How Does Elie Wiesel Lose Faith In Night

“You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is like an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty” (Mahatma Gandhi). Despite struggling to retain his faith in God and humanity, Elie Wiesel ultimately becomes a mere shell of his formerly pious self. Wiesel, a victim of the atrocities the Nazi regime executed during World War II, uses Night to recount his journeys through the trials and tribulations of the labor camps and the concurrent loss of his faith, family, and friends. Although he initially fights to retain his devotion, Elie soon realizes the disparity between his younger self’s belief of the world and the harsh reality. As a young boy, Elie was extremely devout. He did little else but “[study]

After witnessing the burning of the innocent men, women, and children at the crematorium, the new prisoners perform a religious prayer for the dead. Contrary to his prior self who would have jumped at the chance to address God, Elie concedes that “for the first time, [he] felt anger rising within [him]. Why should [he] sanctify His name? What was there to thank Him for?” (33). In their time of despair, as hundreds of helpless people were burned, God did nothing to assist them. As a result, Elie reaches the conclusion that “[he] had become a different person. The student of the Talmud, the child [he] once was, had been consumed by the flames. All that remained was a shape that resembled [him]” (37). As his stay in Auschwitz progressed, so did the deterioration of his faith. He eventually reaches a point where “[he] had ceased to pray… [he] was not denying His existence, but [he] doubted His absolute justice” (45). Although Elie does not completely abandon his religion, the dawning realization that God was doing nothing to help them and that they were the only ones that could save themselves further challenged his diminishing

On Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, the prisoners are unsure as to whether or not they should fast for the Lord, who has done nothing to help them. Elie, now completely devoid of faith, did not fast for “[he] no longer accepted God’s silence. As [he] swallowed [his] ration of soup, [he] turned the act into a symbol of rebellion, of protest against Him” (69). While performing this blatant act of defiance, he finally realizes that God is dead. He not only refuses to honor the sacred holiday but proceeds to go against every fiber of his previously pious self and defies what is expected of him as a religious Jew. At the end of the novel, in the aftermath of the war, Elie finds himself looking at his reflection in a mirror and observes “from the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating [him]” (115). Unable to recognize himself, Elie sees a mere shell of the once bright-eyed child who was naive to the world’s cruelty and wished for nothing more than to pursue his religious