In the book The Trial of God, the author Elie Wiesel tells the story of the aftermath in Shamgorod, Ukraine following a pogrom on the Jewish community. An innkeeper named Berish and his daughter Hanna are the last two remaining Jews in the village. During Purim the following year of the pogrom 3 Jewish minstrels find themselves in Shamgorod looking for a place to celebrate. Though they offend Berish deeply for unknowingly coming to Shamgorod for Purim, he agrees to let them stay if they perform for him and his Christian waitress Maria. While being unable to find a topic to perform that they all agreed upon they decide to hold a trial instead. Berish wishes to put God on trial for allowing his people to be murdered, raped and hated continuously …show more content…
He looks familiar to all of the characters and shortly after is revealed to be the man who left Maria after seducing her. He is unwilling to tell them much about him, who he is, where he is from, or even what he does, but when asked by Berish if he had been a guest at the inn before Sam himself says,” Possibly. I have been a guest in many homes. You have customers, so do I. Some remember me, others prefer to forget me.” (114). In making this comment, Sam urges us to question who he is and what his intentions are. From what Maria says he is not a good man, in fact she goes as far as to call him evil for seducing her and giving her a false feeling of love, then beating her and leaving her. However, during the trial Sam defends God, telling of his just and fair actions and how he is not to be blamed for the actions his children. This is extremely ironic when Sam is revealed to be Satan but makes complete sense by what he gives away about himself in the beginning and the fact that many of them remember him from towns or villages that have seen tragedy. Sam is everything that God is not, therefore in a way he seemed to know exactly how to defend God for the events that were actually caused by
In the 1930s-1940s, the Nazis took millions of Jews into their death camps. They exterminated children, families, and even babies. Elie Wiesel was one of the few who managed to live through the war. However, his life was forever scarred by things he witnessed in these camps. The book Night explained many of the harsh feelings that Elie Wiesel experienced in his time in various German concentration camps. Prior to being taken, it is known that Wiesel was very strong in his beliefs of God and the ideas behind the Jewish religion. However, he questioned God while he endured the torture that the Nazis inflicted on many different races. He questioned why God had done this to these innocent people. Elie Wiesel lost much of his faith while in the
An estimated 11 million people died in the Holocaust. 6 million were Jews. In the book Night by Elie Wiesel tells his story as a Holocaust survivor. Throughout his book he describes the tremendous obstacles he overcame, not only himself, but with his father as well. The starvation and cruel treatment did not help while he was there. Elie makes many choices that works to his advantage. Choice plays a greater factor in surviving Auschwitz.
So as the morning Sun rose. The light beamed on Christopher's face. The warmth of the sun welcomed him to a new day and woke up in a small house in Los Angeles. Christopher is a tall, male, that loves technology and video games. He stretched and went to the restroom it was 9 o'clock and he was thankful it was spring break and didn’t have to go to school. Christopher made his way to the kitchen trying not wake up his parents and made himself breakfast. He served himself cereal Honey Bunches of Oats to be exact with almond milk. Then he took a shower and watched some YouTube videos before doing his homework.
Speeches are given for a purpose. Whether it is for persuasion, or education, or even entertainment, they all target certain parts of people’s minds. This speech, The Perils of Indifference, was given by Elie Wiesel with intention to persuade his audience that indifference is the downfall of humanity, and also to educate his audience about his conclusions about the Holocaust and the corresponding events. He was very successful in achieving those goals. Not only was the audience enlightened, but also President Bill Clinton, and the First Lady, Hillary Clinton, themselves were deeply touched by Wiesel’s words.
Inked on the pages of Elie Wiesel’s Night is the recounting of him, a young Jewish boy, living through the mass genocide that was the Holocaust. The words written so eloquently are full of raw emotions depict his journey from a simple Jewish boy to a man who was forced to see the horrors of the world. Within this time period, between beatings and deaths, Wiesel finds himself questioning his all loving and powerful God. If his God loved His people, then why would He allow such a terrible thing to happen? Perhaps Wiesel felt abandoned by his God, helpless against the will of the Nazis as they took everything from him.
...lation that surrounded the case ended with the torturous deaths of most of the alleged conspirators. Some where burned at the stake and others were hanged. Still more were broken on the wheel. The deaths of several men and a family were carried out largely on the basis of one 16-year-old servant's ever changing word.
In the novel I read which is of course Daniel’s Story is about a kid named Daniel and his family and how they try to go through life being a Jew in the WW2 era and how they have to live and how they were put in such harsh conditions and the way they were treated was awful. Just like when Daniel saw a Jewish kid no more than 12 years old being shot in both legs just because he missed a spot of dirt when sweeping. The first thing I would like to talk about is the technology used in the novel. Machine Guns were used, trains were being ridden, there was a crematoria, and in the research I have looked up all of those were historically accurate, the only thing fictional is the characters in the novel like Daniel, but of course this most likely did happen to many families and the harsh things that they were put through.
Eliezer Wiesel loses his faith in god, family and humanity through the experiences he has from the Nazi concentration camp.
The theme of The Terrible Things is doom. Throughout the story, each animal is being picked off by what is known as “Terrible Things”. After one animal is picked, the animals think that it wouldn’t happen to them. It does. “A nervous silence filled the clearing. But life went on almost as usual. Until the day the Terrible Things came back.” (page 12). Each species was gathered until there were none left. This story relates to First They Came For The Communists by Martin Niemoller and Night by Elie Wiesel because all three stories do not choose to believe that anything bad can happen. “When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.” (First They Came For The Communists stanza 4) A similar scenario happened to the little rabbit in
”Lie down on it! On your belly! I obeyed. I no longer felt anything except the lashes of the whip. One! Two! He took time between the lashes. Ten eleven! Twenty-three. Twenty four, twenty five! It was over. I had not realized it, but I fainted” (Wiesel 58). It was hard to imagine that a human being just like Elie Wiesel would be treating others so cruelly. There are many acts that Elie has been through with his father and his fellow inmates. Experiencing inhumanity can affect others in a variety of ways. When faced with extreme inhumanity, The people responded by becoming incredulous, losing their faith, and becoming inhumane themselves.
Having an opinion and or a belief is better than not having one at all. A great man such as Elie Wiesel would agree to that statement. He believes standing up for what is right by showing compassion for a fellow human being than for letting good men do nothing while evil triumphs. The message he passes was how indifference is showing the other man he is nothing. He attempts to grasp the audience by personal experiences and historic failures, we need to learn from and also to grow to be the compassionate human being we all are.
Some people are born to be heroes. Some people may be forgotten heroes. Some people are born not to be heroes at all. In ways they are similar and in some ways they are different. John Campbell’s Hero’s Journey Monomyth shows the certain stages that a hero would traditionally go through to be qualified as a hero. Elie Wiesel is not a monomyth hero, because he does not follow the correct steps and does not hit enough steps to be considered a monomythic hero.
1. Throughout Judges, the recurring, downward spiral-like theme reappears with each Judge that is raised up by YHWH. While it begins with the depiction of the general people of Israel being disobedient, you begin to see that even the Judges, appointed by YHWH, were fallible. Whether it was Gideon’s lack of faith and continued distrust in YHWH, or Samson’s indiscretions and immense pride, the Judges proved that no leader was blameless in breaking the covenant with YHWH, it was not just the people, but those YHWH called Himself. So as Israel moves towards a monarch, how will these patterns continue? Will the fallibility of man, even in the ones that God calls to reign be a continued issue in the covenant with Israel? 1 Samuel uses fewer characters with a more in-depth look at each and the fallibility of man and the relationship with God.
Within the Trial of God, there is situational irony that occurs with the belief and faith in one man, Sam. All characters except for Maria, believe that Sam is a messenger sent from God and can prevent evil from happening. “You are a messenger; do something!” (Wiesel 160). Mendel states, “You are close to heaven, pray for us! (Wiesel 160). Yankel himself states, “You must accomplish miracles, you can! We know you can! Please! (Wiesel 160). In other words, these characters believe that begging to Sam to help them out in a time of need can save them from death. What led them to believe he was a holy figure was because of the way he defended God during their trial. He had very powerful statements and good counter arguments to their beliefs on why God is guilty. Due to them believing he is “saint”, leads to a shocking ending. After all the begging is said, Sam replies, “you took me for a saint, a just? How could you be that blind? How could you be that stupid? (Satan is laughing…..the door opens, accompanied by deafening and murderous roars) (Wiesel 161). Basically, Sam was deceitful towards the characters which led them to think he was a savior. He is clearly Satan in one’s mind from the evidence that clearly shows in the text. Also in the past, he happens to appear right before other mass murders occur. In contrast, in the video, God on Trial, the situational irony occurs in two ways. The first with the selective system and the second was with one of the main characters who lost his faith in God and was against God during the entire trial. The selective system was a decision that was made by a NAZI doctor who told Jews to go right, who would live, or left, who would go on to die, well that’s what one of the Jewish prisoners thought. A young man named Moche was told to go left and when approached by another prisoner, Moche view is, “Going to live
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.