Religion, it may not be for everyone. Some may not care or believe in it, however to many it is. It's often the most important thing to some and what keeps them going to live a happy life. They say it's a part of them and that they will never stop believing and lose their faith. Unfortunately in some certain situations that may change. In the book Night, Elie Wiesel uses his memoir to share his experience about a dark period of his time. He was just an ordinary twelve/thirteen-year-old boy that stayed true to his religion and studies. His faith in god was always strong and had never wavered. However, all that started to change later in the book when he was sent to a concentration camp, Auschwitz. He spent countless days in misery. His faith in god started to weaken due to no result of anything getting better and lack of hope. One's belief can make a huge impact in one's life but once it falters, it leads to a dark path of loneliness, despair, and betrayal.
In the beginning of the book, Night Wiesel described himself as a religious person
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Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky. Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever.” (Wiesel, 34). At this moment in just a short period, he had already begun to change. Just witnessing what this camp has done and doing too many of these poor innocent people and no one doing anything to help them triggers his emotions. Which continues to lead him toward this battle of losing faith and wondering why isn't God doing anything or whether he was real or not since this was going on. He (god) was the one who is responsible for everything this world is doing. The longer he spent at the camp the more his faith becomes non-existence. There was always something to blame god about. The almighty being has just left them to suffer and go through all this pain. All there was is
Throughout the novel, his personality and beliefs start changing dramatically. Elie lost his belief in God. Before he and his family moved to the camps, Elie was a very religious boy. He lost his belief in God during the time he was in the concentration camp.
Throughout the book Night, the main character Wiesel's opinion of God changed once he experienced something as mortifying as the Holocaust. When his faith was tested, he decided to stop having faith in God, he stopped trusting God, and allowed himself to stop being illuded by God. On page 19 there are a few examples of Wiesel's views and beliefs on God before the Holocaust. “Where, according to Kabbalah ”, this shows that Weisel was interested in his faith enough that he knew the rules and standards/principles that his religion valued. “I succeeded on my own in finding a master for myself in the person of Moishe the Beadle.”
Within seconds of being there, he lost his faith in god. Elie Wiesel’s joy and love for his religion completely changed from wanting to learn, to doubting it. Wiesel’s change in faith helped keep him alive in the concentration camp. When he was in the camp the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur came around and in his words, “To fast could mean a more certain, more rapid death” (Wiesel 69). A lot of the people did not fast including Elie because his father told him not to and because he, “[...] no longer accepted God’s silence” (Wiesel 69).
In conclusion, in the memoir Night, Elie Wiesel utilizes the suffering and adversity of Jews during the Holocaust in order to present how when faith in God is lost, a person can continue to progress in life or not, but they will only be able to if they have hope and faith in themselves. The book illustrates that without God, one must still be able to live a satiated life and be able to procure self-motivation. In the lives of Jews during the Holocaust, as well as people today, no matter what religion one has faith in, when faith in that is lost due to hardships, one must be able to find hope in other places. This is not to say that following a religion is useless, but instead to relay the message that in addition to faith in something else,
Identity, God and Religion In Elie Wiesel’s novella, Night, the themes of identity, God, and religion become present due to the association Wiesel has with Judaism. Both themes intertwine, and are displayed ascribable to the oscillation Wiesel experiences, the statements he makes regarding God’s death, and his loss of interest for cabalistic mysticism. Eliezer undergoes change, he was passionate about his religion, but there were instances where he felt the need to pull away due to the circumstances he found himself in. When, “[Elie] … was thirteen, [during the day he] studied Talmud, and by night [he] would run to the synagogue to weep,” (Wiesel 3). Eliezer’s strong connection with his religion is shown, because he chooses the synagogue
Throughout Night Elie Wiesel makes a lot of connections relating to god like in the start of the book what he was trying to figure out his religion. Then he found Moshe the beadle. Finding him would help Elie with his journey to god. Although Elies finds Moshe the beadle he comes across different ways to find god.
God is gracious in the eyes of those who are ignorant. Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, is the accounts of his experiences being taken to the Nazi concentration camps, Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Eliezer begins as a faithful Jew, proud to a long heritage and willing to show his devotion by studying Kabbalah, or a branch of Jewish mysticism. However, his studies are put to a halt when the Germans arrive in his village. The experiences Elie has as a Jew in the Nazi concentration camps develops his view on faith and God, through these events his look on God becomes less idealistic.
But then, when his father dies in the concentration camp, nothing matters to him anymore (113). He becomes idle and uncaring, and never thinks of his family; only food. The camps stole his personality, and also his beliefs.
To begin with, Elie Wiesel had lost faith in himself from the destruction because of the physical way he viewed the situation. “In a few seconds, we had ceased to be men…. The student of talmud, the child I was, had been consumed by the flames. All that was left was a shape that resembled me. My soul had been invaded-and devoured- by a black flame” (Wiesel, 37) Elie Wiesel views this situation physically from the way they were exposed and how they had lost their pride so quickly.
Wiesel's loss of faith was brought on by the absence of God. This resulted in him questioning why it was God's will to allow Jews to suffer and die the way they had. Another portrayal of religious confliction within Wiesel was the statement of his faith being consumed by the flames along with the corpses of children (Wiesel 34). Therefore, he no longer believed God was the almighty savior everyone had set Him out to be or even present before them. To conclude, his experiences within Nazi confinement changed what he believed in and caused him to change how he thought and began questioning God because of the actions He allowed to take
Why do you go on troubling these poor people’s wounded minds, their ailing bodies?”(Wiesel 68) Wiesel clearly is losing faith in God because he has seen babies burned alive, families killed together. Wiesel blames God for what has happened. Additionally, Elie Wiesel is not thankful for God anymore because he is not in Auschwitz helping him and the rest of the Jews. Wiesel feels anger towards God.
and it changed him. In the book, Night, the main theme, is religion and belief which is shown when Elie talks about the his strong religion and belief as a boy, his disconnection from religion, and the inhumane actions the Nazi 's caused. Having such a strong belief in something and then dramatically changing how you think, is a very significant event. During this time, many people questioned where God truly was. Even Elie was questioning where God was.
Elie, once so faithful, is one of the first to lose faith in God due to the horrific sights he sees. After witnessing the bodies of Jewish children being burned, Wiesel writes, “Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever” (34). He quite understandably has begun to doubt that his God is with him following the sight of the supposedly chosen people’s bodies being unceremoniously burned. Elie, though, was perhaps not a member of the masses with this belief; in fact, some men were able to hold on to their beliefs despite these horrendous sights. Also near the middle of the book, Wiesel reflects on the faith of other Jews in the face of these events, saying that “some of the men spoke of God: His mysterious ways, the sins of the Jewish people, and the redemption to come.
When these people were being treated in such malicious ways, they started to believe that God wasn’t really there for them. They felt as if He wasn 't there to protect them. Sometimes, they started to rebel against their own religion and turn to their worst enemies for faith. Throughout Elie’s memoir, Night, Elie shows that many people, including himself, lost faith during their stay at the concentration camps. Many other victims of the concentration camps lived to see such tragedies that they began to lose hope in God, as well as he did.
Religion is Everywhere In our declining world, the branches of religion touch everything from the government policies, individual policies, and our social lives. Whether you are a firm believer in religion or not, it is affecting you regardless. In every aspect of life, religion is strengthening your self confidence, giving you an aspiration to be good, and endowing positive influence in non-religious places.