Theme essay Night is a first person memoir written by Ellie Wiesel. It follows him throughout his journey in The Holocaust. Wiesel is separated from his mother and sister, making a special bond between him and his father. Wiesel is forced to watch friends get beaten and killed right in front of him. Eventually, he loses his father as well. Throughout these atrocities and tragedies during The Holocaust, one of the things that impacted Wiesel the most was his faith. We see his faith change significantly all through the book as he grows older and experiences loss.
In the first half of the book, Wiesel was very committed to his faith. He prayed everyday everynight, and always thought about god. But, we begin to see Wiesel deeply think about
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After the death of his father, Wiesel feels empty, but at the same time feels a sense of relief. Before he passed, Wiesel’s father was one of his main motives that kept him going strong. After his death though, he starts to realize that he was neglecting himself. He was angry and frustrated with God about his father falling ill, that he forgot about himself. He begins to forgive god. Although still angered, Wiesel slowly starts to find his faith again. Wiesel was eventually freed from the concentration camp. After being freed, he fell ill. Wiesel had not thought about his self image in a while, but “One day when I was able to get up, I decided to look at myself in the mirror on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me.”(115). Not only did he nearly escape death itself, but he escaped the death of his own faith.. Although finding his faith a little bit again, it was only a shadow of what it used to be. It used to fill him with pride, and joy. Wiesel reveals at the end of the story that his faith would never be the same after his experiences. Wiesel writes impactful words about the holocaust and his faith when he says “Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to