...novel is a boy's loss of innocence in a world he thought good and a loss of faith in a God he thought just." Be sure to answer both parts of the prompt. The central theme of Elie Wiesel’s writing “Night” is a boy's loss of innocence in a world he thought good and a loss of faith in a God he thought just. Throughout the book, Wiesel encounters numerous situations that put him through a mix of emotions that lead him to change his belief that God is just. Originally Elie had full trust in God, shown by his devout prayers to God and his devoted study of the Talmud and Kabbalah. But over time his horrific experiences during the Holocaust started to influence his beliefs. He says in his first night at Auschwitz, “Never shall I forget...
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...losing grasp of it can greatly influence them. In Elie Wiesel’s novel, Night, he relives his experiences in which he’s compiled during the Holocaust that the German Nazis were held accountable for. On May 1944, towards the end of the Second World War, he at the age of fifteen, his family, and other Jews are forced by the Nazis to detach from their homes to attend their first concentration camp called Auschwitz. It was situated in Poland and his mother and youngest sister will die there while he and his father carry on their lives with the only priority of survival in their minds; little do they know, a dark future awaits them. It is in camp Buchenwald, located in Germany, to where Elie and his father transfer in the progressing years, that Nazi brutality becomes more conspicuous. This leaves him the last motive to remain alive, his father. As Elie continues to inhabit the surreal and agonizing environment with tortuous occurrences at every step, he finds it difficult to survive as an adolescent which leads to his quick transition into adulthood; thus leaving his state of innocence. Because of Elie’s loss of innocence, he is impacted by having his relationship with God suffer, being desensitized to deaths and atrocities, and reversing roles with his father. One way that Elie is impacted by his loss of innocence is his relationship with God suffers. God, though present, is prejudicial in Elie’s perspective. It appears to Elie as if God’s protection fails to liberate the Jews...
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...Wiesel’s Changes of Faith The Holocaust brought about many hardships and created severe adversity for its victims that may have created experiences ultimately too traumatic that transformed their lives for years to come, either through starvation and labor in the concentration camps or execution and incineration in the extermination camps. In the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, Wiesel tells the story of himself as a young Jewish boy born in Romania, who in 1944, was forced into ghettos with the rest of the Jewish citizens and later deported, along with his father, to the Nazi’s largest killing center, Auschwitz-Birkenau. While living through this day-to-day horrifying basis, Elie begins to live with overwhelming fear and total alienation, as well as his increasing loss of faith on God and whether God is even existent or not for His lack of participation in trying to help the Jews. Although Elie manages to survive his long and frightening journey through both labor and death camps, his faith was never at the high-most air-reaching level as it dramatically changed throughout the course of the novel because of his disturbing experiences in witnessing cremated human beings, executions, and the going through the loss of his entire family. Prior to being deported to the camps, Elie’s faith was extremely high as he was well-established with his studies in mysticism and the cabbala and his great involvement with religion through prayers. Elie is finding a great interest in wanting to...
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...Loss, one word with so many meanings and simple and nothing can change it. Loss, of a loved one, faith, trust, happiness, your own life; and once it is gone, it is lost, and good luck trying to find it. Sayonara, au revoir, adios, bye. Elie Wiesel’s Night deals with his loss of faith in his God. Wiesel’s problem can be root all the way back to 1942, the beginning of Elie’s awakening, his first insight into the real world, his first insight into the Holocaust. The Holocaust was a horrid event, of ruthless killing, of senseless slaughter, destroying families, and a whirlwind of destruction. Under strain, ones happiness and ones faith is slowly whittled under the knife of opposition and pressure. Elie has lost so much through out his life, losing his family, his friends, but most importantly his faith. The first example of Elie loosing his faith is when he arrived at Auschwitz, Elie and his father are directed to go to the left; a prisoner then informs them that they are on their way to the crematory, Elie’s father recites the Kaddish or prayer for the dead, revolt rises up inside of Elie and he questions God, “Why should I bless His name? The Eternal, lord of the Universe, the All-Powerful and Terrible, was silent. What had I to thank Him for? (Wiesel 31)”. Elie is hopeless, his situation rendering him of his beliefs unable to believe that a holy being could cause such grief. He was stricken with terror that even after his prayers, his deep devotion to the great “lord” that God...
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...Author: Elie Wiesel Date of Publication: 1958 Genre: autobiography, memoir Historical information about period of publication: World War II, and the Holocaust, ended in April 1945 when the liberating Allied armies came through the conquered territories in Nazi Europe. Night describes 16 year old Elie’s loss of faith in God, humanity, family and morality in general. Elie, therefore, vowed to not speak of his experience in Auschwitz, Buna or Buchenwald (or any event between 1943 and 1945, from the beginning of the occupation of Hungary to Germany’s liberation in 1945) for ten years, until he had time to internalize this dramatic loss, and regain his faith and possession of his memory and life. In 1954, after realizing that even less than ten years after the end of the Holocaust, the world was already forgetting and Jews were abandoning their roots, the time had come to testify and justify to the world that Hitler had not succeeded. Biographical Information about the author: Eliezer “Elie” Wiesel was born on September 30, 1928 in Sighet Romania, where his memoir Night begins. In his childhood (up to the Nazi occupation of Romania) his father encouraged his study of the Torah, other Judaic texts and other literary works. As described in the beginning of Night, Elie was also curious about the realm of Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism. From 1944 to 1945, Elie and his family were subjected to the Nazi terror (will be described in the plot summary section). Elie and two of...
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...rights and freedoms all human beings are obliged to have. Additionally, it states that human rights are to be enjoyed by all people, regardless of who they are or where they live; while also including civil and political rights such as the right to live, freedom of speech, and privacy. In Elie Wiesel’s Night, Wiesel shares an impeccable account and the overlying theme of the dehumanizing macabre that is referred to as the Holocaust- particularly the idea that if one is treated as subhuman, death overrules innocence, the fight for survival results the loss of feelings, and extreme starvation outweighs all....
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...Introduction Elie Wiesel’s existence begins in Hungary where he is born in a Jewish slum. Life takes a different lane when he lands in concentration camps under the Nazi regime. The period from when he becomes a teenager sees him face the harsh life where his father denies him the opportunity to pursue Cabbala. Elie gets his own master, Moishe the Beadle who significantly tells him to spend time pursuing God through questions and not trying to comprehend His answers. "I pray to the God within me for the strength to ask Him the real questions." (Wiesel 30). Moishe is among the first prisoners taken by Germans and when he manages to escape and tell people of what Germans were doing to prisoners, he is taken for insane. There then follows a trail of events where he undergoes a series of bizarre encounters including the loss of his sisters and mother. This was a very trying time for Elie in which life drives out the innocence from him completely. In the concentration camps, where they are taken to as Jews, they are subjected to incessant torture and Elie witnesses babies burning in furnaces. The aim of this essay is trying identifying various ideas in the book written by Wiesel, identifying their changes, and at last draft a conclusion from these ideas as well as marking a significant change in his life since it takes a toll on his personal relationship with God. Changes in ideas about God and Humanity by Elie Wiesel From an innocent religious boy, Wiesel...
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...Disoriented Faith It is psychologically natural for humans to question faith and spirituality after experiencing tragedy and loss. People may doubt or even reject their faith with God whom is depicted in scripture as a source of peace and security in our lives. In Elie Wiesel’s Dawn, Elisha faces a similar spiritual contradiction after barely surviving the holocaust. After all of his family and friends are murdered by the egregious acts of the Nazi’s, Elisha seems to immediately question the logic behind his faith in Judaism and God. Stemming from his upbringing as an Orthodox Jew, his faith does not merely go away, rather, his understanding of God is reinterpreted into a more extreme outlook that acts as his catalyst for change as he transforms into a terrorist. Elisha’s reshaped understanding of God first becomes evident when he is relocated in refuge programs in France. In a camp outside of Normandy, Elisha often spends his time alone, in part because he does not speak French, but he interestingly reveals some important information regarding his faith. For the first time, we see that Elisha is pondering his faith as he looks up at the sky searching for God. Cliché in nature, it is almost as if he is saying “Why, God?” as he searches for the face of a child in the sky, trying to his rationalize experience in the concentration camp. When pressed to discuss this when Catherine, another girl whom he lustfully bonds with after discovering that she also speaks German, Elisha...
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...___________________________ LIVING HISTORY Hillary Rodham Clinton Simon & Schuster New York • London • Toronto • Sydney • Singapore To my parents, my husband, my daughter and all the good souls around the world whose inspiration, prayers, support and love blessed my heart and sustained me in the years of living history. AUTHOR’S NOTE In 1959, I wrote my autobiography for an assignment in sixth grade. In twenty-nine pages, most half-filled with earnest scrawl, I described my parents, brothers, pets, house, hobbies, school, sports and plans for the future. Forty-two years later, I began writing another memoir, this one about the eight years I spent in the White House living history with Bill Clinton. I quickly realized that I couldn’t explain my life as First Lady without going back to the beginning―how I became the woman I was that first day I walked into the White House on January 20, 1993, to take on a new role and experiences that would test and transform me in unexpected ways. By the time I crossed the threshold of the White House, I had been shaped by my family upbringing, education, religious faith and all that I had learned before―as the daughter of a staunch conservative father and a more liberal mother, a student activist, an advocate for children, a lawyer, Bill’s wife and Chelsea’s mom. For each chapter, there were more ideas I wanted to discuss than space allowed; more people to include than could be named; more places visited than could be described...
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