Elie Wiesel's Character Analysis

Even the deeply observant can become unfaithful. When the mass assassination of the Holocaust occurred, the religious Jews began to doubt God’s judgment. In Night, Elie Wiesel gives the reader a first hand account of what it was like to be separated from his family and be faced with the crisis of self-preservation versus looking out for others as he was raised to do. Elie comes to question his faith because of the cruelty and inhumanness that the Nazi’s show their prisoners. Before the concentration camps, Elie is deeply faithful, but when he is whisked away to Birkenau and the others that follow, his faith begins to falter. At the beginning of the book he is very religious, in the middle he starts to waver, and at the end he is seemingly lost his faith.

To begin, Elie is very religious. He uses his faith as his identity at the beginning of the novel. Elie was, “almost thirteen and deeply observant,” (Wiesel 3) exemplifying the early start to the tradition of religion. He used to cry when he would pray and when questioned by Moishe the Beadle about it or why he prayed at all he replied, “I don’t know,” (Wiesel 4) leaving him deeply

troubled; but because of his religious upbringing he hadn’t questioned “why” before. He dreamed of learning more of the Kabbalah from Moishe from their deep talks about the books. One day Moishe is taken away by the Gestapo, dashing Elie’s dreams of becoming a master of the Kabbalah.

After experiencing the camps, Elie begins to lose faith. It starts to waver when he begins to experience the horrors of the concentration camps for the first time. As he arrives to Birkenau and see the crematorium he describes, “Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever,” (Wiesel 34), marking the beginning of the end to his belief. Elie begins to notice signs that God is not present in the camp. A boy once seen as “God-like” because of his angelic features was put on display for the prisoners to be hung for a crime. The audacity of the Nazi’s is shocking with a Jew exclaiming, “”Where He is? There he is--hanging here from this gallows. . .,” (Wiesel 65). They see the struggling child as though God had died with him. Elie tries to find things to pray for when his fellow Jews pray, but becomes angry and frustrated, “The Almighty, the eternal and terrible master of the Universe chose to be silent. What was there to thank Him for?” (Wiesel 33).

Finally, Elie loses faith when he and his people are not helped.

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

69).

Ultimately freed from the last of his many concentration camps, Elie looks into a

mirror, “From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me,” (Wiesel 115). When Elie sees himself in the mirror and not only does he not recognize himself physically, he doesn’t recognize himself spiritually. Night comes to a close as World War II starts to end. The numerous acts of inhumanity made many question their faith along with Elie and the Jews. Wiesel through his adolescent self continues to bring awareness to these heinous crimes. He leads the reader on a journey from the loss of his family to ultimately the loss his faith.