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Examples Of Theodicy In Night By Elie Wiesel

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The much debated issue of Theodicy has perplexed Christians for many centuries and nowhere does it become more prevalent than when looking at the events of the Holocaust. In this period of mass horror, many Jewish people began to question how a loving and mighty God could allow these atrocious events to play out. Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the Holocaust, wrote about his personal experience along with his testimony to how he questioned God’s presence in all of the evil he witnessed firsthand. One of the first times Elie Wiesel begins to question God is after he and his father arrive at the Birkenau concentration camp. As they are being marched in a line they look around to see men throwing babies into a pit of fire, burning them alive. This …show more content…

However before it grows into anything substantial the SS guards discover the intentions and make an example of the leaders by hanging them in the main part of the camp for all the prisoners to see. Along with the leaders, one of the pipels, a child, also was killed alongside his master. Death of the boy struck home with many of the Jews. It was a more appalling stage of evil that made justifying a loving God that much more difficult. At one moment Elie Wiesel chooses an alternative to dealing with theodicy. After seeing the child hang, he hears an inmate cry out, wondering where God is in the mist of this. In Elie’s head he thinks, “…Where He is? This is where—hanging here from this gallows…” (page 65). This morbid thought began to bring about the reality of an approaching atheism in Elie Wiesel’s life. Not that Wiesel in the end completely accepts it but in an effort to find an alternative to theodicy, he dances around the idea that his God is dead. Another selection comes further along into Elie’s story and it continues to take a toll on all on the Jews. Many lose the majority of their faith. Instead of dealing with the immense problem of evil, which they can no longer disregard or ignore, they turn to a different alternative, athesism, which is to deny their faith all together. Like Elie, most of these

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1. After the hanging of a child, Elie hears someone say, “‘For God’s sake, where is God?’ And from within me, I heard a voice answer: ‘Where He is? This is where—hanging here from this gallows…’ That night, the soup tasted of corpses” (Wiesel 65). Though optimistic at first, Elie Wiesel, along with many others at the concentration camps, began to lose faith in God.

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Throughout Night, by Elie Wiesel, the narrator, Wiesel, was subjected to changes within his ideals and religious beliefs. When Wiesel was first introduced to the book, he was a devout Jewish boy who loved his father and had his total faith in God. Over time, Wiesel began to change as a result of being beaten down almost every day and witnessing his fellow Jews being worked to death or simply killed for not being fit enough. "I watched it all happening without moving. I kept silent.

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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.

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This was where everything began to change for Elie, especially his spirituality. For example, he writes about the scenes of one particular hanging, “‘For God’s sake, where is God? ‘ And from within me, I hear a voice answer: “Where he is? This is where—hanging here from this gallows,’” (page 65).

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Elie Wiesel successfully created a clever plot consisting of dialogue, introspection and dynamic characters to make his story realistic and compelling. Elie WIesel changed the protagonist Eliezer, an observant Jewish youngster, that strived to delve deeper into the mythical traditions of his religion, changed to a person that questions God’s greatness, a disloyal son and a person that only seeks personal gain. The protagonist, Eliezer, proves to be a very dynamic character. One of the most noticeable change in Eliezer is that his perspective and beliefs of God has changed dramatically.

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Earlier, a man had asked that question while a young boy was hanged alongside the adults, murdered at the hands of the Nazis. “Behind me, I heard the same man asking: ‘Where is God now?’” (Wiesel, 72). At this moment, Elie and many others began to question their faith.

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