When a person's faith is also an alternative for their culture and morals, it proves challenging to take that sense of security in that faith away from them. In Night, Elie Wiesel, a Jewish student living in Sighet, Transylvania during the war of 1942, uses his studies in Talmud and the Kabbalah as not only a religious practice but a lifestyle. Elie and his fellow civilians are warned, however, by his Kabbalah teacher who says that during the war, German aggressors are aggregately imprisoning, deporting, and annihilating millions of Jews. When Elie and his family are victim of this aggression, Elie realizes how crucial his faith in God is if he is to survive the Holocaust. He vows after being separated from his mother and sisters that he will protect he and his father from death, even though as death nears, Elie gradually becomes closer to losing his faith. In the end, to Elie's devastation, Elie makes it out of the Holocaust alone after his father dies from the intense seclusion to malnutrition and deprivation. Elie survives the Holocaust through a battle of conscience--first by believing in God, then resisting his faith in God, and ultimately replacing his faith with obligation to his father. Elie's genuine belief in God helps him before being sent away to the concentration camps. On an average day-to-day basis, Elie "studied Talmud and by night ...would run to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the Temple" (p.3). He is committed to his studies of Jewish mysticism and from this, is passionate about religion and God Himself. By embedding his life into God and religion, Elie puts his sense of comfort and security into Him, as well as his complete faith. Elie's faith in God is ... ... middle of paper ... ...ith his near-death experiences that cause him trauma. As he and his father invert roles, and Elie becomes the bread-winning patriarch of the bunch, obligated to tending and making sure his father is fed properly, Elie’s loss of innocence and childhood evaporate with his restoration of faith in humanity. He learns that among the prisoners, fending for their own individual weight is the only way to survive. Separate from Elie and his father’s relationship throughout, fathers and sons collide, and friends betray other friends. But Elie’s own weight comes from his father, and yet when he refuses to betray him also, Elie’s own bravery reveals itself, making him the key survivor out of all of them. While he chooses to battle out his conscience to decipher these decisions to survive for his family or for he himself, he gains courage, and the courage to oblige to his faith.
Due to the atrocities of the concentration camps, Elie lost his faith in God. Early on in the story, Elie used to leap over ancient temples and study the Kabbalah. In his old town, he used to complain to Moishe the Beadle “ I told him how unhappy I was not to able to find in Sighet a master to teach me the Zohar.”(Wiesel,5) This shows him complaining about not having a teacher. But as he started to go through the camps, he saw what was going on and started to
In his memoir, Night, author Elie Wiesel describes the horrors he experienced during the Holocaust. One prominent theme throughout the work is the evolution of human relationships within the camp, specifically between fathers and sons. While they are marching between camps, Elie speaks briefly with Rabbi Eliahu, who lost sight of his son on the long journey. Elie says he has not seen the rabbi’s son, but after Rabbi Eliahu leaves, he remembers seeing the son. He realizes that the rabbi’s son did not lose track of his father but instead purposefully ran ahead thinking it would increase his chances of survival. Elie, who has abandoned nearly all of his faith in God, cannot help but pray, saying, “ ‘ Oh God, Master of the Universe, give me the strength never to do what Rabbi Eliahu’s son has done’ ” (Wiesel 91). In this moment, his most fervent hope is that he will remain loyal to his father and not let his selfishness overcome his dedication to his father. However, he is soon no longer able to maintain this hope.
First of all, The Holocaust caused Eliezer to be weakened in his faith. In the beginning of chapter five Eliezer is thinking and finds himself accusing God for abandoning the very people that worshiped him. On page 67 it says, “Blessed be God’s name? Why, but why should I bless him? Every fiber in me rebelled. Because he caused thousands of children to burn in mass graves.” This statement shows a major drop in Eliezer’s religious security. It shows that he thinks he can’t trust God anymore. This passage shows that Elie has lost all stability in his faith. The Holocaust has broken Eliezer’s foundation for his faith in his religion.
Elie Wiesel was a young boy growing up in the small town of Sighet, Hungary. He was very religious and spent much of his own time studying the Talmud and reading into the Jewish religion. He was an ambitious character and had very little hate for anyone, he also was very open minded and very compassionate for all those around him. But when the Nazis first take his family to the ghettos that they moved all Jews of Sighet too, he first began to hate and feel the pain of persecution. He was then also separated from his mother Sarah, and his three sisters Hilda, Beatrice, and Tzipora when he and his father were sent to Auschwitz where his inmate number was “A-7713”. During his time at this concentration camp he first began to question his belief in God and his belief in the good of humanity. Elie survived the Holcaust but he had suffered the horrors of watching people die right in front of him, and the loss of religion and his family.
During this long and painful experience, Eliezer questioned his faith more than once. Before he and his family were forced onto the camps, Eliezer’s studies in Jewish mysticism taught him that if God is good and He is everywhere, than the whole world must therefore be good. But his faith in the world is broken by the cruelty and evil he witnesses during the Holocaust. He wonders how God would even let such an evil take place, he feels that if the world is so sick and cruel, than God must also be sick and cruel or not exist at all.
In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, as in the holocaust, evil trumps all good. According to Dictionary.com, the definition of evil is “morally bad or wrong.” The entire book consists of events that are morally bad or wrong, so much so that it hides the little bit of good that can be found. Most of the evil comes from the Nazis, who treat the Jews inhumanely. No one should be treated the way they were treated, which is practically the definition of evil.
Elie’s religious beliefs faded away during his time in the concentration camp. Before the Holocaust Elie had a strong connection with God, he would study the Talmud every day, and compared praying to an essential way to live. Early in the book, in the vicinity of his house, Elie said “By day I
Without a doubt, some decisions can affect not only the person making the decision, but also his most beloved ones. Elie truly understands this as he tells himself, “I had no right to let myself die. What would he do without me? I was his sole support” (87). The purpose of Elie’s survival is to provide hope to his father, and to strengthen his desire to live. Indeed, his thoughts are not about his own survival at this point, but instead, to encourage his father to continue living. When one of them gives up, the other has no intention of continuing his life. As Elie’s father falls asleep, Eliezer tells his father, “’We’ll take turns. I’ll watch over you and you’ll watch over me. We won’t let each other fall asleep. We’ll look after each other”’ (89). When father and son rely on one another, it gives them more motivation to pass by the difficult situati...
However, despite these thoughts, he still decided to support his father, which helps him detour away from the path to being a brute. First of all, this is shown when Elie’s father asked him for coffee, and Elie goes to get him some. “Like a wild beast, I cleared a way for myself to the coffee cauldron. And I managed to carry back a cupful. I had a sip. The rest was for him”(77). This quote reveals how Elie, despite thinking about abandoning his father before, helped his father even though he didn’t need to. The simile, “like a wild beast” describes how Elie was desperate to get coffee for his father and he wanted to help his father as quickly as he could. The word “for him” also implies that Elie wasn’t a brute because he was thinking about his father, not only himself. Elie sacrificed his own needs for his father by giving him the rest of the coffee. His desperation of wanting to help his father shows that he is not a brute. In addition, after the head of the block tells Elie to abandon his father, Elie thinks, “It’s too late to save your old father, I said to myself. You ought to be having two rations of bread, two rations of soup…. Only a fraction of a second, but I felt guilty. I ran to find a little soup to give my father”(80). In the beginning of the quote, Elie was tempted to desert his father and steal his father’s assets for himself. The word “I said to myself” shows that Elie’s mind was trying to convince him to abandon his father. If he had listened to these temptations, he would’ve become a brute. However, Elie’s true self stops him from following these cruel thought and Elie felt guilty instead. The words “I felt guilty” implies that Elie still has moral feelings. Instead of brushing this feeling off, he decides to face this feeling and want to help his father more by finding him
A wise man once said, let your faith be bigger than your fears. In the memoir “Night,” Elie Wiesel reveals his tragic experience during the Holocaust of World War II. When young, Elie lived in a small town called Sighet with his family. He and his family were soon separated to different concentration camps in Poland. This is when he and his father, Wiesel, were lost in a sea of nameless faces all eaten up by their hunger. Elie managed to survive, but his father was just too inadequate. Elie Wiesel’s “Night” shows that there is not enough room in our minds for both fear and faith, we must decide which one to live with.
The determining concern of survival confronts both Elie and Chlomo throughout Night. The concept of survival is illustrated by the complications brought upon Elie and Chlomo. Elie and Chlomo believe they could only survive the concentration camps with one another; the father-and-son link was held together for the survival of each other. One complication in particular, was the i...
Many themes exist in Night, Elie Wiesel’s nightmarish story of his Holocaust experience. From normal life in a small town to physical abuse in concentration camps, Night chronicles the journey of Wiesel’s teenage years. Neither Wiesel nor any of the Jews in Sighet could have imagined the horrors that would befall them as their lives changed under the Nazi regime. The Jews all lived peaceful, civilized lives before the German occupation. Eliezer Wiesel was concerned with mysticism and his father was “more involved with the welfare of others than with that of his own kin” (4).
As stated in the text “Why would I bless Him(God). He causes thousands of children to burn. He created Auschwitz.” (67 page). This shows that he hates God for making millions of people to die and making the killing center, Auschwitz and other camps. In fact, as noted on page 69 “ I no longer accepted God's silence… I turned that act(not fasting) into a symbol of rebellion of protest against Him. “ This shows that Elie no longer accepts God for allowing this to happen and will not pray to God because of this. In addition, ironically in the beginning of the book he wanted to became a person who studied God ,but towards the end of the book he didn’t believe in God after all he has when though and the horrors he had
One of the immoral acts Elie has witnessed at a concentration camp was Rabbi Eliahou’s son leaving his own father behind when he started losing strength after being marched for miles. “He had seen him. And he continued to run in front, letting the distance between them grow greater” (Wiesel, 67). Elie’s analysis reveals he has learned how people have become barbarians themselves. The cruelty of abandoning a family member suggested the qualities of a brute which is emphasized through imagery since readers will envision “the distance between them grow greater”.Furthermore,
They were seeking religion as a path of survival through the months of their imprisonment. Elizers faith was strong at the age of twelve as he was mentored by a man named Moshe the Beadle. Moshe was a man of all work at the Hasidic synagogue. He became the master of Eliezer. Moshe instructed him through Jewish mysticism, which was the god that was everywhere all the time and touched all aspects of life. The quote that Elizer follows through his time of need states “Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live.” It explains, that God finds silence the most troubling. This quote begins to show meaning , as a young boy was hung by the gestapo as the concentration camp was silent as a man ask where is god when he is needed and how can he can just sit and watch the horror of this tragedy. Eventually Elizer lost his belief in god but until that point he believed in god as a way to keep moving forward. The reason that god was so important was that a certain belief system that gives the inmates hope for liberation from the Nazis. All the inmates are looking for something or someone to believe that helped them carry on through time of