...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...
Words: 1428 - Pages: 6
...Compare and Contrast Anthem with Night Even though books come in many genres, they can still be compared and contrasted. This applies to almost all books. For example, Eliezer Wiesel’s Night and Ayn Rand’s Anthem are different genres. However, the similarities and differences between these author’s works are definite and deserve analysis. Such similarities include how the societies handle the executions of criminals. In Anthem, Equality has to stand “...in the great square with all the children and all the men of the city, sent to behold the burning” (Rand, 38). During Elie’s experience in the Holocaust, he and everyone else in his camp has to walk “...past the hanged boy and stared at his extinguished eyes, the tongue gaping from his mouth. The Kapos forced everyone to look him squarely in the face” (Wiesel, 63). Also, both Elie and Equality receive messages from watching a public execution. When the pipel is hanged, Elie thinks that God is no longer with the Jews and takes it to...
Words: 617 - Pages: 3
...1 Symbolic Interaction, Functional Analysis, and Conflict Theory of Elie Wiesels’s Night Introduction 2 Symbolic Interaction, Functional Analysis, and Conflict Theory of Elie Wiesels’s “Night” Elie Wiesel’s Night begins in Sighet, Transylvania, 1941 when he was a teenager. He begins talking about a life before his world, along with his family, was torn apart. His family was Jewish, and he wanted to study Cabbala. He was very much involved in his faith and wanted to further pursue it by studying Cabbala, but his father would not let him. “There are no Cabbalists in Sighet.” (pg 4). He was very close with his shtibl, Moishe the Beadle, who later was taken by Hungarian Police and expelled from Sighet because he was a foreign Jew. Once they were taken over by the Gestapo, the babies were used as target practice and the adults were shot. Moishe managed to escape because he was shot in his leg and was able to get back to Sighet to tell Elie what happened. He also tried to tell everyone in town what had happened to him and the rest of the foreign Jews, but no one believed him and he was branded insane. 1944 was when the town of Sighet was split into two ghettos, and no one could leave the town. Shortly after that, the Hungarian police told everyone in town to turn in their valuables (gold, jewelry, etc.) because they were going to the first concentration camp, Auschwitz. This is where Elie and his father were separated from his mother and sisters, and never heard from or...
Words: 2465 - Pages: 10
...throughout Night. Eliezer Wiesel presents the Jewish faith in a moment of extreme darkness however, what gives him the courage and strength to continue to live is his connection with religion and his relationship with God. Initially Elie shows strong devotion, then becomes disillusioned with God’s power, and ultimately redefines the position God holds in his life. In the beginning, Elie Wiesel’s relationship with God in Night shows strong devotion. Wiesel made spirituality inherent to all activities, wished to spend his life focused around Judaism, and devoted all his free time and energy on religious studies. Wiesel believed that religion was a basic survival need, showing that he followed his religion instinctively. When asked why he prayed, Wiesel couldn’t think of a proper answer and thought, “…strange question, why did I live, why did I breathe?”. Wiesel maintained confidence in religion as the situation deteriorated. Wiesel and his people gave thanks to God for survival, keeping hope that God was putting them through a test of hardships what would keep them alive if they kept their faith. When they had arrived at Auschwitz, they thanked God and were able to regain their confidence because, “Here was a sudden release from the terrors of the previous nights”. Wiesel thanked God for the little things that helped him because he wanted a sense of protection and clung to the belief that God watched over them and helped them survive the challenges he faced. When Wiesel’s new shoes...
Words: 882 - Pages: 4
...A normal 12 year old boy would have never seen a man shot to the ground or eaten by dogs, Elie Wiesel unlike any other boy went through this, not in the comforts of his home but in the filthy concentration camps. Surrounded by death itself Elie held onto any life available, could you? Elie Wiesel the author of Night went through the horrors of inhumane treatments Through his book, Wiesel changed from an innocent boy to a mature man only at 15. Wiesel was like any other boy in the beginning. He held a stable life while living with his family in Sighet. In the beginning of the book, Night, Elie Wiesel was not immune to the nazi treatments, He doubted that what had happened to him would eventually become his reality. Wiesel lived with his two sisters and his parents, They lived in a jewish town, Everyone in the town knew of Hitler and his goals, but, they abandoned the idea of him accomplishing any of his plans.Wiesel too believed this, Moshe a friend of his, warned everyone the terror the Nazis were bringing to the jews. Everyone just pitied him. Wiesel explained, “Even I did not believe him I often sat with him after services and listened to his tales trying to understand his grief but...
Words: 887 - Pages: 4
...resist the desire of death. In a beautiful villanelle dedicated to his father, Thomas told him: “do not go gentle into that good night,” but to “rage, rage against the dying of the light” (Thomas, 1 and 3). Thomas hoped that his father would find the strength to not give up in his fight for life. Their familial love gave his father the hope to do the seemingly impossible and defy death, for a little longer. Hope is key to surviving in any situation, but it takes a lot of emotional strength to maintain. During the Holocaust, this was truer than ever for millions of people, who faced death every day, and were tortured, starved, and violated. Their hope in religion, the goodness of humanity, and themselves were continually tested and most victims’ hope were eventually lost because of their suffering. One survivor, Elie Wiesel, wrote a memoir, Night, sharing his experiences during the Holocaust and in a concentration camp, and solemnly displaying his progression of hope. Elie's gradual loss of hope caused him to lose the emotional strength that he needs to survive, which made him desperate to cling on to the familial identity that was...
Words: 1708 - Pages: 7
...Can literature help us remember the past? Night, Perils of Indifference, and Acceptance Speech all have things in common. They can connect to different themes and they connect to one another. Literature has a big part in this world and it helps us remember past events, just like the Holocaust. In Elie Wiesel’s Acceptance Speech he says, “Who would allow such crime to be committed? How could the world remain silent?” This kinda ties back to theme 3 - breaking the silence on cruel acts is a way to break the cycle of repetition. He’s asking why would the world remain silent? He wanted people to break the silence when the crime was being committed. In this speech it also says “one person of integrity, can make a difference, a difference of life and death.” And this kinda connects to the prompt because it’s saying that you,...
Words: 640 - Pages: 3
...The worst manslaughter in history, forgotten? Relieved? Forgiven? Human minds in need of such remembrance of something that accepted such a crime to wipe out an entire race? Elie Wiesel’s Night not only reminds us of the unforgivable crimes that Hitler committed, but helps us with the further understanding of the differences in human nature by culture/religion. This experience dramatically changed Elie from a dreamer and believer to someone who has no faith and lives to only eat and sleep. The death of his father would haunt him, only for Elie to find out when his dad dies, he wouldn’t care anymore. The Holocaust changed many people immensely and shot a hole in the heart of history. Before Elie was plucked into the worst manslaughter in the...
Words: 558 - Pages: 3
...I believe that the story “Night” shows us a multitude of angles on which people lived during the holocaust. Though I do not belive that in these times that human kindness prevailed, often prisoners would kill for food or drink, and many people turned a blind eye to the actions in Germany. The history of the world is plagued by mankind’s inability to settle for what they have and who they are. Wars have been fought over religion, tradition, territory, and in this case, the idea that one race is superior to another. World War II was a horrible time in the world. The First World War was “the war to end all wars” and yet chaos spread over Europe. Elie Wiesel’s story, Night, is no exception. Elie was a Jewish prisoner who escaped the Nazi death camps. Night redefines what a common theme of man’s inhumanity to man. This theme is shown through the murder of a young boy, Elie’s belief in God, and Elie’s self-worth. The first display of Nazi inhumanity is the murder of a young child. An man and the boy (his assistant) were accused of blowing up a power plant on the camp. The man and boy were tortured and questioned and refused to give any information about the incident to the Nazi soldiers. The boy was described as “having the face of a sad angel” and was sentenced to be hanged. Everyone at the camp liked him and the SS officer in charge of the hanging refused his job and was replaced. The child was so light he hung for half and hour before actually...
Words: 880 - Pages: 4
... May 1, 2011 Major Works Data Sheet- Night Title: Night 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...
Words: 2916 - Pages: 12
...English 1302 29 November 2013 Losing Faith There were a lot of Jewish people who had a large faith in humanity or in what we all called God and Elie Wiesel was one of them. Their faith in humanity ended up being lost during the second Great War, which is commonly known as War World II. Though, after the war and after they were saved by the Allies, little by little their faith in humanity and God slowly came back. Even the truest believers, like Elie Wiesel, can lose their faith in all of humanity and even who they call God, but once you are shown even a slightest bit of kindness, you can gain it all back. In the very beginning of Elie Wiesel’s novel, Night, based off his experiences during the World War II, all he wanted was someone to help him in his studies of the Kabbalah. Even though his father thought him to be too young that did not stop Elie from pursuing his dreams. He ended up finding a teacher for his studies of the Kabbalah in Moishe the Beadle. Elie was not the only Jewish child whose studies meant a lot to him. David Weiss Halivini was another child who had big dreams and an even larger faith. He had a dream of being a rabbi of a small village in the Carpathian Mountains (Fox). Though he had to put his dreams on hold after the Germans came and put his family into the ghettos, just like Elie’s family. Also like Elie, he continued with his studies, not wanting to put his dreams on hold because he was moved into a ghetto. Not only did Jewish families have a strong...
Words: 1770 - Pages: 8
...English 10 Rough Draft Essay In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, the author uses symbolism, and metaphors to show the theme loss of faith. Both Elie and his father express signs that they have lost faith in the Jewish religion. This is important because religion is supposed to help people through hard times, and give them faith in the world around them. The first example of this is when all of the Jewish civilians are forced to wear the yellow Star of David. When Mr. Wiesel was asked what the community should do about being shamefully forced to wear the star. His response was rather nonchalant stating. “The yellow star? So what? It’s not lethal…” (11) This shows that Mr. Wiesel is not holding the offense to his religion in high regard, showing...
Words: 402 - Pages: 2
...attained from a human being, their outlook on life becomes devious. Having a positive on life conceives comfort in many people’s lives. When an outside fury comes along and changes someone’s life, his or her attitude is going to change drastically. In three books I’ve read, “Night”, “The Handmaid’s Tale”, and “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”, each struggle with the society they are dealt with. To be more specific, each main character has to struggle for freedom in the society that is surrounding them. When someone is enforced to go against his or her accustomed state of life, a negative state of mind is most likely going to be perceived through that person’s actions. In Elie Wiesel’s novel “Night”, a gloomy conduct is shown towards freedom, faith, and life. One of the most important rights as a human being is the capability to live willingly. Freedom gives people the right...
Words: 2308 - Pages: 10
...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...
Words: 668 - Pages: 3
...The Boy in the Striped Pajamas vs. Night Everyone knows that Duke and North Carolina is the biggest rivalry in NCAA basketball. Both organizations are often compared to one another, but it seems that they have their own unique distinctive interests. Even though they are both two different organizations they all have one motive in mind and that’s winning the NCAA Men’s National Championship. However, they both are similar and have their differences, Just like the same could be said about the two books Night and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pajamas and Elie Wiesel’s Night, while the text have their differences, both serve a purpose in theme and craft moves that is the same in many ways. Both stories...
Words: 414 - Pages: 2
