Night Essay Example
Night Essay Example

Night Essay Example

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  • Pages: 5 (1239 words)
  • Published: June 18, 2022
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In Night by Eliezer Wiesel, Elie’s faith in God changed drastically. In the beginning of the novel he has a strong faith in god with the help of Moishe. And as the novel goes on, he continuously loses faith in god through the events he sees while in the Nazi controlled concentration camps. Elie’s personality and the strength of his faith is very different from the beginning to the end of the novel. Throughout the book Elie begins to question and eventually loses faith completely in God.

Elie started out the novel with a very strong faith core. His family raised him Jewish and Elie was always trying to expand on his faith. In the very early part of the novel, Elie says, “By day I studied Talmud and by night I would run to the synagogue to weep ov

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er the destruction of the Temple.” (Wiesel 3). This evidence shows Elie already had a strong faith base from his parents and his community because at the age of 13 he was already worshipping at temple. As he grows in his faith, Elie meets a very feeble, yet religious man named Moishe the Beadle. In the novel Elie describes his experiences with Moishe as, “Thus began my initiation. Together we would read, over and over again, the same page of Zohar. Not to learn it by heart but to discover within the very essence of divinity.” (Wiesel 5). This shows that Elie cares deeply about his faith and would like to build upon it. He even reaches out to another community member to deepen his faith and as he says, “... discover the very essence of divinity.�

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(Wiesel 5). Elie was quite convinced that he would be faithful for eternity. He states, “And in the course of those evenings I became convinced that Moishe the Beadle would help me enter eternity,” (Wiesel 5). This shows that Elie is trying to achieve the afterlife in his faith. This shows true dedication to his religion. In the beginning of the novel, Elie is extremely interested in Kabbalah and wants to expand his knowledge, showing how much he trusted and believed in God.

Elie begins to question his faith and God himself as the novel goes on. He questions God in three major ways throughout the book. The first time Elie finds himself questioning God is when he first sees the small children and babies being tossed into the crematorium when he first arrives at Auschwitz. He writes, “Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. 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 nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my god and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.” (Wiesel 34) This quote shows that Elie is beginning to lose his faith in God and everything he has been taught while growing up. As Elie spends more time in the various concentration camps throughout the course of World War II

he continues to lose faith in God. In the novel Wiesel writes, “What are You, my God? I thought angrily. How do You compare to this stricken mass gathered to affirm to You their faith, their anger, their defiance? What does Your grandeur mean, Master of the Universe, in the face of all this cowardice, this decay, and this misery? Why do you go on troubling these poor people's wounded minds, their ailing bodies?” (Wiesel 66) Elie feels this way after he watches the young boy hanged. This hanging bothers Elie because it was not an instant death like all the other hangings he had watched because the boy was too light for his neck to break. Elie and all the other prisoners were forced to watch this horrific death. This is when Elie loses mostly all his Faith in God and gives up on the practices of the Jewish culture and begins to truly defy God. Elie shows his distrust in God during Rosh Hashanah when he is listening to a sermon from one of the other prisoners. Wiesel writes, “Blessed be God's name? Why, but why would I bless Him? Every fiber in me rebelled. Because He caused thousands of children to burn in His mass graves? Because He kept six crematoria working day and night, including Sabbath and the Holy Days? Because in His great might, He had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many other factories of death? How could I say to Him: Blessed be Thou, Almighty, Master of the Universe, who chose us among all nations to be tortured day and night, to watch as our fathers, our mothers,

our brothers end up in the furnaces? Praised be Thy Holy Name, for having chosen us to be slaughtered on Thine altar?” (Wiesel 67) This quote shows that Elie is extremely upset with God. He is blaming God for letting all of these horrific events take place and has lost all of his previously very strong faith.

Elie quickly lost faith as he saw what the Nazis were doing to the Jewish people. Certain events throughout the story caused Elie to lose his faith. Elie experienced terrifying things first hand which broke his faith down to almost nothing. The first crack in his faith came early in the novel. Elie states, “I looked at my house in which I had spent years seeking my God, fasting to hasten the coming of the Messiah, imagining what my life would be like later. Yet I felt little sadness. My mind was empty.” (Wiesel 19). This shows his faith gently begin to fleet away. Deportation from his home made him begin to question god about why this would happen. The next major event that furthered Elie’s distrust in God is when he watches babies and small children thrown into the crematorium. He writes, “A truck drew close and unloaded its hold: small children. Babies! Yes, I did see this, with my own eyes … children thrown into the flames. (Is it any wonder that ever since then, sleep tends to elude me?) So that was where we were going. A little farther on, there was another, larger pit for adults. I pinched myself: Was I still alive? Was I awake? How was it possible that men, women, and children

were being burned and that the world kept silent? No. All this could not be real. A nightmare perhaps…Soon I would wake up with a start, my heart pounding, and find that I was back in the room of my childhood, with my books…” (Wiesel 32) This show Elie cannot believe this is real and that the world does not know this is going on. This event truly haunts Elie and propels his disgust and anger toward God.

In summary, Elie Wiesel experienced many terrifying and awful things during his time in the Nazi controlled concentration that, despite his once strong faith as shown in the beginning of the novel, caused him to lose his trust in God. He was forced to live through things that no human should ever have to, and this eventually led to the destruction of his faith.

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