The Holocaust was one of the most important and tragic events of the last century, leaving a lasting effect on the victims. Elie Wiesel, a Jewish teenager who survived the Holocaust tells his story in his memoir, Night He describes his experience at the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps revealing the physical and emotional pain he underwent as well as his changing perspective on faith and identity. Throughout the memoir Wiesel goes through significant changes in his faith, identity and religious views. A pivotal moment in Elie’s journey is when he and his father arrive at Birkenau, and witness the persecution of the Jews. What Elie witnessed horrifies him and he begins to doubt God saying “For the first time, I felt anger rising …show more content…
Throughout the book, Elie suffers from the loss of hope, but it is when for a moment he thinks his father has that is when he reaches rock bottom. At this point Elie sees death as an inevitable fate, and he sees no need to live or fight Elie's expression of feeling entirely lost and defeat reflects this loss of purpose and hope.The line, "There was no longer any reason to live, any reason to fight" (Wiesel 99) reflects Elie's despair as he looks to find purpose in a world empty of sense and reason. This quote highlights how Elie's faith has been broken by his experiences, as he battles to find any reason to live. Together with his other remarks, such as his doubts about the purpose of prayer and his anger at God. Sadly, eventually his father becomes very ill and dies in Buchenwald. His loss of his father leads to lack of will to live and emotion. Elie gets transferred to a children's block after the death of his father and he describes his miserable state in his life during that period saying "I shall not describe my life during that period. It no longer mattered. Since my father's death, nothing mattered to me anymore" (Wiesel 113). The quote "Since my father's death, nothing mattered to me anymore" (Wiesel 113) shows he lost his sense of purpose for live, this shows throughout the rest of the book, this quote also shows how much he was holding on to his father, how he didn’t want to split up with him. Both quotes connect to the theme of loss of faith He feels that nothing matters anymore, and there is no reason to live or