Throughout World War II, Nazi Germany was composing a plan to completely eradicate inferiors in a massive genocide. Millions of Jews were shipped into concentration camps dispersed throughout major Eastern European cities. Many Jewish believers, used their faith, to guide them to freedom. Others didn’t have that privilege for peace in the camps. In Night, Elie Wiesel discusses Man’s relationship with religious faith through imagery motifs, and selection of details to reveal how the absence of a just and loving God led to the Jews loss of Faith. Elie Wiesel recollects on his experiences in the concentration camps using olfactory and visual imagery to paint vivid pictures outlining the loss of Faith in the concentration camps. As Elie lost his hope and trust in the Lord, he felt that his faith was consumed by his fears. Over the course of life in camp. He discloses that the flames engulfed his faith forever, which caused him to live as long as God (page 32). This excerpt expressed after his first night in camp, expresses the feeling of endless torture for a crime not committed, like our sins are to the Lord. Wiesel concretely expresses the loss of faith using olfactory imagery. However, his faith cannot burn in itself, instead it ignited in Elie causing smoke to rise from his heart. His loss of faith from the camps undoubtedly reflects the numerous others whom also continued a blazing faith. Furthermore, Elie and a stranger question …show more content…
Gods existence in the camp based on the murder of an innocent child and two grown men believed to have carried weapons. They both deliberated, “For God’s sake, where is God?” and from within me, I have heard a voice answer. ‘where He is? This is where-hanging here from this gallows…” (page 65). This powerful image expresses no evaluation of why God is dead but to contrast why God is dead to the Jews. Incidentally, visual imagery is used to describe the scene taking place during the murder of three innocent children of the Lord. The Jews feel as though, in that moment when the Pipel died that the Lord died too. Thus interpreted two ways, that God died from remorse and sadness from instances in camp, or what is believed by the Jews, that he died from hopelessness in the captives lives. Nonetheless, with the understanding that God is dead, leaves the Jews feeling neglect and insecurity for life in the camps enforced by motifs. The absence of a loving God leads to the fear of what’s coming in the night and that what is seen is forever living in their minds. To illustrate this emptiness, Wiesel explains a remembrance of Mrs. Schachter. She was a tense woman with piercing eyes, and on the third night in the train car shouted that she saw a huge fire and begged for mercy on her family (pages 24-25). Clearly, the fire was the malevolence of Nazi concentration camps, ending millions of lives in the crematoria. The purpose of this excerpt is to not only foreshadow the fate of the Jews, but to show that she was focused and condemned by the flame by the mention of her piercing eyes. Moreover, with the crazed woman shouting that there was a fire when in reality it was just the emptiness of night outside the car. Thereafter, many of the ignorant Jews died in the crematoria, they realized that she was right. Her eyes seemed to touch Elie, because he said they were piercing, meaning intense. Never the less, her eyes, being intense, left a mark on Elie and the Jews by piercing them with the image of flames burning the Jews in the night. On the contrary, Wiesel identifies anxiety for what is to come outside of camp, when the survivors are freed. He mentions, “The gates of the camp opened. It seemed as though an even darker night was waiting for us on the other side” (page 84). This passage leaves the reader questioning what is darker. Due to the loss of faith, the Jews were living empty lives in the camps sheltered by horror and inhumane treatment. However, when liberation occurs, life without God would be dark because they all needed someone to talk to, to feel comfort other than themselves. Also, life after the gruesome experiences behind those gates would haunt each individual forever reliving every night over again. Furthermore, life dependent on the reliance of oneself represents how life without God leads to even grimmer nights, and how our eyes then, can only see the negative. Throughout Night, Wiesel discusses the Jews loss of faith in detail and anger towards God. During life in the concentration camps, numerous Jews felt neglect and discouragement from the absence of God. Elie protests, “Why should I bless his name? The eternal lord of the universe, the all-powerful and terrible was silent” (page 31). This excerpt shows that the Jews felt unattached to God due to the dangers that her has let them live. As a whole, the congregation feels as though God left them stranded to fight the camps, and abandoned any call for help. In addition, the words used to describe God, essentially mock him for being the ‘eternal lord of the universe’, because he never answered their prayers or saved them from suffering. Likewise, Wiesel disrespects the Lords name by not capitalizing it, to show disrespect for what he feels to be abandonment. However, the anger towards God continues by Elie denying the actions of the Lord. He states that, He’s not denying his existence, but only his justice to the Jews (Page 42). This passage reveals Elies deeper thoughts on God’s abandonment of the Jews. He feels that God is still there, but not showing justice in his actions towards the Jews. The detail in this passage suggests a deeper sense of loss and a feeling of aggression at God for abandoning the Jews essentially at their deaths. Elie discusses that he feels as though God did not show justice to the Jews by throwing them to their deaths. No one deserves that treatment. Nevertheless, the Jewish faith adapted from the concentration camps; will forever lack God as the everlasting father due to unforgiving hearts. In the end, relationships with the almighty father can weaken over time when the eyes are shielded from his true power.
Elie Wiesel establishes that even with a background in religious practices one experience can cause one to lose it all. Imagery, motifs, and specialized detail all aid to Wiesel’s description of Jews losing their faith in the horrifying experience of the Holocaust. Even when one loses sight of what is important, don’t give up on everything good because to the all-powerful God will never fail to save
you.
Night is a dramatic book that tells the horror and evil of the concentration camps that many were imprisoned in during World War II. Throughout the book the author Elie Wiesel, as well as many prisoners, lost their faith in God. There are many examples in the beginning of Night where people are trying to keep and strengthen their faith but there are many more examples of people rebelling against God and forgetting their religion.
Six million Jews died during World War II by the Nazi army under Hitler who wanted to exterminate all Jews. In Night, Elie Wiesel, the author, recalls his horrifying journey through Auschwitz in the concentration camp. This memoir is based off of Elie’s first-hand experience in the camp as a fifteen year old boy from Sighet survives and lives to tell his story. The theme of this memoir is man's inhumanity to man. The cruel events that occurred to Elie and others during the Holocaust turned families and others against each other as they struggled to survive Hitler's and the Nazi Army’s inhumane treatment.
A statement from the nonfiction novella Night –a personal account of Elie Wiesel’s experience during the Holocaust—reads as follows: “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, to watch as our fathers, our mothers, our brothers, end up in the furnaces” (67). War is a concept that is greatly looked down upon in most major religions and cultures, yet it has become an inevitable adversity of human nature. Due to war’s inhumane circumstances and the mass destruction it creates, it has been a major cause for many followers of Christianity, Judaism, and other religions to turn from their faith. Followers of religion cannot comprehend how their loving god could allow them to suffer and many devout
The significance of night throughout the novel Night by Elie Wiesel shows a poignant view into the daily life of Jews throughout the concentration camps. Eliezer describes each day as if there was not any sunshine to give them hope of a new day. He used the night to symbolize the darkness and eeriness that were brought upon every Jew who continued to survive each day in the concentration camps. However, night was used as an escape from the torture Eliezer and his father had to endure from the Kapos who controlled their barracks. Nevertheless, night plays a developmental role of Elie throughout he novel.
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).
The section in the novel night that painted a dark and angry picture of human nature is when the Jews were fleeing Buna and hundreds of them were packed in a roofless cattle car. The Jews were only provided with a blanket that soon became soaked by the snowfall. They spent days in the bitter cold temperatures and all they ate was snow. For these reasons, many suffered and died. When they stopped in German towns, the people stared at that cattle cars filled with soulless bodies. “They would stop and look at [the Jews] without surprise.” It was a regular occasion for the German people to see suffering Jews and not feel pity. The dark and angry picture of human nature was when a German worker “took a piece of bread out of his bag and threw it
In the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie states, “Blessed be God’s name? Why, but why would I bless him?” (Wiesel 67). Inhumanity led to the division of religion and it also led to the loss of hope. Two significant themes when faced with inhumanity is wanting to give up and the loss of faith.
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.
Eliezer Wiesel loses his faith in god, family and humanity through the experiences he has from the Nazi concentration camp.
Mr. Wiesel had intended this book to describe a period of time in his life that had been dark and sorrowful. This novel is based on a survivor of the greatest Holocaust in history, Eliezer Wiesel and his journey of being a Jew in 1944. The journey had started in Sighet, Transylvania, where Elie spent his childhood. During the Second World War, Germans came to Elie and his family’s home town. They brought with them unnecessary evil and despair to mankind. Shortly after young Elie and thousands of other Jews were forced from their habitats and torn from their rights of being human. They were sent to different concentration camps. Elie and his family were sent to Auschwitz, a concentration and extermination camp. It would be the last time Elie sees his mother and little sister, Tzipora. The first sights of Auschwitz were terrifying. There were big flames coming from the burning of bodies and the crematoriums. The Jews had no idea of what to expect. They were not told what was about to happen to them. During the concentration camp, there was endless death and torture. The Jews were starved and were treated worse than cattle. The prisoners began to question their faith in God, wondering why God himself would
In the memoir, Night, Elie Wiesel remembers his time at Auschwitz during the Holocaust. Elie begins to lose his faith in God after his faith is tested many times while at the concentration camp. Elie conveys to us how horrific events have changed the way he looks at his faith and God. Through comments such as, “Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God, my soul, and turned my dreams into dust,” he reveals the toll that the Holocaust has taken on him. The novel begins during the years of 1942-1944 in Sighet, Transylvannia, Romania. Elie Wiesel and his family are deported and Elie is forced to live through many horrific events. Several events such as deportation, seeing dead bodies while at Auschwitz, and separation from his mother and sisters, make Elie start to question his absolute faith in God.
The year was 1943, young Elie Wiesel began to slowly realise the danger of the German Army and its leader; Adolf Hitler. Elie was one of the millions of the Jewish faith that was sent to concentration camps during the period known to all as the Holocaust. Throughout the journey to the camp, Elie and all others were promised that they would not be separated from their families; however, they soon learned the cold, hard truth that they were to be separated, “Men to the left, women to the right.” (Wiesel, 2006, pg. 29) Throughout the entire recap of Mr. Wiesel's experiences, everyone looked for something to give them the strength to survive, or the will to die. Night, by Elie Wiesel, shows the reader examples of objects taking on more than their
Irish Playwright, George Bernard Shaw, once said, “The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity.” Inhumanity is mankind’s worse attribute. Every so often, ordinary humans are driven to the point were they have no choice but to think of themselves. One of the most famous example used today is the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night demonstrates how fear is a debilitating force that causes people to lose sight of who they once were. After being forced into concentration camps, Elie was rudely awakened into reality. Traumatizing incidents such as Nazi persecution or even the mistreatment among fellow prisoners pushed Elie to realize the cruelty around him; Or even the wickedness Elie himself is capable of doing. This resulted in the loss of faith, innocence, and the close bonds with others.
One’s spiritual life can flourish or it can shatter in times of great trials. Elie Wiesel went through one of the world’s most horrific event and he lived to tell the stories of those who did not survive the Holocaust. To say that his faith and even his sanity was tested during his time in the concentration camps would be an understatement. He saw the people he loved suffering and dying for God, whom did not seem to notice their anguish. His relationship with God was broken and then put back together again due the great strain of the atrocity he experienced.
Elie Wiesel was once very spiritually grounded, however as he lost his faith he began to become less humane. In Elie’s strive to be more in tune with God, he tries to read the Kabbalah, a sacred Jewish passage, prematurely. Elie even compares praying to breathing when he says, “Why did I pray? Strange question...Why did I breathe?” (Wiesel 4). Elie’s faith is so strong he could not imagine a world where he did not pray, much like he could not imagine not breathing. However, he knows the exact moment he lost his faith. He delves into this moment and remembers it as, “the moment that murdered my God” (Wiesel 34). In his eyes, something that was so close to him, like his faith, is a significant loss and is a significant shift in his identity. He struggles to maintain his faith and begins to question God’s existence, and His audacity for the torment he is subjected throughout the Holocaust. Although Elie Wiesel may seem like a brute in his eyes, in comparison to other victims he is on the fence between human and