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The impact that concentration camp life had on elie wiesel
Elie and his faith
Thesis on holocaust
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A night. A camp. A belief. A question that changes the life of Elie for years to come. Night by Elie Wiesel describes the ups and downs in his religion and when he lives as the warm water out in the Artic cause the water change warm to cold? When Elie becomes thirteen the world exists as a warm happy place and he learns the wonders of his religion, but when the world turns cold and heartless it seems less likely for Elie to learn or believe in his religion anymore especially in the time of the Holocaust. The thesis matches the background knowledge by explaining the horrors of the Holocaust shatters more than a man’s life but their religion too. Night holds treacheries for Elie he starts living and believing, when the end of the year comes he starts to ask some questions, and when Elie finds an answer it leads to a decision that stays with Elie for almost forty years. To begin, Elie lives in a life of curiosity, the wonders of his religion shows his curiosity even more; this occurs when he still lives with his family, his house, his life. Every day Elie learns more and more his life expands as he continues learning current and ancient studies of his religion. First of all, the studies of Kabbalah tends to look ancient which probably intrigues Elie even more like a moth flying towards a light. “One day I asked my father to find me a master who could guide me in my studies of Kabbalah” (Wiesel 4). Elie wants to learn, he soaks up information like a sponge, and Kabbalah prevails as one thing Elie wants to learn the most. Also, Elie not only now studies Kabbalah thanks to Moishe the Beadle, but also he plays, prays and persists into learning more, all day Elie studies Talmud another course in his religion. “By day I studied Talmu... ... middle of paper ... ...his acceptance. The last few final acts of acceptance, rebellion and thoughts that drive Elie as he makes his own path not knowing where it leads him while leaving behind his religion and fills it with hope of living to the next night. Throughout Elie’s life he experiences the up and down of this religion. When all looks good Elie finds himself studying Kabbalah and many more areas in his religion, but when the world starts to turn it brings Elie with it along with questions that devour Elie’s religion right before his eyes. Usually then the hero of the story recovers what they lost, but Elie truly went through the Holocaust and the Holocaust only takes; and Elie opens his eyes to find what they took away and that he now travels alone with no beliefs. A deadly night. A devious camp. A destroyed belief. A time when Elie loses something that comes back in forty-years.
Throughout “Night” the main character loses his faith. On page 4 it says “Why do you (Elie) cry when you pray?” which means that he cared so much
Samuels starts out explaining the background of Elie, a child who has a great love for religion. Then, Nazis come and occupy his native town of Sighet. Although held captured and clueless to where they were going, the Jews were indeed optimistic. They had no reason not to be, the Nazis were treating them as they were of importance. However, the optimism was to come to a halt. After arresting the Jewish leader, the Jews were sent to ghettos, then into camps. It wasn't until they reached Auschwitz where Elie for the first time smelt burning flesh. Then the eight words that Elie couldn't forget, "Men to the left! Women to the right!" He was then left with his father, who for the whole trip he would depend on to survive. It was this, in which made him lose his religiousness. In the months to come Elie and his father lived like animals. Tragically, in the end his father past away, and to amazement Elie had not wept. Samuels did an overall remarkable job on this review; however, there were still some parts that could have been improved.
In order to have meaning or a purpose for existence, one must construct a sense of hope found on one’s perception of truth or value. Elie constructs his hope around his religion, faith, and family: three things grounded with a firm foundation that will never shake, at least it seems. After years of studying Jewish law and religion, Elie becomes firmly grounded in his beliefs and faith. Once uncertainty begins to settle in, Elie and others cling to their family and their prayers as they wait to hear the news Elie’s father will bring them: “To the last moment, people clung to hope” (Wie...
Since Elie was dealing with hardships and unbearable weather conditions, I believe night was a significant time for him to compromise and motivate himself to keep moving forward. Earlier on in the novel Night, Elie explains, “Man comes closer to God through the questions he asks Him, he liked to say. Therein lies the true dialogue. Man asks and God replies. But we don’t understand them… The real answers, Eliezer, you will find only within yourself,” (Wiesel 5). I believe he thinks back to this conversation with Moishe since he impacted his view on life and the fact that he needs something to push him through the tough nights in the concentration camps. Although, his dad was the main support beam through his experience in the concentration camps, Moishe gave him spiritual belief in such a way that God has a plan even if his answers are not clear straight away. So, when he wrote about his day to day life at the concentration camps, he chose to write at night because that’s when he most likely felt he was able to sort out his thoughts and feelings without having to worry very much about a Kapo coming after him.
In 1934, Elie woke up in a crowded train car that had turned into insane chaos. His father was sleeping next to him. They did not know where the train was headed but he knew where ever it was, it was not going to be good. It was so hot and crowded in the train car that it was hard to take a deep breath. Breathing in through his nose he could smell the fire and burning flesh. He started to silently pray to the God that knew was real and knew that had not gave up on him yet. He prayed that he would soon wake up from this dream that had turned into a dreadful nightmare. All of a sudden the train came to a screeching stop. He knew he was going to have to act fast if he wanted to save his life. He stepped out of the train and saw his mother and
Every man, woman, and child has his or her breaking point, no matter how hard they try to hold it back. In Night by Elie Wiesel the main theme of the entire book is the human living condition. The quality of human life is overwhelming because humans have the potential to make amazing discoveries that help all humans. Elie Wiesel endures some of the most cruel living conditions known to mankind. This essay describes the themes of faith, survival, and conformity in Night by Elie Wiesel.
In the final moments of Night, Elie has been broken down to only the most basic ideas of humanity; survival in it of itself has become the only thing left for him to cling to. After the chain of unfortunate events that led to his newfound solitude after his father’s abrupt death, Elie “thought only to eat. [He] thought not of [his] father, or [his] mother” (113). He was consumed with the ideas of survival, so he repeatedly only expressed his ideas of gluttony rather than taking the time to consider what happened to his family. The stress of survival allocated all of Elie’s energy to that cause alone. Other humanistic feelings like remorse, love, and faith were outcast when they seemed completely unimportant to his now sole goal of survival. The fading of his emotions was not sudden mishap though; he had been worn away with time. Faith was one of the most prominent key elements in Elie’s will to continue, but it faded through constant. During the hanging of a young boy Elie heard a man call to the crowd pleading, “Where is merciful God, where is He?” (64). It snapped Elie’s resolve. From this point on, he brought up and questioned his faith on a regular basis. Afterwards, most other traits disappeared like steam after a fire is extinguished. Alone in the wet embers the will to survive kept burning throughout the heart ache. When all else is lost, humans try to survive for no reason other than to survive, and Wiesel did survive. He survived with mental scars that persisted the ten long years of his silence. Even now after his suffering has, Elie continues to constantly repeat the word never throughout his writing. To write his memoir he was forced to reopen the lacerations the strains of survival left inside his brain. He strongly proclaims, “Never shall I forget that night...Never shall I forget the smoke...Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the
"A prolonged whistle split the air. The wheels began to grind. We were on our way." (xx). From living a somewhat happy life to being starved and miserable, Elie and his father learn to live in different circumstances and potentially losing or gaining things important in their lives. Throughout the ways Elie has changed, how has he changed with his relationship with God his one thing he realize on, his father, and how has his physical health which was once heathy, changed?
The ground is frozen, parents sob over their children, stomachs growl, stiff bodies huddle together to stay slightly warm. This was a recurrent scene during World War II. Night is a literary memoir of Elie Wiesel’s tenure in the Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel created a character reminiscent of himself with Eliezer. Eliezer experienced cruelty, stress, fear, and inhumanity at a very young age, fifteen. Through this, he struggled to maintain his Jewish faith, survive with his father, and endure the hardships placed on his body and mind.
He decides that he would never leave his father, even if staying with him would be the cause of his death. The German forces are so adept at breaking the spirits of the Jews that we can see the effects throughout Elie's novel. Elie's faith in God, above all other things, is strong at the onset of the novel, but grows weaker as it goes on. We see this when Elie's father politely asks the gypsy where the lavoratories are. Not only does the gypsy not grace his father with a response, but he also delivers a blow to his head that sends him to the floor.
He could not believe that the God he followed tolerated such things. During times of sorrow, when everyone was praying and sanctifying His name, Elie no longer wanted to praise the Lord; he was at the point of giving up. The fact that the “Terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent”(33) caused Elie to lose hope and faith. When one chooses to keep silent about such inhumanity going on, they are just as destructive as the one causing the brutality.... ...
When people are placed in difficult, desolate situations, they often change in a substantial way. In Night by Elie Wiesel, the protagonist, Elie, is sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp where he undergoes many devastating experiences. Due to these traumatic events, Elie changes drastically, losing his passion in God, becoming disconnected with his father, and maturing when it matters most.
“From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me” (Wiesel 115). Eliezer Wiesel wrote the last statement of his accounts with a meaningful tone. He drifted between life and death during his extensive journey. Before his numerous encounters of adversities, he was always looking up to God for the right answer, following in his father’s successful footsteps, and perceiving the world as a constant place of comfort and security. In Eliezer Wiesel’s memoir, he examines how his own view of religion, his father, and the world around him changes as he faces the cruel truth of reality.
Foolishly the Jews believed that nothing would happen, they were ignorant to all the warnings always convincing themselves their lives would go back to normal. It never did. They were captured, ripped away from their own lives, treated worse than animals. Slowly, Elie became aware of the torturous experiences that were to come. “For the first time I felt revolt rise up in me. Why should I bless His name? The Eternal, Lord of the universe, the All-Powerful and Terrible, was silent. What had I to thank Him for?” (Page 31). Elie first questioned his faith at Auschwitz while someone began to recite the Kaddish, a symbolic prayer for the dead, a prayer he had never heard someone say for themselves. It had only been the first few days of agonizing months, and he had witnessed a father and son kill each other for bread, and heard a fellow Jews’ plan to run at the electrical fence, because death was better than enduring so much pain. How could God, the just and righteous, allow for innocent people to be slaughtered and
...e has to deal with the death of his family, the death of his innocence, and the death of his God at the very young age of fifteen. He retells the horrors of the concentration camp, of starvation, beatings, torture, illness, and hard labor. He comes to question how God could let this happen and to redefine the existence of God in the concentration camp. This book is also filled with acts of kindness and compassion amid the degradation and violence. It seems that for every act of violence that is committed, Elie counteracts with some act of compassion. Night is a reflection on goodness and evil, on responsibility to family and community, on the struggle to forge identity and to maintain faith. It shows one boy's transformation from spiritual idealism to spiritual death via his journey through the Nazi's failed attempt to conquer and erase a people and their faith.