Loss Of Faith In Night By Elie Wiesel

Elie has many internal conflicts, the largest is with God. At the beginning of Night, Elie is seriously studying the Talmud, putting specific focus on the mysticism of the Jewish faith. Elie's father is not only a devout Jew, he is a person to whom people come for advice. Elie's faith is not only a comfort to him, it connects him with not only his father, but the people of his community. He takes tremendous pride in his studies because that is how he was raised and it is all he knows, which is why the horror of seeing his fellow Jews being systematically exterminated by the Nazis makes him question the very existence of God. He cannot understand why God would let such atrocities happen to the Bible's chosen people. Which is why he constantly

It is the idea of both the world and God’s silence that he finds most troubling. Eliezer and his companions are left to wonder how an all-knowing, all-powerful God can allow such horror and cruelty to occur, especially to such devout worshipers. The existence of this horror, and the lack of a divine response, forever shakes Eliezer’s faith in God. Not only does he lose faith in God but it is the silence of the world that screams it’s indifference in the ears of the Jews, it is their silence that is the most deafening. Eliezer claims that his faith is utterly destroyed, yet at the same time says that he will never forget these things even if he “lives as long as God Himself.” After completely denying the existence of God, he refers to God’s existence in the final line. As mentioned before, Wiesel wrote elsewhere, “My anger rises up within faith and not outside it.” Eliezer reflects this position, which is particularly visible throughout this passage. Despite saying he has lost all faith, it is clear that Eliezer is actually struggling with his faith and his God. Just as he is never able to forget the horror of “that night,” he is never able to reject completely his heritage and his religion. While another motif that influenced his change of faith was the inhumanity towards others that he witnessed at

I think that another tonal element present is one of anger and indignation that what happened was allowed to happen. This is brought out by images of the "little faces of the children" that were incinerated and killed. In the idea of how the "flames" seen "consumed my faith for ever," there is both a mourning and bitterness, also confirmed by the idea of how the speaker will "never forget these things/ even if I am condemned to live" for all of eternity. The closing of "Never" also helps to bring out a resonating quality that is both mournful and angered at what was experienced and the lack of autonomy on the part of human beings to stop such atrocity. It is for this reason that the poem brings out many different elements of resonance, which is representative of how complex the issue of the Holocaust really is in the memory of both the survivor and the intellectual consciousness that studies and analyzes it. These varying degrees of tone resonate in the minds of the readers but also add a certain level of depth to the memoir that could only be created by Wiesel. His choice of vocabulary and the anaphoric quality of this passage show the