alive knowing that they are still people able to have conversation instead of mindlessly

Elie has not stopped believing in God. But, for him, the God whom he loved and adored has been hung and executed. His innocent

Elie reflects on the first night at the camps, he says “Never shall I forget the night at that camp that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed...Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky. Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget the natural silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live…” (pg.34). Elie was explaining that was the night it all changed for him, how it will always be apart of him. After seeing what this camp had to offer, to still even be alive was a privilege. He knew then, Auschwitz was just a Jews death sentence waiting to happen. He will never forget because it will always be stuck with him, that it was so horribly traumatizing that one could be so evil to innocent people. Think about Elie’s motivation it seems to go up and down, there were different things that would build his hope up but at the same time deprive him from it. The author illustrates this point when he states “The idea of dying, of ceasing to be, began to fascinate me” (pg.86) When Elie and all the other men were told to march on, the SS officers told them to increase their pace more and more and soon found themselves running at full pace for hours and hours. The SS officers had orders to shoot anyone who could not sustain the pace. Elie was explaining how his foot was aching and he was so exhausted and desperate for it all to be over, but never seemed to end. He was so reckless at this point, but he remembers his father. Elie tells us “My father's presence was the only thing that stopped me. He was running next to me out of strength, desperate. I had no right to let myself die. What would he do without me? I was his soul support?” (pg.86-87). This simply proves that this was the only reason that Elie was to go on was because he wanted his father to go on.

In the background the sun is setting on the horizon. Elie and many others start to cry in anguish, but the worst has yet to come. They still have to march past the bodies of the hanging. “The two men were no longer alive. Their tongues were hanging out, swollen and bluish” (64). But then there was the revolting scene of the third rope. It was still moving, the child was not yet dead. He hanged there for more than half an hour wiggling like a worm, “lingering between life and death, writhing before our eyes” (65). When Elie passed him he was still alive and his tongue was still red, his eyes still open. Elie heard behind him, “For God’s sake, where is God?” (65). During that night Elie’s soup tasted of corpses.

Wiesel uses the themes of the struggle to maintain faith and inhumanity toward other humans in order to portray the cruelty of the Holocaust. Eliezer begins the novel with a strong, unwavering faith in God. He believes that God is everywhere and that God is present at all times. Since God is present in every place in the world, the world must be good and just. Eliezer’s faith in the integrity of the world and God is challenged by the brutality he witnesses during the Holocaust from the Nazis and his fellow prisoners. An example of Eliezer questioning his faith is when he witnesses a small child being hanged. He asks himself where God is and answers, “He is hanging here on this gallows” (Wiesel 65). He witnesses Nazis burning children in furnaces, Jews being subjected to repeated beatings and humiliations, the hanging of fellow prisoners, the hanging of a child and the slaughter and death of prisoners. The cruelty of the Nazis breeds more cruelty and Eliezer sees the prisoners become cruel as well. He sees sons abandoning and abusing their

When Elie is ordered to go on a march, he and others witness a youth about his similar age being hung for stealing food. “I remember that on that evening the soup tasted better than ever” (Wiesel 63). This indicates that Elie had shown no emotion towards the event, and in turn was happy that he was able to eat the soup, even if it was at the expense of another individual. Additionally, as Elie’s father is dying towards the end of the novel, Elie shows no empathy towards him as he is being beaten by the Nazi SS Official. “I heard his voice...yet I did not move” (Wiesel xi). Elie later regrets this terrible event however, but this just suggests how he was corrupted at that time after seeing all those people suffer and not do anything about. It then ultimately it happened to his father, and he did not do anything about it. Moreover, Elie is very religious at the beginning of the story, and is eager to learn more about the Jewish religion. However, as the book progresses, he begins to lose faith in his own God. After seeing all these terrible horrors, he exclaims, “For God’s sake, where is God?” (Wiesel 65). This statement clearly validates that as he watches all this abomination take place, he wonders where God

When they arrived, the people in Buna told them that it is a good camp, and “one can hold one’s own here (Wiesel 47)”. There, they are forced to witness the hanging of a young boy. Elie heard a man say, “‘For God’s sake, where is God?( Wiesel 65)’” and Elie found himself responding, “‘Where He is? This is where - hanging here from this gallows… (Wiesel 65)’”. After all the death and torment Elie had been exposed to, he could no longer hold on to the beliefs he lived by before he was taken captive. Elie was longer is the person who was able to “...read, over and over again, the same page of the Zohar. Not to learn it by heart but to discover within the very essence of divinity (Wiesel 5).”. The only question Elie had left was how God could let this happen to him, and he knew he would never get the answer. Because of the dehumanizing treatment Elie received, his faith in God and everything he believed him was

He is no longer anticipating Him to make a change or stop the atrocities taking place in the camp. For Elie this is “a protest against Him”, protesting the silence, proving that he can make it without the weight of waiting for righteousness. Ultimately, as the days continued, Elie appeared to be almost apathetic. He woke up that dawn on January 29 without a father. As it turned out, he had been taken to the crematoria.

This quote shows Elie’s loss of faith because, Elie is questioning God for not saving him and the other Jews from the from being put into the concetration camps. This was just the beggining of Elie’s loss of faith. Elie continues to question, and loss his faith when he witnesses a little pipel get hung from the gallows. Elie said, “‘For God’s sake, where is God.’ And from within me, I heard a voice answer: ‘Where He is?

He writes, “Never shall I forget… the first night in the camp… that smoke… the small faces of the children… those flames… the nocturnal silence… those moments… Those things… Never” (Pg.34). The time that he spent in the camp and the things he saw will never leave him. Elie was only fifteen when he arrived at the camp and he went through so much. The events he witnessed would even be too much for some grown men. At the very end of the book he looks in the mirror at himself for the first time since before he came to the camp and says, “From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes will stay with me forever,” (Pg.115). This only adds to the things that will stay with him forever. For the first time in about a year he saw himself. He saw what the concentration camps had made of him. He was a completely different person not only physically, but mentally and spiritually also. That is something he will never

During World War II, Hitler's final solution was to annihilate all the Jews. He sent all the Jews to multiple concentration camps, breaking their families up and forcing them to do brutal things. In the book Night, Elie Wiesel tells us about how his experiences in the camps were. He and his father gets split away from his mother and other siblings, so he has to look out for his father like his father has to look out for Elie. Throughout the book, Elie gives examples of how he loses his faith in God.

As situations become tougher in Auschwitz, Elie loses his faith in God. When the prisoners are forced to watch their fellow Jews get hanged, Elie hears a voice behind him, “For God’s sake, where is God?” Elie thinks to himself, “Where He is? This is where-hanging here from this gallows…” This demonstrates how Elie has no more confidence in God. Elie never would have thought that God would let his people suffer from watching friends, family or fellow Jews be hanged. Afterward, around ten thousand men gathered to recite the prayers of death. The prayer starts just like every other prayer, “Blessed be God’s name.” Even though they are reciting a prayer, Elie does not understand how everyone still believes in saying this, even believing that God