During the Holocaust, Eliezer Wiesel changes from a spiritual, sensitive, little boy to a spiritually dead, dispassionate man. In his memoir, Night, Elie speaks about his experiences upon being a survivor of the Holocaust. The reader sees how Elie has changed through his experiences in Sighet and the ghettos in comparison to what it was like for him in the concentration camps. In Sighet, Eliezer, or Elie for short, led an average life with his family. Elie “believed profoundly” (Wiesel 1) in his Jewish religion. Elie says, “During the day, I studied the Talmud, and at night I ran to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the Temple”(Wiesel 1). This was Elie’s average life up until the beginning of the Final Solution. He had studied over …show more content…
Elie says, “The race toward death had begun,” (Wiesel 8) in meaning that this was the start of many changes. Some of these changes caused Elie’s beliefs to begin to change. While in the ghettos, Elie goes to one of his father’s friend’s house. When he wakes up, he tells the old man to get up and get ready to leave. The man looked at him with “terror-stricken eyes” and Elie “could not say any more”(Wiesel 12). Elie now saw that things were not going to be alright. Elie gained a sense of fear, which would easily alter his beliefs. If someone could not control his or her fear, he or she will succumb to the fear and begin to be controlled by it. This would soon happen to Elie and very many other Jewish/Nazi-hated peoples in the …show more content…
Elie first recalls Dr. Mengele’s “eight short, simple words” (Wiesel 27) when he enters the camps: “Men to the left! Women to the right!” (Wiesel 27) In this part of the book, Elie and his father are separated by his mother and sisters. This metaphorically kills Elie because he is very attached to his family as are they to him. A piece of Elie has been taken away from him forever. Later in his memoir, he mentions the cruel hanging of the Pipel. Previous hangings that day did not phase Elie, but when the young, angelic Pipel was hanged, Elie said his once flavorful soup “tasted of corpses.” A man near Elie was saying “Where is God now?’ And I heard a voice within me answer him: “Where is He? Here He is- He is hanging here on this gallows…”(Wiesel 62) This is a powerful quote that shows how Elie has also began to question his faith. This brings about the mindset of the death of God in Elie. Elie begins to show distrust and rebellion in his God. This is a sharp contrast to Elie’s former beliefs. When Elie’s father dies, Elie emotionally shuts his mind off. He says “After my father’s death, nothing could touch me anymore.” He had finally given up. His father was his rock tied to the balloon, his reason to keep going. Without his father, Elie gave up and became zombified like the rest of the broken souls. Elie fully turned into the emotionless man that he was set to become as a result of surviving
The spiritual change in Elie was substantial. He went from a pious, devout Jew who spent countless of hours studying his faith. He never questioned God, but that is probably because everything was always good. During his stay at the concentration camps, Elie never stops believing in God, although he does question what he is doing. On page 64, Elie says, “Why, but why I should I bless Him? In every fiber I rebelled. Because He had thousands of children burned in His pits? Because He kept six crematories working night and day, on Sundays and feast days? Because in His great might He had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many factories of death?…” This shows the
In life, people go through different changes when put through difficult experiences. In the book Night, Elie Wiesel is a young Jewish boy whose family is sent to a concentration camp by Nazis. The story focuses on his experiences and trials through the camp. Elie physically becomes more dehumanized and skeletal, mentally changes his perspective on religion, and socially becomes more selfish and detached, causing him to lose many parts of his character and adding to the overall theme of loss in Night.
While Elie was in the concentration camp he changed the way he acted. This new behavior led him to develop new character traits. While Ellie was in the concentration camp he became angry at many things. For example “I would have dug my nails into the criminals flesh” (Wisel 39). Elie shows extreme anger when the Nazi officials are beating Elie’s father. Elie was angry because the Nazi soldiers were not treating them nicely and keeping them in poor conditions. Elie was usually not a person to display anger, but he shows this when his family members are being hurt. Elie wants to stand up for what is right and for his family members. Despite his studying, Elie wavered in his belief in Kabbalah while he was at the camp. Elie was a religious boy before he went to Auschwitz, but while in the camp, he became angry at God. In the book Elie says, “‘Where are You, my God?’” (66). Elie is wondering why God is not helping the Jews. Elie had complete faith in his religion until he experienced and witnessed such horrible suffering. He had been taught that God will punish evil and save the righteous. However, when Elie saw that God was not helping the Jews situation,
Elie loses complete faith in god in many points where god let him down. He struggles physically and mentally for life and no longer believes there is a god. Elie worked hard to save himself and asks god many times to help him and take him out of the misery he was facing. "Why should I sanctify his name? The Almighty, the eternal, and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent..."(page 33). Elie was confused, because he doesn’t know why the Germans would kill his race amongst many others, and he does not know why god could let such thing happen to innocent people. "I did not deny god's existence, but I doubted his absolute justice..."(page 42). These conditions gave him confidence, and a courage to
When Elie and his family are sent to a concentration camp, he is fortunate enough to not be separated from his father. At first, this is a relief, and is father is his will to survive. “The idea of dying, of ceasing to be, began to fascinate me. To no longer exist. To no longer feel the excruciating pain of my foot… My father’s presence was the only thing that stopped me. He was running next to me, out of breathe, out of strength, desperate. I had no right to let myself die. What would he do without me? I was his sole support.”(86)
“Saliva mixed with blood was trickling from his lips. He had closed his eyes. He was gasping more than breathing.” (108) While Elie was at the concentration camp, he had to watch his father suffer from dysentery. By the time a doctor saw Elie’s father, the disease had progressed too far for treatment or medicine. Elie wondered why God didn’t give Elie’s father a second chance to live. This resulted in a major decrease in Elie’s faith in God and the Jewish religion because he didn’t understand why God couldn’t save his father. “One more stab to the heart, one more reason to hate. One less reason to live.” (109) In this scene, Elie was close to giving up on surviving the Holocaust. His father was at the last stages of his life and was suffering every minute because he had nausea, suffocation, and blood was all over his body. Elie wanted God to either help his father recover from dysentery or for God to end his father’s life quickly so the suffering could come to an end, but God didn’t respond to Elie’s prayers. At this point, Elie was so traumatized by the Holocaust that his faith had almost
Before Wiesel traveled to this gruesome death camp, he showed an abundance of positive traits. Some of these being his love for his religion, his strong hope for his future, and his powerful, loving family. In the first few pages Elie confesses his love for his religion and his ambition to pursue it to a teacher of the Jewish religion. He says that “...I told him how unhappy I was not to be able to find in Sighet a master to teach me the Zohar…” (5). He was stating that he wanted to branch off of his current religion and learn a new form of it, but he was limited because no one in his area also studied this form of Judaism. We can also learn that he was hopeful because you can tell that he is still trying to learn this other religion. Elie also writes that “Naturally, we refused to be separated” (20). He was speaking about his family in this quote and how he and his sisters had the opportunity to leave their mom and dad so that they could get to a safer place with the family maid. The mother did not want to go, so no one went; Instead they stuck together in the ghettos. They had an immensely strong family bond and it is shown through this passage. The children chose their family over a more certain safety. The next quote came after they were all in cattle carts, and were traveling to the new place. Elie recalls “It was as though madness had infected all of us” (27). Elie was scared during this time, but also reserved. He just kept to himself on while he was in this cart that was heading somewhere that he did not know.
The first event that occurred causing Elie to become more skeptical, was when the Germans established the ghettos in Sighet. They were able to live in their own house with the exception of their other relatives, which was in the first ghetto; but then the Jews got forced to move and live in another ghetto. Consequently, he lost all of their possessions and a bit of their freedom. Elie started to slowly lose his faith slowly, life for him was still good regardless of the germans using the Jews as slaves for the things they needed to get done. “Little by little life returned to normal”. This quote explains there were times where Elie got false hope about living situations and life would get better, that this currently was just a nightmare and only a nightmare;
Before Elie went to the concentration camp, he had many good characteristics such as being dedicated, sympathetic, and optimistic. To start, on page four, Wiesel writes, “He wanted to drive the idea of studying Kabbalah from my mind. In vain. I succeeded on my own in finding a master for myself in the person of Moishe the Beadle.” This was the beginning of the book where Elie was introducing us to his religion. This piece of evidence from the book shows that Elie was dedicated to practicing and learning his religion. His father wasn’t fully supportive of him studying Kabbalah, as there were not many Kabbalists in town, but Elie stayed completely dedicated to it, not thinking about outside opinions. Another trait Elie displays in the beginning of the book is sympathy. On page nineteen, Wiesel writes, “My father was crying. It was the first time I saw him cry. I had never thought it was possible. As for my mother, she was walking, her face a mask, without a word, deep in thought. I looked at my little sister, Tzipora, her blonde hair neatly combed, her red coat
Stated in the book, “ 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” ( page 67). All the Jews in the concentration camps questioned why their savior was letting this happen and not helping them and Elie was one of those Jews. Without having much insight of what was to come of their lively hoods Elie and rest of the Jews pushed through tough conditions, Elie states, “ It’s over, god is no longer with us” (page 76). After time Elie and other Jews started believe that their was no God, and they should accept their fate. Elie’s will power decreased throughout the book, after understanding everyday was a fight for his life. When something is desperately wanted it is fought for, easier said than done when surviving the conditions Elie lived in: scarce food, bad weather, and poor sheltering, In the words of Elie, “I’ll run into the electrified barbed wire, that would be easier then a slow death in flames”(page 33). He wanted to give up once finding out his fate to be. At the time he thought why should he sit
Once introduced to the camps, he begins to understand the horror of the camp. He witnesses a death of young ones who didn't get to live. Elie begins to question God why are you staying silent. He wonders why do I praise him if he does nothing. "For the first time, I felt anger rising within me, why should I sanctify his name? The almighty, the eternal and terrible master, chose to be silent" (33). Once the Jewish boy entered the concentration camps he had a big change of heart he discovered that God was horrible and did not care for us. This is the moment that he begins to question God due to seeing the atrocity in the camps. He begins to question the faith because of how God was
Eliezer's life, before the Holocaust, revolved around his faith because it was all he knew. We discover his devotion early on as so, “I was twelve. I believed
Dreadful. Dark. Depressing. In the memoir, Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie and his father are taken to a concentration camps as prisoners. They are both taken to a concentration camp and spend almost a year inside the camp.
With all of the death and horror around him he loses his faith in God and loses his will to live, and gives up for selection. “He lost all incentive to fight and opened the door to death” (77). Elie is observing this change in his demeanor and recognizes his loss in faith and acceptance of death. Survival is dependant upon having the strength to
When Elie and his family arrived at the camps, he began to lose faith. From what he saw, and to his family being separated, where his mother and sister were killed almost instantly, he began to realize that this was an act of hatred. One moment that Elie started to lose faith that really stuck out, was when he saw a small boy get hung. They tied a rope around his neck, along with a few other men, and had him stand on a chair. The chair was kicked out from under him. Unlike the other men, who had a quicker death because they were large enough, the boy suffered for a long time because he was too small of the rope so he slowly suffocated as the group of men started to walk away. Another instance when he started to lose faith was when he was in the hospital. He saw that