More handpicked essays just for you.
Short summary of the book night by elie wiesel
Short summary of the book night by elie wiesel
Synopsis of night by elie wiesel
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Short summary of the book night by elie wiesel
The summer was coming to an end While facing struggle and adversity, a spiritually connected person may battle with his or her faith. In chapter 5, the Jewish prisoners are all gathered together and are a little anxious on whether or not this will be their last day on earth. They have been tormented because of their beliefs and now there are many questioning their quarrels with God. Elie is struggling to understand why God himself is rejecting and punishing those who serve him and give him his grace but yet are rewarding those who permits others to be gassed and killed. Before Elie’s hometown got invaded, he was extremely religious. He used to pray and feel the presence of God all around him causing him to shed tears of joy and even began
Eliezer was a strict Jew who practiced religion and observed all Jewish holidays. As a child he was very devoted and focused all his energy to study Judaism. He grew up loving God with the belief that God is more powerful than anything else in this universe. He believed that with all the power God has, he is capable to put an end to all this awful suffering. Living and witnessing all this misery and have God not do anything about it makes him questions God.
Elie seems to lose faith in God. “"Yisgadal, veyiskadash, shmey raba…May His name be celebrated and sanctified…" whispered my father. 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 thank Him for?” (33) The God Elie once prayed and cried out to before was allowing his people to die in horrible ways. God, a being who is supposed to be loving and merciful was allowing them to die alongside millions of other
Elie has changed from an Orthodox Jew with a strong faith in God into a person that isn’t too sure about his faith anymore. Throughout the book, you can see Elie questioning himself and the life he was given by his God. He sees he was not as blessed as he thought he was, and his faith quickly deteriorates into nothing. His story is a great example of how an Orthodox Jew in a concentration camp can turn someone from having faith and happiness to someone’s that is miserable and constantly wishes he was dead. Elie not only loses faith in himself, but also with his dad and his relationship with God.
The jews view of God differed in the holocaust. Some thought there was no way there could be a God since he let the jews suffer through the holocaust. Others thought that God was testing them to see how strong their faith was towards him. God can change a person’s identity. Elie was a kid that experienced the holocaust and his belief in God changed throughout his journey.
Eliezer loses faith in god. He struggles physically and mentally for life and no longer believes there is a god. "Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my god and my soul and turned my dreams to dust..."(pg 32). Elie worked hard to save himself and asks god many times to help him and take him out of his misery. "Why should I bless his name? The eternal, lord of the universe, the all-powerful and terrible was silent..."(pg 31). Eliezer is confused, because he does not know why the Germans would kill his face, and does not know why god could let such a thing happen. "I did not deny god's existence, but I doubted his absolute justice..."(pg 42). These conditions gave him confidence, and courage to live.
Firstly, the cruelty and evil that Eliezer has to witness at the Nazi concentration camps causes him to lose faith in God and religion. In section four, at the hanging of some treasonous Jews, Eliezer answers a man’s question of “Where is God now?” by saying “Where is He? Here He is—He is hanging here on this gallows. . . .” (Wiesel 65) because he is trying to imply that the benevolent God has died a mortal being’s death, and is comparing God’s “Death” to the young boy Pipel’s hanging, by the Nazi soldiers. Throughout the novel, cruelty and evil of individuals causes problems through Eliezer’s journey and the only being he can blame is God. We see in section fo...
In this passage, Elie is on a bed inside the infirmary because of the injury to his right foot. There was a Hungarian Jew next to Elie who was suffering from dysentery, which is an infection of the intestines. The only thing that showed he was alive was his voice. Elie questions “Where did he get the strength to speak?” This is validated as all the pain people were enlightened to within the concentration camp made no sense for any Jew to have the ability to speak. Elie describes the Hungarian Jew as being just a skin and bone with dead eyes, which reflects on his scrawny body and the feeling that he may be dead judging by his eyes. This is also a Metaphor as Elie is comparing the man to just skin and bones. My stance on this situation is simply
Elie experience was very miserable. The Jews were tortured every day; they were tortured to the point where many of them started committing suicide because they couldn’t handle what was going on. “You old loafer!” he started yelling. “Is this what you call working?” And he began beating him with an iron bar” (Wiesel 54). It wasn’t unusual for one to be beaten each day. One would be considered blessed if they were not beaten by an Nazis. Elie and the others were tortured to the point where they had no longer faith in god. “Blessed be God’s name? Why, but why would I bless him? He caused thousands of children to burn in his mass graves”.(Wiesel 67) It’s really hard to think and to understand what Elie and all the others and to go through to no longer have faith in God. This is another way Elie Wiesel shows dehumanization to inspire his reader to take action against social injustice in the world
“Where He is? This is where - hanging from these gallows…” (Wiesel 65). This quote greatly summarizes how Elie and other prisoners feel about their God throughout the Holocaust. Being new to the concentration camps, Elie depicted babies being thrown into flames, which is when he stated, “Was I still alive? Was I awake?” (Wiesel 32). This act of questioning himself serves as his first act of questioning God. As Elie views more horrific sights, he starts to doubt God even more. Elie even starts to get angry at God for letting the Holocaust happen. While witnessing a solemn service, Elie starts to get even angrier and thinks, “But look at these men whom You have betrayed, allowing them to be tortured, slaughtered, gassed, and burned, what do
Eliezer loses his faith because he questions why he should thank God. All of the fellow Jews were praying for the dead but Elie was just utterly confused why God would do that to the children. “Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank Him for?” He thought if God was going to be silent and not help these people, then why should he praise this so called “God.” He had lost faith in his family when they were split up at the beginning “Yet that was the moment when I left my mother. There was no time to think, and I already felt my father’s hand press against mine: we were alone.” He believed that he would never see his sister and mother again. Thus,
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.... ...
In the beginning of the memoir, Elie is an extremely passionate and devout Jew, but as the story progresses, Elie sees horrendous things in the concentration camps, and as a result, he slowly loses his faith. Elie displays his extreme devotion in the beginning stages of the memoir when he states, “By day I studied Talmud and by night I would run to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the Temple. I cried because something inside me felt the need to cry” (Wiesel 4). Elie is clearly very fond of learning more about his religion and connecting to God in a spiritual way. Furthermore, Elie is only thirteen years old, so when he says he cries because he feels the need to cry, he is exhibiting incredible passion. Elie reveals signs of change and begins to lose his faith in God just a few moments after arriving at the concentration camp when he says, “Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes” (Wiesel 34). Elie exclaims that he cannot worship God anymore due to the awful things he has seen at Auschwitz. He does not want to believe in the being that could have allowed these awful events to happen. This is a completely different Elie from the loving and caring Elie in the ghetto. Elie also uses rep...
This new behavior lead 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 putting them in poor conditions. Elie is usually not a person for 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. 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 now, when he is starting to question his beliefs. He had learned that God will punish evil and save the righteous. However, when Elie saw that God was not helping the Jews situation then asked himself the question, “Is God real?”. Elie became worried because he felt he had lost a companion that always seemed by his side at all times. He lost hope. While Elie was in the camp he had changed the way he acted towards his Dad. Before Elie was sent to the camp Elie had a love hate relationship with his dad. However while they were in the camp together they became closer. Elie showed this when, “I tightened my grip on my
The fall of his religiousness starts at the New Year. Elie questions whether or not he and his people will ever see salvation and is confused why they continued to pray when God was seemingly nonexistent, “You have betrayed, allowing them to be tortured, slaughtered, gassed, and burned,” (Wiesel 68). As their prayer draws to a close, Elie knows deep inside he no longer feels a connection with God, describing feeling like, “an observer, a stranger,” (Wiesel 68). Elie admits he, “had ceased to pray,” (Wiesel 45) following more of the atrocious acts commited by the Nazi’s. To rebel against the absence of his God he, “did not fast,” and explains why, “As I swallowed my soup, I turned that act into a symbol of rebellion, of protest against Him.” (Wiesel
After a brief stay at Auschwitz, they are moved to a new camp, Buna. At Buna, Elie goes through the dehumanizing process of the concentration camps. Both he and his father experience severe beatings at the hand of the kapos. All the prisoners are overworked and undernourished. Many lose faith in God, including Elie. He witnesses several hangings, one of a boy with an angelic face, and sees him struggle for over thirty minutes fighting for his life. To a stranger's cry of "Where is God now?", Elie answers: "He is hanging here on this gallows...." (p. 62). As Elie witnesses the hanging of the young pipel, he feels that it is his God who is hanging on the gallows. Elie i...