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Loss Of Faith In Night By Elie Wiesel

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Faith in graciousness is easily maintained in a world of peace, but when peace turns to war, faith can be disoriented. In the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, the central idea of the struggle to maintain faith in a benevolent God is developed by the usage of symbolism throughout the novel. The holocaust caused the loss of faith in God for many victims, Elie struggled with his faith during his time in the camps. The hanging of the Pipel, cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners, and night, are examples of symbolism used to express Elie’s struggle with his faith.
Symbolism is used to show Elie’s loss of faith in a benevolent God, through the hanging of the Pipel. The Pipel was a young innocent child who was the assistant to a Kapo. The Pipel was …show more content…

The cruel and inhuman treatment of the prisoners symbolizes the death and violence of the holocaust. The use of symbolism helps further the central idea of Elie’s struggle to maintain faith in a benevolent God. In the camp Elie meets a man named Akiba Drumer. Akiba Drumer was a very religious rabi who preached to the prisoners. He represents the faith in God at the camp, his reasoning for the horrors they experience is God testing the Jewish people. While he is preaching, Elie thinks about his faith in God. Elie says, “I was not denying his existence, but I doubted his absolute justice” (45). Elie experiences violence and death almost immediately after being sent to the camps, he sees the darkest side of humanity while in the camps. His experiences with cruel and inhuman treatment cause him to question his faith. He does not question his faith in God, but he questions God’s benevolence. Elie’s faith dies more and more as he experiences more violence and death. He doesn’t believe God could let something this horrible happen to a whole race of people, especially in the twentieth century. The cruel and inhuman treatment of the prisoners symbolize the atrocities and horrors of the concentration camps, this example of symbolism makes Elie question his faith in a benevolent

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As for me, I had ceased to pray... I was not denying His existence, but I doubted His absolute justice” (45). It is apparent here that the effect of the Holocaust on the Jewish people’s faith was delayed on some level. Elie refuses to pray to the God that apparently abandoned him. This is personified when he says he doubts that God has absolute justice.

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Elie became independent from God and refused to view him as omnipotent, and therefore, Elie and the other inmates believed that“ [they] were masters of nature, masters of the world” (87). With the daunting experience that Elie had undergone, he felt that the camps had utterly devoured his identity and his soul, but because he suffered blisteringly and managed to abide, even if “ [he] was nothing but ashes now, [he] felt [himself] to be stronger than this Almighty to whom [his] life had been bound for so long” (68). Although Elie was at last, liberated from the concentration camp, the rigorous conditions and brutal treatments from the camps has weakened him physically, mentally, and spiritually. Elie, bereft of his faith and soul, looked into mirror for the first time after his liberation, and “from the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating him” (115). Through tormenting sufferings and witnessing the mortifying decimation in the Holocaust, Elie’s faith is eventually dismantled

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He had a deep spiritual outlook and devoted abundances of time to learning the Torah, as well praying each day at the Synagogue and even sought out a mentorship under Moché the Beadle in studying the kabbalah. Elie's faith is put to the test, however, when he is brought to the concentration camps and forced to endure its brutal conditions. He experiences horrific atrocities and cruelties and finds it difficult to comprehend how God could permit such evil to exist. His once unwavering faith is shaken as he starts to doubt himself and his confidence in God after the death of a young pipel, “‘Where is He? Here He is—He is hanging here on this gallows….”

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The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank Him for?” (33). The design of the camps intentionally tested faith, forcing the Jewish prisoners to confront the dead and dying at all times. By straining this part of Elie’s identity, the process of dehumanization began.

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The dehumanizing conditions and the inhumane treatment of the prisoners were simply unbearable. This leads the reader to believe that Elie is in for a wild ride in this camp and it will impact him heavily.

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In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, there are many hardships that caused the characters to lose faith in their religion. Night is a 1960 memoir based on Weisel's Holocaust experiences with his father in the Nazi German concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald in 1944 -1945 toward the end of the Second World War in Europe. In the novel many prisoners struggle with their faith. “Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my god and my soul and turned my drams to dust.”

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Using the event of the child being hanged to directly relate it to the faith of Jewish prisoners in the time of the Holocaust helps readers understand the emotional and spiritual impact of seeing human suffering on a level like this. Many Jewish prisoners, including Eliezer, have slowly been losing faith in God but this event made them question how someone so powerful as their God could let something like this happen. Using an event as cruel and despicable as this helps readers understand how the Jewish prisoners lost their faith and understanding of God in times as harsh and dark as

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Elie has strong beliefs in god but shortly after seeing the harm done to people he questions god. In this memoir, this theme is depicted in numerous ways including Elie questioning why innocent people who follow god are being harmed,

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The cruelty of the German officers at the concentration camps change Elie’s personality throughout the novel. At the beginning of the novel, Elie is deeply religious and spends most of his time studying Judaism. However, by the end of the novel, Elie believes that God has been unjust to him and all the other Jews, and has lost most of his faith. The cruelty of the German officers also changed the other Jews as well. The events of the Holocaust forces the prisoners to fend for themselves, and not help others.

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