Loss Of Innocence In Night By Elie Wiesel

The Bible states, “The Lord also will be a stronghold for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble; And those who know your name will put their trust in you, for you, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek you.…” [Psalm 9:9-10] Many believe one should turn to God in times of turmoil, but what should one do when death is everywhere and God does not anwser? This is the case in Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night. In this memoir Wiesel informs the reader of Eliezer’s, the protagonist, life in concentration camps during the Holocaust. Throughout the memoir, Eliezer’s suffering and inhumane treatment affect his faith and innocence, but these experiences do not transform him into a bestial creature.

The greatest change to Eliezer’s identity is his

Elizer always looked after his father’s safety and well being but shortly before his father dies, he begins to care less and less about himself and his father: “I had no more tears. And in the depths of my being, in the recesses of my weakened conscience, could I have searched it, I might perhaps have found something like—free at last!” (106) Eliezer states that their first act as freed men is not to think of revenge, they only think about food. This quote shows that, though Elie has lost his identity so much to the point where he could become a wild animal, he still manages to keep the human instinct of survival. He some way or another pushed past the Nazi brutality to survive hunger, torment, and distress. Even as his emotions shut down to the point where he could not cry for his dead father, he was shutting down so he could survive. At the end of the memoir, Eliezer states that when he looks in a mirror for the first time since being imprisoned, he could no longer recognize the person he was looking at. These finishing lines present the idea that the experience has, in a sense, “killed”