In the memoir, Night written by Elie Wiesel, Elie experiences many circumstances that cause his relationship with God to differ. Throughout the memoir, Elie describes he is very passionate about his belief in God. However, as the war comes he experiences many things to see how cruel the world can truly be and begins to doubt his God’s capabilities to help. At the beginning of the memoir, when Elie is still at home, he is very devoted to his religion, and his faith in God is strong. Elie states “Why do I pray? Strange question. Why did I live? Why did I breathe?” (Wiesel 4). This shows how he prayed so often and continuously that it's very normal to him and compares it to simple things like living and breathing. Elie finds comfort in prayer …show more content…
This describes Elie’s thoughts after witnessing the bodies of innocent Jewish children being cremated in front of him. He also doubted why he had been chosen to be alive but not others, and felt a sense of guilt. This horrific experience left Elie in shock and scarred him. It made him lose the faith in God that he once had because how could God let such inhumane events occur? Not only did he lose faith but also became dehumanized and would never be able to go back to the person he once was before. Toward the end of the memoir, Elie still finds himself going back to his religion and says “And in spite of myself, a prayer formed inside me, a prayer to this God in whom I no longer believed in” (Wiesel 91). Elie has come to accept that he doesn't want to believe in God, but deep down he still does. He physically doesn't, but emotionally and internally he still has that connection with God even if he doesn't want to. He will always go back to God because Elie knows he still has faith in him even if he doesn't want to admit it. He finds comfort with God, but after experiencing cruel moments in the Holocaust he finds himself questioning his
After living through the Holocaust, Elie lost his devotion and faith in God. To Elie, God was everything to him prior to the traumatizing experience. Every day he would pray and devoted his life to worshiping
The Jew's religion was taken away by the Nazis. Before the Holocaust, Elie and his family would go to the synagogues to pray but when the Nazis invaded their country, they closed the synagogues and took all of their religious belongings. In the concentration camps, Elie’s father was getting weaker and Elie was barely surviving with nothing the German soldiers gave them. Elie starts getting angry with God because he is not doing anything to stop these German soldiers from killing them. God is letting Jews and non-Jews die and Elie’s faith in God is getting weaker and is losing strength.
Before Elie was shipped to the concentration camp he would spend his time studying Jewish mysticism, “One evening, I told him how unhappy I was not to be able to find in Sighet a master to teach me the Zohar, the Kabbalistic works, the secrets of Jewish mysticism. ”(Wiesel, 5) he once had a love for his race before war changed his mind. Elie believed that if God answered him everything would be ok but when he did not, “Never shall i forget those flames that consumed my faith forever….. Never shall i forget those moments that murdered God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes….Never.” He even prayed to God even when he did not believe he was there.
His belief in God was changed as well. Before the holocaust, Elie was active in his religion and beliefs. He would pray often and wished to know more about God. The holocaust caused him to question these beliefs. Several instances in his book Night recount a man asking the question “Where is God.”
Elie has just heard a tale of a son betraying his father and prays to God to help him never cross his father after not believing in God for a long time. The author tells the reader, “And in spite of myself, a prayer formed inside me, a prayer to this God in whom I no longer believed” (Wiesel 91). This reveals that despite Elie losing all his faith in God, he recognizes he’s at his weakest and prays to God to help him. He turns to God at the moment he believes he needs him most. Elie’s decision to pray is a significant turning point in Elie’s identity.
At the beginning of the novel, Elie is deeply religious and believes in the power of God to protect him and his people. However, as he witnesses the horrors of the concentration camps, he begins to question his faith and the existence of a benevolent God. In one powerful passage, Elie reflects on his experiences in the camps and his loss of faith, saying, "Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky" (Wiesel 34).
(pg 33). This quote from the memoir emphasizes the way Elie begins to resent and question god. Elie whose once faith was unconditional towards god, his faith in god was slowly being destroyed by the way the holocaust and the concentration camps were affecting him mentally, and faithfully, and how his soul was darkening as he starts to lose faith. To show the sequence of the memoir silence was a huge part of the memoir. It illustrates how many Jews could do anything but say silent throughout the whole experience of the Holocaust.
Elie has many internal conflicts, the largest is with God. At the beginning of Night, Elie is seriously studying the Talmud, putting specific focus on the mysticism of the Jewish faith. Elie's father is not only a devout Jew, he is a person to whom people come for advice. Elie's faith is not only a comfort to him, it connects him with not only his father, but the people of his community. He takes tremendous pride in his studies because that is how he was raised and it is all he knows, which is why the horror of seeing his fellow Jews being systematically exterminated by the Nazis makes him question the very existence of God.
Perhaps with an even more rooted belief in his existence and divinity than in the beginning, sort of like he’s been shaped and steered by the egregious events in his life to a point where he finally gains “the strength to ask him (God) the real questions”(5). Elie’s journey with his faith can be described as not completely losing the belief in God’s existence, but at many times questioning and doubting his goodness. A passage describes Elie as “one of God's chosen;” and “ from the time he began to think, he lived only for God”(Foreword 3). This quote from the foreword possibly answers the question posed in the thesis. The bigger question all readers and even the characters need to ask themselves is, ‘how does one keep his faith and handle the death/resurrection of God in the soul of a child who suddenly faces absolute evil?’
Growing up so religiously has permanently forced Elie to look at life through a Jewish perspective. God has never truly left his consciousness. He says the prayer "Oh God, Master of the Universe, give me the strength never to do what Rabbi Eliahu’s son has done" even though he says "God in whom I no longer believed. " Elie is constantly contradicting himself whens he claims he doesn 't believe but he still says prayers and thinks about God.
Elie was faithful and did what he was supposed to do. He wonders why God would punish him and so many others by letting them suffer and be killed. In class we talked about people losing their faith in the Holocaust and that if you lose your faith you have nothing to hold on to and
After several weeks in Auschwitz, the prisoners are sent a death march to a different location due to the Allies attempts to liberate the camp. The men march for three days, and those who can’t keep up are left in the snow to die. When they arrive at a resting place, Elie and his father rest after a rigorous journey, and learn that Rabbi Eliahu’s son had abandoned his father, running past him during the march. After he has partially lost hope in god during his time in the camps, Elie writes, “And in spite of myself a prayer formed inside me, a prayer to this G-d in whom I no longer belied. “Oh G-d, Master of the Universe, give me the strength never to do what Rabbi Eliahu’s son has done” (91).
Elie's Relationship with God Elie's relationship with God in "Night" by Elie Wiesel is complex, with his journey marked by a progression from a devout and unwavering belief in God to a deeply shaken and conflicted faith, ultimately leading to a sense of abandonment and disillusionment. At the beginning of his internment, Elie has a strong conviction in a compassionate and righteous God, as illustrated by his statement that "I believed profoundly. During the day, I studied the Talmud, and at night I ran to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the Temple" (Wiesel 4). However, as he witnesses the unspeakable atrocities of the concentration camp, he begins to question God's existence and justice, expressing his disbelief and confusion
As for me, I had ceased to pray... I was not denying His existence, but I doubted His absolute justice” (45). It is apparent here that the effect of the Holocaust on the Jewish people’s faith was delayed on some level. Elie refuses to pray to the God that apparently abandoned him. This is personified when he says he doubts that God has absolute justice.
(pg.33) It is apparent that Elie has changed from his former religious self who was dedicated to learning his religion and studying Kabbalah and Talmud everyday despite what his father said, however, it is unknown whether Elie completely abandoned his religion. We see indications of Elie questioning and doubting God, however, we also see his self-contradictory behaviour of returning to praise. “Some of the men spoke of God: His mysterious ways, the sins of the Jewish people, and their redemption to come. As for me, I had seized to pray…/I was