How Does Elie Wiesel Use Religion In Night

Religion, it’s been around ever since the start of humanity. Humans have always looked to worship something of a higher power. In the modern age, people are beginning to question faith and whether there is a god or if the one that they worship is the correct god. Throughout Elie Wiesel’s Night he begins to question if there even is a god. By using the prominent motifs of eyes and night, Elie Wiesel was able to develop the theme of a young man’s struggle to maintain faith. Having first hand experienced the terrors of the Holocaust, they have had their souls scared and separated farther from God. People say that the eyes are the windows to the soul, Wiesel uses people’s eyes to demonstrate how they have been changed after a certain experience.

One such person is Elie’s teacher, Moshe the Beadle, who was rounded up with all the other foreign Jews from Sighet. When Moshe escaped after being left for dead, “the joy in his eyes was gone. He no longer sang. Ho no longer mentioned either God or Kabbalah”(7). Moshe no longer had a strong connection to God after this experience and this same thing happened to Elie. Elie witnessed some intense cruelty in the camps and he began to question his faith. The event that he was forced to spectate that really changed his view on God was the hanging of the young boy. A young boy with an angel's face was accused of sabotaging an electrical plant that gave power to the camp and was sentenced to death. The boy and three other men were hung in front of all the other prisoners. Before he actually died, he “remained for more than half an hour, lingering between life and death, writhing before our eyes”(65). One man asked, where is God and Elie’s only response was that God is “hanging here from this

When Elie’s life was bright, living in Sighet with his family, his relationship with God flourished. That strong relationship lasted even until the end of his bright times. While Elie was studying with Moshe, “he had watched [him] one day as [he] prayed at dusk” when Elie just started crying(4). Elie didn’t know why he was crying, just the fact that something in him was telling him to cry. During this dusk prayer, Elie’s relationship was still strong with god, but as night consumes his life, the relationship will crumble. Elie and his father were alone at Auschwitz for the first night and “that turned [his] life into one long night seven times sealed…. Never shall [he] forget those moments that murdered [his] god and [his] soul”(34). When his life all of a sudden turned dark, he lost his strong connection with God. In Night, Elie Wiesel uses the motif of night to express the bright and dark times in his own