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Night novel elie and his father
Literary review of night by elie
Literary review of night by elie
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Night The memoir Night focuses on Elie Wiesel’s experience of the Holocaust. In his memoir, it is clear that the one thing that is lost in these terrible death camps is everyone’s humanity. The purpose of the concentration camps is not only to kill, but to dehumanize. In addition to humanity, there is one less noticeable thing that is lost in being forced to stay in these concentration camps - faith. Elie’s view on religion and God changes drastically during the Holocaust. Originally, Elie is extremely religious and devout. He believes in God strongly, prays to God often, and even studies Kabbalah. Even on his first night after arriving in Birkenau, Elie already feels a sense of God leaving him, his faith dissipating. Towards the end of Elie’s …show more content…
This is shown in many ways, some being direct quotes from the text, and some moments simply symbolizing his disbelief. The first proof of this is towards the beginning of Elie’s memoir. When Elie first arrives at Birkenau, a smaller concentration camp near Auschwitz, it is evident that his arrival is the turning point in which he starts to lose his faith in God. This is because of a thought that Elie has after he and his father make it through selection with the “notorious Dr. Mengele.” On page 55, Elie thinks, “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.” This quote is extremely significant to the argument being made. These two sentences that Elie thinks say that his faith in God is murdered that night, reasons for this being the flames that he saw, and the terrible fate that many Jews including some of his family had suffered. Another piece of proof that shows the same idea that Elie’s faith is not as strong and is weakening is that he begins to question the idea of God himself. “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?” (Night
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. Yet, after he had been exposed to the reality of the concentration camps, Elie began to question God. According to Elie, God “caused thousands of children to burn...He kept six crematoria working day and night...He created Auschwitz, Birkenau, [and] Buna”(67). Elie could not believe the atrocities going on around him. 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 cho...
I thought angrily. How do You compare to this stricken mass gathered to affirm to You their faith, their anger, their defiance? What does Your grandeur mean, Master of the Universe, in the face of all this cowardice, this decay, and this misery? Why do go on troubling these poor people’s wounded minds, their ailing bodies? … Blessed be God’s name? Why, but why would I bless Him? Every fiber in me rebelled. … But look at these men whom You have betrayed, allowing them to be tortured, slaughtered, gassed, and burned, what do they do? The pray before You! They praise Your name! … I was the accuser, God the accused. My eyes had opened and I was alone, terribly alone in a world without God, without man.” (Wiesel
Night by Elie Wiesel was a memoir on one of the worst things to happen in human history, the Holocaust. A terrible time where the Nazi German empire started to take control of eastern Europe during WWII. This book tells of the terrible things that happened to the many Jewish people of that time. This time could easily change grown men, and just as easily a boy of 13. Elie’s relationship with God and his father have been changed forever thanks to the many atrocities committed at that time.
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.
In the novel “Night” by Elie Wiesel, the author displays the transformation and the evolution of the average human being, through a horrible experience that he personally went through. When he is transported from one place to another, forced to leave everything behind, to go live in the ghettos, then in a horrible concentration camp. In the concentration camp, Elie experiences numerous events that challenge his physical and mental limits. Some of these events made him question his faith, and whether there is such a thing as God, turning him from a conservative Jew to a reform Jew. Elie doesn’t love the concentration camps, yet he doesn’t hate it, in fact he does not care anymore.
In another example, Elie himself witnessed a furnace in action burning infants as the smoke and fire started to pump into the air. His reaction was rather fearful and unsure if he was going to be next when in line. He knew that what he was seeing was real, and that it was truly brutal. And lastly, the march from Buna to Gleiwitz. This was the winter march in which Elie noticed that Hitler was actually sticking to his word about getting rid of all Jews. He keeps saying “It’s actually happening” over and over again to express his fear, concern, and state of mind. With the situation at the time, it was clear to see how one can be fearful of death and how it can strike at any moment. Then again, some just left for dead. The wrong in this was when Elie noticed that the march caused the Jews to turn against each other as some trampled across one another to move or later on when a kid killed his dad for a couple of bread crumbs. In conclusion, free will and conscience reside in any individual and makes it completely possible for one to judge right from
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.
This was shown in the memoir, Night, in the middle of the book, when Elie starts to wonder, is God really who people say he is, “ For the first time, I felt anger rising within me. Why should I sanify his name? The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe chose to be silent. What was there to thank him for?” (33) This proves, that in this particular point in the book, Elie is now doubting God and his power. In addition, Elie is now wondering, is men powerful than God. He wonders, why would the Almighty God chose to be silent when people are dying. It proves the fact that Elie is now moving closer away from this Almighty God that he once believed in. In other words, it proves the fact that Elie is now changing from this very religious person, to neutrality during this particular moment in the
For all of eternity, people have witnessed their life advance forward, and the events that are witnessed through life can change them; therefore, their lives may become altered. In the book “Night” Elie, the book's author, recounts his time in the concentration camps during the Holocaust. The Holocaust was a difficult time for many people, and in this novel Elie wrote about the horrors he witnessed there. As a result, Elie was changed by the events he faced: losing his religion, his identity, and his relationship with his father.
“Then came the march past the victims. The two men were no longer alive. Their tongues were hanging out, swollen and bluish. But the third rope was still moving: the child, too light, was still breathing...And so he remained for more than half an hour, lingering between life and death, writhing before our eyes.And we were forced to look at him at close range. He was still alive when I passed him. His tongue was still red, his eyes not yet extinguished. Behind me, I heard the same man asking: "For God's sake, where is God?"And from within me, I heard a voice answer: "Where He is? This is where--hanging here from this gallows..."That night, the soup tasted of corpses.” Elie and the other Jews are wondering where God is and why he is not saving the people who were hanged. Elie’s response of God is him on the gallows. It made Elie be very angry towards God. God has caused so many deaths that He could have recused from and to stop this nightmare.
The Holocaust survivor Abel Herzberg has said, “ There were not six million Jews murdered; there was one murder, six million times.” The Holocaust is one of the most horrific events in the history of mankind, consisting of the genocide of Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, mentally handicapped and many others during World War II. Adolf Hitler was the leader of Nazi Germany, and his army of Nazis and SS troops carried out the terrible proceedings of the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel is a Jewish survivor of the Nazi death camps, and suffers a relentless “night” of terror and torture in which humans were treated as animals. Wiesel discovers the “Kingdom of Night” (118), in which the history of the Jewish people is altered. This is Wiesel’s “dark time of life” and through his journey into night he can’t see the “light” at the end of the tunnel, only continuous dread and darkness. Night is a memoir that is written in the style of a bildungsroman, a loss of innocence and a sad coming of age. This memoir reveals how Eliezer (Elie Wiesel) gradually loses his faith and his relationships with both his father (dad), and his Father (God). Sickened by the torment he must endure, Wiesel questions if God really exists, “Why, but why should I bless him? Because he in his great might, had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many other factories of death? (67). Throughout the Holocaust, Wiesel’s faith is not permanently shattered. Although after his father dies, his faith in god and religion is shaken to the core, and arguably gone. Wiesel, along with most prisoners, lose their faith in God. Wiesel’s loss of religion becomes the loss of identity, humanity, selfishness, and decency.
Eliezer loses hope, trust, and his beliefs. He begins to rely on himself because he knew that only he can help himself and he could not depend on anyone else. "Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever..."(pg 32). Elie's father was struck, and that was when he realized he was afraid of death, and he felt guilty because he did not help his father.
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...
However, the Holocaust is more than a warning from the history. The loss of six million lives is incalculable & unforgettable; consider what could have been achieved by those innocents who died, what could have been found, written, invented and avoided. They tell us to 'Never Forget', conscious that their ancestors suffered numerous persecutions and that it is our responsibility to ensure that such crimes are never committed against us again. Elie thinks if the world is so cruel and disgusting then the god must be cruel and disgusting or the God does not even exist Conflict in the book arises: When Akiba the Drummer (whose faith helps Elie undergo for some time) as well as a Rabbi Eliahou whom Eliezer talks to, They also eventually claim that the God's existence is impossible to believe in a world that holds such a large-scale of death factory, deliberate horror as the Holocaust.
“Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes” (34). When Elie first gets to the