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Symbolism In Night By Elie Wiesel

2092 Words9 Pages

The symbol I chose was God for Eli because he does talk about God quite often during his days in the holocaust from the book Night.
This picture I choose is a pile of dead bodies to represent death for the symbol God. The reason I choose this picture because Eli had witnessed a lot of cruel things at a young age. He had worshipped God so much and had trust and love for him. That all was shattered from the holocaust. It’s because God wasn’t with him and the others letting the Nazi’s do whatever they want to them. His encounter of deaths: “They brought a crate. “Lie down on it! On your belly!" I obeyed. I no longer felt anything except the lashes of the whip. "One! Two!… "He was counting. He took his time between lashes. Only the first really …show more content…

The reason why I choose faith was because at the beginning of the novel night Eli had so much faith in God because he always prays. "Why do you pray?" he asked after a moment. Why did I pray? Strange question. Why did I live? Why did I breathe? "I don't know," I told him, even more troubled and ill at ease. "I don't know."(Elizer,4) People pray because we believe that God is real and God is very powerful. It’s our mindset to pray. That’s why Eli doesn’t really know why he prays, but he does it anyways. He doesn’t want to live without faith that God gave him, but that faith was shattered when the holocaust happened to him. Eli seems like he was struggling his faith with God. He thought God himself had made him and the others suffer this evil, the cruel place called the concentration camps and how he has to fight for his life to survive. He struggles, asking god the nature what he is doing and why he had come to save them from hell. Which comes to this quotation "I pray to the God within me for the strength to ask Him the real questions." (Elizer,5) His experiences had made him ask horrible and cruel questions to God if the powerful God is actually there with him or does God truly exists. Eli’s dad has said this “I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people." (Elizer,81) This is an indirect quote towards God. Eli father has lost fate in God and that he trusts more from …show more content…

“NEVER SHALL I FORGET that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky. Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes. Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.” (Elizer,34) Eli is struggling to wonder what is God doing and why does God not helping him and the others or answering all of their prayers. All they have is just silence. Eli has to witness people being tortured, dying and being injured. He wants to know where this powerful God at and why he is watching all this events happening. Silence also ties into faith because Eli is witnessing hell and his lack of response of the one person he look up to. He is questioning himself and having cruel thoughts towards God. “For the first time, I felt anger rising within me. Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank Him for?” (Elizer,33). He is only describing what God truly meant for him by Gods lack of

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The travesty of Genocide has tragically claimed both his innocence and childhood prematurely. When the young child is hung for all the Jews to see he no longer tries to conjure or repeal god, Elie simply thinks to himself, “He [God] is hanging here in the gallows” (Wiesel 65).Elie

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(4). The answer Eliezer gives shows how his faith in God is not something he has to think about, doing just like living and breathing which he compared it to. During his time in the concentration camp however, his faith becomes tested. He is treated brutally and struggles each day to live to see the next. The time he spent in the concentration camp made it hard for him to maintain his faith.

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Elie had struggled with his relationship with God frequently throughout the book. In the beginning he practiced Kabbalah but in chapter 5 he doesn’t even want to acknowledge God’s presence. He had a complex relationship with God and he wavered in his beliefs. His relationship with God is important because we see how hardships can change someone's belief and how easy it was for him to put the blame on God. During chapter 5 it was the end of the Jewish year and the prisoners got together and prayed.

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Eliezer Wiesel, the author of Night, wrote the book with the goal of teaching his audience to never lose faith. As a Holocaust survivor, Eliezer faced obstacles that most of us will never have to face. These hardships however, did cause him to finally lose his faith in God. Throughout the book, Eliezer questions his faith. Because of the severe trial and adversity, Eli Weisel questions his faith in God, even though he was a faithful man before the Holocaust.

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When everyone in camp was crying and asking where God was as they all watched the boy struggle to cling on to life, Elie had thought to himself that God was there “hanging…from [the] gallows”, symbolizing his loss of faith in God. From then on, as Rosh Hashanah passed, Elie felt intense hatred for God as He did nothing to help the thousands of people suffering and being murdered. Elie refused to sanctify God’s name because of the immense pain He was causing, and felt angry that others in the camp continued to worship Him. Elie felt “terribly alone in a world without God, without man” and “without love or mercy”. As everyone prayed, Elie felt like “an observer [and] a stranger” because he had disconnected from God, and as he defiantly continued to eat instead of fasting for Yom Kippur, Elie “felt a great void opening” inside him as his last bit of trust in God faded.

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Others remain faithful and retain the hope that He is on their side, explaining these happenstances as an example of God’s mysterious ways. While this may as well be the case, Elie stops praying, believing that he has been abandoned. He finds no hope of redemption in the Talmud like

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Belief and Faith is a “double-edged sword” to the jews, it cuts both ways. It keeps them alive, and at the same time makes them oblivious, and leads to their suffering. Over time, Elie’s belief in god, diminishes and eventually he questions God’s existence extensively and at point, Elie is infuriated that even though they are being tormented and enslaved, the Jews will still pray to god, and thank him, “If god did exist, why would he let u go through all the pain and suffering (33). This is a major point in the ongoing theme of faith and belief, because for once he is infuriated with the thought of religion in a time of suffering. Throughout the book, with the nazis ultimate goal is to break the jews and make dehumanize them and if anything, their goal is take and diminish their belief.

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Eliezer Wiesel loses his confidence in god, family and humankind through the encounters he has from the Nazi death camp. Eliezer loses confidence in god. He battles physically and rationally forever and no more accepts there is a divine being. "Never should I overlook those minutes which killed my god and my spirit and turned my fantasies to dust..."(pg 32). Elie endeavored to spare himself and asks god commonly to bail him and take him out of his hopelessness.

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At the start of the book Eli is praying, but he is crying. His friend asks him why he’s crying. “Why do you cry when you pray? He doesn’t have an answer. Eli says, “ I don’t know, I had never asked myself that question.

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Elie's faith is tested many times in night. It is a struggle throughout the entire book and eventually it is lost and once it is lost you can never get it back. The first-time Elie's faith is tested is when he watches the baby's get burned alive in the dark of night when they first enter Birkenau. It is tested that same night as well when he thinks he is going to be burned alive but he still blesses god right before he thinks he's going to die. The next time his faith is when Elie’s faith was tested was on new year’s.

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Earlier, a man had asked that question while a young boy was hanged alongside the adults, murdered at the hands of the Nazis. “Behind me, I heard the same man asking: ‘Where is God now?’” (Wiesel, 72). At this moment, Elie and many others began to question their faith.

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