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The Holocaust was a “dark” time for the Jews. Throughout the story “Night” Jews suffer through the worst and Eliezer, the narrator, feels that he is living in a world without god because of the suffering. The title “Night” symbolizes the dark times in different or all of the Jews’ life’s and all of their losses of faith or most all of them. There are many instances where Eliezer mentions “night fell.” “Darkness” hit during this time period. To begin with, Eliezer mentions many times, “night fell.” The first time is when his father is interrupted while telling stories and informed about the deportation of Jews. Similarly, it is night when Eliezer first arrives at Birkenau/Auschwitz, and it is night-specifically “pitch darkness”-when the prisoners begin their long,tiring and horrible run from Buna. In section 5, Eliezer mocks the idea that the Jew’s are God’s chosen people, deciding that they have been chosen to be massacred. He comes to believe that man is stronger than god, more resistant and more forgiving. Eliezer has been losing faith in God A trail of indeterminate light showed on the horizon. We were exhausted. We were without strength, without illusions.” According to this quote, the prisoners have replaced God because they feel alone and weak in the world now (Helpless). Most of the Jews have lost strength and are hanging by a hangnail to survive through this “pitch darkness.” In section 8 when it is getting close to the end of the story Eliezer looks in the mirror and has an impression made on him and said this. “From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me.” This quote from Eliezer was his final statement about the effect the Holocaust has had on him. The Holocaust has made many people lose their faith in God, their will to live, and it had lasting impacts on all the
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 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.
Eliezer thinks of his own father and prays, “Oh God, Master of the Universe, give me the strength never to do what Rabbi Eliahu’s son has done” (Wiesel 91). He didn’t want to admit it but he could already feel his father falling behind. He feared that there may come a time when he would have to choose between his father and his own survival, and that was a choice he didn’t want to make. That choice came one night after being transferred by train to another camp. Once off the train they waited in the snow and freezing wind to be shown to their quarters.
...nd the doctor refused to help him because there was nothing he could do. He started to hallucinate and the others made fun of him. Did they not realize they suffer the same fate as him? When Eliezer woke, his father was no longer there. Possibly taken to the crematorium, all Eliezer could think was that he was free at last. What happened to not wanting to be separated from his father? He had become selfish and it is now hard to feel sympathy for him.
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...
...ies of many being burnt away. During his nights at the camp, he just observes the worst kinds of inhumanity possible: the punishing, beating and murders of innocent people all around him. Another major theme portrayed in Night is how inhumanity towards others slowly builds. Although it’s also no secret the Nazis themselves were full of darkness and cruelty, Elie also refers to how he feels a darkness enter into his soul after inspecting the flames. Here, he again questions challenged his faith in God.
It means that he still could see how was the holocaust like, the corpses, constant death and misery still haunt him and would never let go him. On page 115, where he said "I wanted to see myself in the mirror hanging on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto” and after he have seen himself he describe that “a corpse was contemplating” him. Meaning, the holocaust transformed Eliezer into a living corpse, a shadow of his former self.
Silence is an exceptionally important theme in the novel Night. Though the Nazi’s were gruesomely murdering millions of innocent people, no one was speaking up or even trying to stop this horrifying and dreadful act from happening. Despite the 'silence' that surrounds them, millions of Jews and others considered inferior by the Nazis, are unethically being burned and slaughtered. When Eliezer finds himself surrounded by silence and the feeling of emptiness comes upon him, he starts to reflect upon whether or not the existence of God is real. Eliezer goes on to say, “Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live.” The thought of God becoming silent is what Eliezer finds most troubling.
Eliezer’s horrible experiences at Auschwitz left him caught up in his sorrows and anger toward God. His loss of faith in God arises at Auschwitz. He doubts arise when he first sees the furnace pits in which the Nazis are burning babies. This horrifying experience ...
The Holocaust was one of the world’s darkest times, a mass murder conducted in the shadows of the world’s deadliest war. Thousands of Jews, Poles, Gypsies, and more were killed in the concentration camps every day. The Nazi soldiers deprived their prisoners of food, water, and in some cases, their will to live. In the memoir Night, Elie Wiesel, a young Jewish boy1, recounts the stories of his life during the Holocaust. As time progresses in the camps, it is evident that the dehumanization brought upon by a nefarious army causes the Jews to lose their faith in God.
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.
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
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.
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
At the beginning of Elie’s time at Auschwitz, as the prisoners were marching closer to the crematorium, Elie states he would never “…forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live” (34). Now even though this isn’t necessarily after a tragic incident, it serves as a foreshadowing to the sheer lack of humanity and justice in Auschwitz and the Holocaust in general. It serves to show that the silence was the worst part of it; the part that, to the prisoners, showed that a good piece of them would die because no one acknowledged it. Even Elie and his family didn’t acknowledg...