Night, By Elie Wiesel: Character Analysis

Faith is complete trust or confidence in someone or something. In the novel Night, by Elie Wiesel, the narrator talks about his and his father’s experience in a Nazi concentration camps during the height of the Holocaust. Elie and many others struggle with keeping their faith throughout the novel. The silence from God doesn’t make sense to Wiesel, and why him and his father are living in hell. Elie Wiesel’s faith changes and get affected by the many horrors in the life he went through. Eliezer, the narrator, was a very faithful youngman. He prayed every day in hope to open up his religion. One day a religious friend named Moché the Beadle had asked why Eliezer prayed everyday. Eliezer then genuinely asked himself, “why did I pray? A strange question. Why did I live? Why did I breathe?” (14). Eliezer compared praying to living and breathing as in, if he didn’t pray he wouldn’t be able to function with his life. He did everything based on his religion. Until he went to one of his first concentration camps and was selected to go to the left. He was face to face to the fires of hell, witnessing the deaths of innocent human being. That night, he says, “Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my

He gives us an image of the crowd of men at the camp celebrating and praising in God’s name. The crowd yelled out the words, “‘Blessed be the Name of the Eternal!’” (74), and Eliezer responds furiously with, “Why, but why should I bless Him? In every fiber I rebelled. Because he has had thousands of children burned in His pits? Because He kept six crematories working night and day, on Sundays and feast days?” (74). Eliezer, on that page, continues to list the faults in his world. He didn’t want to praise someone that has brought so many horrible things to the lives of thousands. He revolted against the name of God. He didn’t want to do anything with him at that