Night And Persepolis By Elie Wiesel And Marjane Satrapi

Faith can be very important in a person’s life, but it is often very difficult to hold on to during times of crises. It could help a person a great deal, or it could leave a person weak and in pieces once they lose it. Both Elie Wiesel and Marjane Satrapi experienced the loss of faith and the difficult times following. They described their experiences in their respective memoirs Night and Persepolis. Elie wrote about his experience in several concentration camps during the Holocaust, and the trauma that he both witnessed and felt during that time. He experienced leaving everything he ever had behind, losing his father, losing his friends, and being forced to do things his body was not capable of doing because of the little amounts of food and

Marji experiences in full force for the first time when her uncle Anoosh died: “That was the last time I had seen my beloved Anoosh… Shut up You! Get out of my life!!! I never want to see You again!” (Satrapi 70). Marji is obviously very angry in this quote, and she directs that anger at God. She does this by specifically saying “You”. She blames Him for what has happened, and is furious at Him. Another thing she says in the quote is the word ‘never’. The word never is a very powerful word. If a person would never want to see something again, like Marji with God, he/she must really hate that thing. So Marji must really hate God in order to take Him permanently out of her life. A similar reaction comes from Elie after having spent some time at Auschwitz: “But look at these men whom You have betrayed, allowing them to be tortured, slaughtered, gassed, and burned, what do they do? They pray before You! They praise Your name!” (Wiesel 68). Elie too directs his anger at God by saying “You” over and over again. Elie is sick of God’s silence and accuses Him of causing the death of all of the men. He uses four verbs in increasingly painful order describing what he believed God did to all the men around him. Those words are powerful and easily paint a picture showing Elie’s accusations very

In Marji’s case, she no longer has anyone to confide in after she gets rid of God, and she feels completely lost in the world. She also lost her life dream of being the last prophet and had nothing to do. For Elie, after he became angry with God because of His silence, he lost something that was very important in his life for most of his previous life. He too had no one to confide in and no one to keep him together other than his father. In the modern world, a similar thing could occur with many people around the world. Muslims are especially targeted because of the fact that most terrorists are Muslim extremists. These people most likely have thought about abandoning their religion and getting rid of God to escape the harassment, but Elie and Marji understand that doing that will not benefit them at all. This is because they will experience something like Elie and Marji experienced after their loss of faith. They will most likely feel alone and afraid in a world where everyone is against them. Elie and Marji struggle to keep their faith, and eventually lose it causing them much more trouble and hardship than they would have had maintaining their