Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Importance of family
The role of religion in society and politics
Why is religion important in history
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Importance of family
Will the human race ever fall so victim to the cruel acts of Inhumanity, that humans might make the world an unlivable place? Will the human race ever fall so victim to the nice acts the humanity, that humans might make the world a livable and enjoyable place? The book Tuesdays with Morrie shows a bit of both, but mostly focuses on Humanity as a good thing. In the book Night, the book focuses on both, but mainly focuses on how inhumane humans can be to one another. Morrie focuses more on the good in humanity, while Elie struggles through his life trying to find if there is any humanity left. In the novel Tuesdays with Morrie, Morrie is college professor that is cursed with a deadly disease called ALS. It slowly starts to take its tole on …show more content…
He suffers a great deal and is locked in a concentration camp for most of the novel. Elie tries to take on the inhumane acts and struggles that the Nazis throw at him. A young boy and his father face the harsh inhumane acts of Word War II’s Holocaust. While Elie and Morrie are on in the same, suffering through dramatic events in life, Elie seems to not have any faith at all in the book. The faith that he once had died very quickly. The events that took place in the concentrations camps were too much for Elie. Most of Elie’s faith in humanity has completely been washed away and put into the garbage. Unlike Morrie, Elie States this after a fellow jew is hung, “FOR God’s sake , where is God? Where is he? God is hanging from the gallows. That night, the soup tasted of corpses.”(Wiesel 65) Throughout the novel Elie gives up on almost everything. He constantly talks about how he would rather die than suffer, while Morrie speaks happy thoughts. They are one in the same because no matter the positive, or the negative attitude, they both fought until the end. Elie is so negative throughout the novel, and he believes that this is what the world has come to. He soon starts to believe that this is all he will ever know. Elie believes that is this is what the life of humanity has come to, Elie does not want to live his
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.
It can be understood that at that moment, Elie was losing his mentality. Even so, he still had the sense of loneliness that most would have in that situation. Elie was hopeless, wondering where his God was, and why he was silent. Elie never doubted his belief in God, he doubted that the God was not his God, that the God was a terrible ruler. It is important to remember that this is extremely early in Wiesel’s experience with the concentration camps, and his piousness is already decreasing.
However, there were warnings by some people that Jewish people were being deported and killed. Although no one believes these warnings, Elie and his family are taken to a ghetto where they have no food. After being in the ghetto, Elie and his father were separated from Elie’s mother and sister because of selection and were placed in cattle cars where they had no room. They are taken to Auschwitz where they suffer from hunger, beatings, and humiliation from the guards which causes Elie’s father to become weak. By now Elie has lost his faith in God because of all he has been through.
Here he is no longer ignorant to the world around him, here he experienced one of the darkest times in man's history. Elie having been through so much already lost his faith in god. Being treated like cattle every day, seeing hundreds killed and burned in the “chimneys,” and even watching live babies thrown into pits of fire was enough for him to lose his faith, something he had once adored so much. A pivotal moment in the story is the hanging of a young boy. When inmates were suspected of breaking the rules or attempting to start an uprising they were tortured for information and then sentenced to hang at the gallows. During this scene, one of the accused is a thirteen-year-old boy who was described to have the face of an angel. Wiesel brings him up to reinforce that his faith is gone, the death of the boy is the death of God to him, “Behind me I heard a man asking: ‘For God’s sake, where is God?’ And from within me, I heard a voice answer: ‘Where is he? This is where hanging from the gallows…’ That night the soup tasted of corpses.” And after that, we see him slowly begin to change as a person. Throughout the whole journey, Elie was lucky enough to be able to stay with his father. Through the text, one of Elie's main focuses is ensuring that his father is taken care of and no matter what happened they were to remain united. After rumors that the Russians are approaching begin
When Elie and his family were sent off to the concentration camps, he tested his belief in God. In the novel Night, “Wiesel's childhood faith in the goodness and promise of God was forever shattered when as a young boy he was deported along with his family from their native Transylvania to Auschwitz. Arriving at Auschwitz Wiesel learned what Dostoevsky in his own time knew, that the sin against the child is the only unforgivable sin, for it indicts not only man but man's creator. Echoing Dostoevsky, he writes: “A Child who dies becomes the center of the universe: stars and meadows die with him.”” (Idinopulos).
An estimated 1/3 of all Jewish people who were alive were grotesquely tortured and murdered during the Holocaust. Those who were not murdered went through changes mentally, physically, and spiritually. This changed many people’s identities to where they seemed like a completely different person. Elie was one of the many people whose identity had changed throughout their time at the death camps.
He applies tone by quoting the men who are questioning God. they are angry and frustrated that God is not there to set them free. Moreover, Elie uses repetition to utilize the theme. He repeats the same line over and over again to get the reader to commemorate. Lastly, he employs irony in his story. Elie realizes how ironic it is to worship someone who will not even give you mercy. The Jews that went through Holocaust experienced more pain than anyone should ever go through. It was very hard for more of them to hold onto their
Elie spent the first thirteen years of his life as a devout Jew and grew up as the son of a pillar of the religious community in his town, yet we witness a stark change in his religious beliefs as he goes through this experience of the Holocaust. An obvious sign of Elie’s loss of religion is how he does not observe any Jewish holidays that require fasting, choosing instead to eat his meal for energy. It progresses further when he forgets to say Kaddish for Akiba Drumer, a man in his block who got sent to his death. Elie struggles with his perception of God throughout the book, as shown when he refuses to ask forgiveness for his sins. Instead, he considers himself “the accuser, God the accused.” Although Elie never completely loses his faith, he does cease to have faith in God’s ability to be completely just. This represents a major loss in Elie’s
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
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.
Through the Holocaust, Elie learned that silence is not an answer to oppression. At first, he couldn’t believe the cruelty and pain the Nazis were inflicting. He said, “’I could not believe that human beings were being burned in our times; the world would never tolerate such crimes,’” (Page 33, Night). Then, Elie came to realize the world was staying silent. He saw that people were suffering and dying, and all of humankind backed away in fear or indifference. Seeing this happen in the time he was at the camp made
...bers that he has a father and he forgot about him in the mob. “I knew he was running out of strength, close to death, and yet I had abandoned him” (p.106). Elie feels guilty for leaving his father when he needed Elie the most. After he wakes up he goes looking for his father. He feels as if he is responsible for taking care of his father. Elie replaces his faith with obligation to his father to help keep him going thought out the holocaust.
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. Throughout his recollections, it is clear that Elie has a constant struggle with his belief in God. Prior to Auschwitz, Elie was motivated, even eager, to learn about Jewish mysticism.
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