“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.
Wiesel was extremely religious
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Eliezer hears a rabbi ask desperately, “Where is the divine Mercy? How can I believe, how could anyone believe, in this merciful God.”(Wiesel 73) Wiesel no longer knows what to have faith in anymore. He’s hoping for any proof of God, any validation that the God he used to pray to would help him, but always ends up disappointed. Wiesel is feeling extremely desperate and betrayed, especially when he heard that Rabbi Eliahou had lost faith. When seeing that Rabbi Eliahou’s son tried to get rid of his father “in spite of [himself], a prayer rose in [Eliezer’s] heart, to the god in whom [he] no longer believed in.”(Wiesel 87) Although Wiesel continues to claim that he no longer believes in God, a small part of him still hopes that he is out there and will save Eliezer and the rest of the Jews. He feels reassurance and secureness when praying to God because it was an instinct and brought him back to the days where he was very devout. He still believes God is out there and will eventually help him in the end. Eliezer continues to believe that God is not merciful and good, but still turns toward him in times of difficulty.
Eliezer went from being extremely religious to questioning in anger about God’s ways. He shows that only in the lowest moments does he turn his back on God, yet in times of need he prays towards God. By the end of the book, Eliezer is still undecided; he is no longer devout,
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.
When one experiences that he cannot tolerate, he doubts his religion and his God's existence. Elie Wiesel's Night, a memoir of the author's experience of the Holocaust, shows that this hypothesis was true. In contrast to the beginning where Elie Wiesel considered praying as an unquestionable action, throughout his memoir, his faith in God gradually vanished as he experienced the "Hell". Elie Wiesel confided his change of the faith in God by the usage of dialogue, repetition, and irony.
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.
As for Elie’s relationship with God, some find it tempting to say that he became an atheist, but this is an oversimplification. Though Eliezer lost faith in God’s mercy, he still believes that there is a God. He still believes that god can still save him from the mess. He feels like god is real enough to help him through the holocaust. He stop relying too much on god, and start asking god questions. Elie sees god as a new path to freedom, and work to regain a new life.
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
Kids tend to rebel against their parents as they grow older. In the memoir, Night, Elie Wiesel recalls his experiences with his family during World War II. His mother and sisters were taken away from him as soon as he arrived at Auschwitz, only his father remained. Elie Wiesel witnessed many terrible events during his first night at camp; the only thing that kept him in line was his father. Elie Wiesel’s father kept him from possibly killing himself. When Elie Wiesel lives in the concentration camp with his fellow Jews, he begins to question the fairness of God, who he had followed his entire life. Elie Wiesel lost faith in God, particularly the faith that He would use His divine power to help him, and he began to rely on his father instead, which gave him more reason to live.
In the memoir Night, the narrator Elie Wiesel recounts a moment when he loses faith in God. ¨But there were those who said we should fast, precisely because it was dangerous to do so. We needed to show God that even here, locked in hell, we were capable of singing His praises¨ (Wiesel 69). Wiesel is losing faith in God and not believing in him. Wiesel believes that he could still pray for God, even though he thinks God does not answer his prayers. Two significant themes related to inhumanity discussed in the book Night by Elie Wiesel are losing faith in God and disbelief.
Eliezer uses his patriarch to represent the complementary relation between God and the one he has with his father. As Night progresses, Elie starts to give up on his faith in God. In the memoir, it states, “ I listened to him….He was right, I thought deep down, not daring to admit it to myself. Too late to save your old father… You could
Elie was deeply devoted to his faith at the beginning but as the story progresses he loses that devotion and barely believes that there is a God that exists. The first signs of him losing his faith was when he arrived at the first camp and saw the horrible things people were doing to the Jews. Other people around him had already lost faith in God and Elie was beginning to doubt God due to Him allowing people to do this to others. “His
The greatest change to Elie Wiesel’s identity was his loss of faith in God. Before he and his family were moved to the camps, Wiesel was a religious little boy who cried after praying at night (2). When the Hungarian police come to force the Jews to move to the ghettos, they pulled Elie from his prayers (13). Even on his way to Auschwitz, stuffed inside the cattle car with other terrified Jews, Wiesel gave thanks to God when told he would be assigned to labor camps (24). After a few days in Auschwitz, Elie Wiesel heard about the crematory and the fact that the Nazis were killing the sick, weak, and young. In his first night in the camp, Wiesel experienced his first crisis of faith: Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. …Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust (32).
Eliezer begins to lose his faith in God when he first arrives at the concentration camp in Auschwitz. After Eliezer arrives in Auschwitz he catches people praying to God: “ For the first time, I felt anger rising within me. Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to to thank Him for” (33)? Elie and his father have just been separated from the rest of their family, and are quickly losing the little hope they have that they will be able to get out of there alive. EIie sees a truck full of babies being unloaded and thrown into a fire, and he wonders why God is doing absolutely nothing to stop it. Later in the book on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, “What are You, my God? I thought angrily… Why, but why would I bless him? Every fiber in me rebelled. Because he caused thousands of children to burn in his mass graves (66-67)? In this quote from the book, Eliezer is questioning God and asking him why he should praise him. Elie has lost his faith in the idea that God will save the Jews from their horrible imprisonment. Elie starts to believe that man is stronger and greater than God, and that he is alone in a world without 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.
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.
Elie Wiesel was born in Sighet, Romania was he grew up to spend his childhood studying Jewish holy books. In 1944 his family was forced to live in one of two ghettos in Sighet. On May 16th, 1944 Elie and his family were taken to Auschwitz-Birkeua concentration camp. In the book Night, Elie writes about his experiences in the Holocaust when he was just 16 years old. Eliezer's faith in God and practice of his Jewish traditions are shattered by the experiences he had Auschwitz. His journey to the Camp's becomes a journey of faith that takes him from being orthodox and traditional, to being unsure about God and the faith that he has practiced since he was born.
In the memoir, Night, author Elie Wiesel portrays the dehumanization of individuals and its lasting result in a loss of faith in God. Throughout the Holocaust, Jews were doggedly treated with disrespect and inhumanity. As more cruelty was bestowed upon them, the lower their flame of hope and faith became as they began turning on each other and focused on self preservation over family and friends. The flame within them never completely died, but rather stayed kindling throughout the journey until finally it stood flickering and idle at the eventual halt of this seemingly never-ending nightmare. Elie depicts the perpetuation of violence that crops up with the Jews by teaching of the loss in belief of a higher power from devout to doubt they