Elie Wiesel's View Of God In Night

“Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust” (Wiesel 34). All of his experiences, from Sighet to his liberation at Buchenwald, are leading to faltering in his mind about whether or not the God he believes in is still there for him. In the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie’s view of God changes throughout the novel beginning with his views of God in Sighet, his view of God upon arrival at Birkenau, and his view of God during Rosh Hashanah. In the beginning of the novel, Elie, living in Sighet, has a different view of God. In Sighet, Elie is a young boy and religion plays an important part in his younger life. Elie is so eager to learn more about the Talmud of the Torah and the Kabbalah,

Elie goes through a selection and watches as his mother and young sister, Tzipora, walk to their death annd has seen a lorry pull up and dump live babies into the ditch and throw them into the flames. Elie angrily questions God saying, “Why should I sanctify his name? The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent,” (33) showing the anger that is that is starting to grow in his heart towards God. Elie is losing faith and trust in him because he believes that God is staying dormant and allowing for all of this to happen. After all of his desire to learn about God, this is the turning point where he is beginning to resist and go against God. “What was there to thank him for?” (33) which expresses that Elie is beginning to find reasons why he should not trust him because he does not have anything to thank him for in the concentration camp. “Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God…” means that the acts that he has witnessed has forever tainted his view of God. Elie’s identity is changing because he is now reciting the Kaddish “against his own will,” showing that that religion has been ingrained in him, so he may be losing his will, but it is muscle memory for him either way. Elie is trying to stray away from his beliefs, yet he is not able to fully deviate away from it completely. His arrival at Birkenau marks one of the changes that start

Normally, they are to celebrate and rejoice because it was a new year, but the prisoners begin to worry that it might actually be the last day as in their last day of life. During their special gathering with some ten thousand men, they pray and he asks, “How could I say to him: Blessed be Thou, Almighty, Master of the Universe, who chose us among all nations to be tortured day and night, to watch as our fathers, our mothers, our brothers end up in the furnaces?” (67) and it shows Elie’s view on how contradictory God is. Elie wonders why someone so great could allow crematoria to work day and night and allow thousands of children to burn even during Sabbath and Holy Days. Elie is losing faith in God because he has been able to create Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Buna, which kills many. He says, “But now, I no longer pleaded for anything. I was no longer able to lament,” (68) demonstrating Elie’s full move-away from God. Elie’s identity is left insecure and he is now alone. Elie was not “terrible alone in a world without God, without men.” “…I felt like an observer, a stranger,” (68) shows how Elie is going from believing and God and fitting in, to forgetting and retaliating against God and feeling alone. Elie is losing his security in his life and identity when he loses what he believes in the most. This eventually leads to his abstinence from fasting during Yom Kippur, even though