“‘Blessed be the name of the eternal!’ Why, but why should I bless Him? In every fiber I rebelled. Because He had had thousands of children burned in His pits?”. In Night, Elie goes through an internal struggle with his belief/religion. In chapter five of this book it is more visible than ever.
In an excerpt of chapter five, Elie goes on to talk about the times in the Bible that man had betrayed God. In this thought he thinks, “When You were deceived by Adam and Eve, You drove them out of Paradise. When Noah’s generation displeased You, You brought down the Flood.” This shows that Elie recognizes that men have made mistakes in the past. Elie says You instead of God to emphasize his hatred to God. Elie is angry because he thinks that it is God's fault for how much he and others had suffered through. He goes on to talk about how the men around him continue to stay faithful to God, even though they have suffered so much. In his hatred he thinks, “But these men here, whom You have betrayed, whom You have allowed to be tortured, butchered, gassed, burned, what do they do? They pray before You! They praise Your name!” Elie is angry at God for what has happened, and shows
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In the beginning of his speech story, God was everything to him. He worshipped him and prayed to him every day of his life. Then the Holocaust began, and his faith started to dwindle as he suffered more and more. His suffering and pain of others are causing him to stray away from God, and he starts to rely on his feelings and his personal health. His life was once dominated by God, but now he does not care about his religion as much as he once did. Elie continues to think, “Once, I had believed profoundly that upon one solitary deed of mine, one solitary prayer, depended the salvation of the world.” This shows that he thinks that it no lingers matter if he continues to pray. This shows that his religion was once everything to him and now he has lost a bunch of his faith due to the
In this essay I am going to show evidence that he lost his faith, not only in his God, but in his leaders and his father. Elie lost faith in his leaders. The cruel actions the Nazis performed in the concentration camps says plenty about why. But when Elie's leg was still recovering in the infirmary, his neighbor said this, “ I have more faith in Hitler than anyone else. He alone has
showing his anger at that moment and when he was writing it, but would end up coming back to his religion sometime later. After he had given up hope for his god, he had felt alone, this showed sadness, and gave the reader an idea of how much his religion meant to him during this period; however, he still threw it away. Elie thinks on pg. 68 “But look at these men you have betrayed, slaughtered, gassed, and burned, what do they do? They pray before You!
Nathaniel Hawthorne once said “such loss of faith is ever one of the saddest results of sin.” As for the novel, Night, you read the struggles of people as they battle within themselves and their faith, we see how they become willing to sacrifice anything to stay alive. In the novel, Night, by Elie Wiesel we grasp further learning about the Holocaust through the author's perspective. We're shown what difficulties the Jews, others have faced, and we see how ruthless they're treated . During his experiences in the concentration camps, Elie Wiesel loses faith in his fellow-man and in God.
Oftentimes, the effects of traumatic experiences can transcend the importance or the gravity of original beliefs. With every passing day, Elie is seeing more and more innocent infants, children, men, and women dying all around him, simultaneously. However, as the survivors around him congregate and continue to pray to God on their own volition he is thoroughly confused. With the amount of deaths around him, he questions everything, and thinks aloud.
Another time when Elie losses his faith in his god is when he started to question why were all these terrible things happening to him, and why didn 't he do something about it, “What are You, my God? I thought angrily. How do You compare to this stricken mass gathered to affirm to You their faith, their anger, their defiance? What does Your grandeur mean, Master of the Universe, in the face of this cowardice, this decay, and this misery? Why do you do on troubling these poor people’s wounded minds, their ailing bodies?”
Elie continued to be angry at Him. Thousands of prisoners were repeating the prayer “Blessed be God’s name…” (Page 67). But Elie was concerned why should he bless Him? Everything inside Elie opposed it.
On the eve of Rosh Hashanah, the Jews gathered in silence, worshiping God. Elie is in shock that they still praise Him despite the terrible things they have endeavored. He even goes into lengths to say, “Praised be Thy Holy Name, for having chosen us to be slaughtered on Thine altar? ,” (pg. 67) and he even begins to think about how man is truly greater than God, “And I, the former mystic, was thinking: Yes, man is stronger, greater than God.
Elie's faith is tested many times in night. It is a struggle throughout the entire book and eventually it is lost and once it is lost you can never get it back. The first-time Elie's faith is tested is when he watches the baby's get burned alive in the dark of night when they first enter Birkenau. It is tested that same night as well when he thinks he is going to be burned alive but he still blesses god right before he thinks he's going to die. The next time his faith is when Elie’s faith was tested was on new year’s.
Eliezer has not only lost faith in god but he has begun to feel hatred towards him for letting innocent men and women be slaughtered and burned. Elie now feels strong hatred towards god for not protecting the Jews. Elie’s view of god changed for the worse. He was very religious and close to god in many ways. He slowly began to lose faith and hope in god.
“I ran off to look for my father. And at the same time I was afraid of having to wish him a Happy New Year when I no longer believed in it,” (Wiesel, 75). Earlier, Elie talks about how he felt powerful and stronger than God himself, now that he was free from the Almighty. He also talks about how he felt alone but strong. Later, he shows retaliation against God.
I no longer accepted God’s silence. As I swallowed my ration of soup, I turned that act into a symbol of rebellion, of protest against Him” (69). An obvious split from God is in this quotation. Elie refuses to honor this sacred holiday to rebel against the God who appears to have left him. He rebels against God’s notion of grace and protection of the Jewish people, for neither of these ideals are apparent in the live he seems to have been cursed to live.
He feels almost anger that the others still put faith in God. He feels that God is lesser than man, that Man is stronger because they still worship God after all they have been through. He felt that he “was the accuser, God the accused.” This is the final stretch, and Elie no longer believes in God or religion.
Elie was angered with God. He kept questioning how God could allow all these things to happen all these innocent people. Elie now said that men are stronger than God. Elie felt abandoned by God. I believe that Elie’s reason for his anger towards God were completely valid.
(67). Explicitly, Elie resents God for allowing him and his Jewish brothers and sisters to be tortured and murdered in gruesome and cruel ways. How could Elie possibly praise a God who condones the murder of children and mothers? He can’t which why he also says, “Some of the men spoke of God: His mysterious ways, the sins of the Jewish people, and the redemption to come. As for me, I had ceased to pray.
“Why do you cry when you pray? He asked, as thought he knew me well. “I don’t know”, I answered, troubled”. This moment shows that at the start of the book he believes in god because he is praying to god for a miracle to someone else that might really need it. The reader can infer that at this point he trust god and believes, which supports the argument that Elie changes from a person who believes in god to a person who only thinks about