Similarities Between Night And Persepolis

What is faith? The word faith itself is an extremely tricky word to define since no one truly understands exactly what it means. Everyone defines faith differently so no dictionary definition has the ability or capacity to fully describe what faith means. The concept of faith is a recurring theme that arises in Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night, and shares an abundance of parallels with Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel Persepolis. Religion was a key aspect in both of the lives of Elie and Marji when they were growing up. When Elie was a young boy, he prayed to God every single day until his life was completely flipped upside down by the Holocaust. Elie began to believe that all of the tragedies that occurred was directly caused by God. Similar to Elie,

As a boy, Elie wanted to go above and beyond to gain more knowledge about his faith which was introduced to him when he was extremely young: “One day [Elie] asked [his] father to find [him] a master who could guide [him] in [his] studies of Kabbalah” (Wiesel 4). Elie’s desire and hunger to know more about his religion demonstrates how religious Elie was and how strong his faith in God was. Elie believes that he is more than ready to start a new chapter throughout his journey of faith. To Elie, studying his faith and praying is a key aspect of his life: “I wanted to have time to pray before leaving” (Wiesel 18). Here, Elie’s comments demonstrate how vital prayer and religion are in his life, it is almost as if religion is a necessity that Elie cannot live without. If Elie’s religion was taken away from him, it would be as if he was losing a huge part of himself. By using such powerful words in his writing, Elie is portraying his need and want for religion in his life. The fact that Elie even comments on how he always makes time for prayer shows the reader the importance of religion in Elie’s life. God is also an important part of Marji’s life due to her being introduced to the idea of religion at an extremely young age even though she did not have much religious

Elie had witnessed the murders of thousands of people and watched as God stood silently at the side and did nothing to try to help the innocent Jews. Elie exclaims, “Why, but why would I bless Him?... How could I say to Him: Blessed be Thou, Almighty, Master of the Universe, who chose us among all nations to be tortured day and night, to watch as our fathers, our mothers, our brothers end up in furnaces?” (Wiesel 67). Not only is Elie questioning God’s existence, but he is also placing the entire blame on God since He chose to stay silent when innocent people were suffering. It is almost as if Elie believes that God is not only condoning the behavior and inhumane actions of the Nazis, but that He is involved in these actions. In such a great time of despair, Elie tries to make sense of his situation by allowing himself to use God as a scapegoat which causes him to blame God entirely for the actions of the Nazis. Elie uses extremely mocking names against God to again portray how Elie believes God is powerless. Elie states, “I was the accuser, God the accused. My eyes had opened and I was alone, terribly alone in a world without God” (Wiesel 68). Elie is putting the blame on God by accusing Him which ultimately makes Him powerless. Since the power of God is being taken away, Elie sees