ipl-logo

Theme Of Night By Elie Wiesel

589 Words3 Pages

A theme from Elie Wiesel’s memoir “Night” is losing faith in god. I think that this is a theme that presents itself throughout the book. Elie shares his story of being brave and persevering through the holocaust. Elie bears witness to the horrifying events and showed a clear representation of what a jew would be going through during WWII.
He shows other themes in this novel. He often shows the want for revenge against his tormentors, the S.S. He shows this and other themes throughout the book. With each horrible experience, the harder it was for him to believe in a higher power. There is also the theme of hatred. The jews hate the nazis and the nazis hate the jews. Hitler hated the jews just because they were jews, Elie hated nazis because of their actions.
At the book’s start, Elie shows great devotion to his religion …show more content…

His father was a rabbi and his family was very religious. When asked why he prays,he says “Why did I pray?...why did I live?, Why did I breathe?”. He couldn’t imagine not having faith in his life. Judaism teaches that god is everywhere and if god is good, the world must be good. So, after his holocaust experiences he thinks god has to either be disgusting and evil or not exist at all. Eliezer’s faith in the in the world is broken by the cruel, heartless and barbaric acts that he witnessed during his experience at the camps. He would never think that they would represent the god he has learned about and his values. Why would a divine god be part of such intolerance?. His faith is also shaken by the attitudes and selfishness he sees among the prisoners. If the prisoners acted differently, he would then probably be able to believe that humankind is basically good. To Elie, The Holocaust exposes the worst qualities in everyone. Everybody in the story, besides Elie and his father, show selfishness, wickedness and brutishness, not only the Nazis, but also the

Show More
Related
801 Words | 4 Pages

The holocaust makes physical and mental alterations to Elie’s life, and this tells the reader that the people who did this are effective and impacting, also it shows that Elie’s mind is controlled by what he was experiencing. Way back at the start of the book the readers see an adolescent boy who is studying Kabbalah, but when suddenly German officers come to ship the Jewish citizens out of his town, Elie wants to run away. By

Read More
1331 Words | 6 Pages

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.

Read More
1074 Words | 5 Pages

When Adam and Eve deceived You, You chased them from paradise… But look at these men whom You have betrayed, what do they do? They pray before You! They praise Your name!,” (pg.68) because of all the horrors and mistreatment Elie has endured, like witnessing infants being thrown into the trenches, “... Children thrown into the flames,” (pg.32), and watching his father being slapped, “... he slapped my father with such force that he fell down and then crawled back to his place on all fours,” (pg.39), his faith is distinguished. This contrasts to the beginning of the book where Eliezer says he cannot imagine a world without God, “Why do I pray?

Read More
329 Words | 2 Pages

Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and soul and turned my dreams into dust..."(pg34). Eliezer tried doing everything possible to stay alive and asked God many times to help him. "Why should I sanctify his name? The the Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent, what was there to thank him for?" Eliezer felt very confused because he didn't know why the Germans wanted to kill him.

Read More
257 Words | 2 Pages

During Elie’s time in the concentration camp, he battled with believing and not believing in faith. For example, when Elie starts to see the negative experience that goes on in the camp, he starts to lose faith in God, therefore he begins to question God actions. For instance, he wants to know why God was letting bad things happen to some of the prisoners, or were they supposed to learn from this experience. Another thing is that, when they arrived at the camp Elie “say’s never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp that turned my life into one long night” (Night pg. 34).

Read More
892 Words | 4 Pages

He showed the readers a personal view of the Nazi's treatment to the prisoners. The hell Elie went through in the camps is something that he will never forget. In contrast the dehumanization the jews received was very harsh it was something that changed their lives forever. They lost their possession, family,morality and their identity. Because of the strength Elie had through this horrible experience he has gained a stronger

Read More
932 Words | 4 Pages

“You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is like an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty” (Mahatma Gandhi). Despite struggling to retain his faith in God and humanity, Elie Wiesel ultimately becomes a mere shell of his formerly pious self. Wiesel, a victim of the atrocities the Nazi regime executed during World War II, uses Night to recount his journeys through the trials and tribulations of the labor camps and the concurrent loss of his faith, family, and friends. Although he initially fights to retain his devotion, Elie soon realizes the disparity between his younger self’s belief of the world and the harsh reality.

Read More
760 Words | 4 Pages

and it changed him. In the book, Night, the main theme, is religion and belief which is shown when Elie talks about the his strong religion and belief as a boy, his disconnection from religion, and the inhumane actions the Nazi 's caused. Having such a strong belief in something and then dramatically changing how you think, is a very significant event. During this time, many people questioned where God truly was. Even Elie was questioning where God was.

Read More
548 Words | 3 Pages

A major theme of the last three sections of the novel is the loss of identity. Throughout the book, Elie and the other prisoners lose touch with who they really are, as Jews and as human beings. In the beginning of the novel, Elie is a devout Jew, focused on furthering his studies of the Kabbalah. However, as his time at the concentration camp progresses, he continually loses his faith in God. He doesn’t fast on Rosh Hashanah as a sign of defiance, and he frequently blames God for what is happening to the Jews.

Read More
509 Words | 3 Pages

(p.45) Elie’s thoughts at this time in his life reflect how his feelings towards God were changing. Elie was not completely ignoring Him yet, but he was now holding God partially responsible for what was happening to the Jews. This is when the strategy of breaking down people’s needs comes into play. The way the Nazis were treating Elie was slowly but surely causing him to disregard his religion and blame the Holocaust on God. Instead of just killing the Jews, the Nazis took away everything they cared about, breaking them down so they were just bodies lacking souls, before finally killing them off.

Read More
451 Words | 2 Pages

All through out Elie’s life he followed God. By the time he turned 15 he didn’t realize his life would change forever. When Elie and his family boarded the train they had no idea that their faith in God and each other would be put to the test. By the time they entered Auschwitz everybody was exhausted, hungry and wasn’t sure what to think about themselves. Throughout “Night” by Elie Wiesel, the author himself shows how he struggled throughout his religious beliefs.

Read More
863 Words | 4 Pages

Elie Wiesel is not only a talented author but a survivor of the holocaust who documented his horrific experiences in his memoir “Night”. In the beginning of the book Elie Wiesel was one of the most religious people in his town of Saghet who had a dream of living a monastic life. However, as a result of the harrowing injustices he endured he continuously lost faith in his religion. Within the book the reader is reminded again and again that when extreme adversity is experienced, faith is often lost.

Read More
876 Words | 4 Pages

The road to a relationship with God is not straight, it is ever changing with challenges and curves and ups and downs. This is a main theme in the memoir Night, by Elie Wiesel, where Elie has a struggling relationship with God. He thinks that God has abandoned him and his dad so he does not feel the need to continue his relationship with God. Elie was excited about his faith but the holocaust makes him feel angry and confused with God. Elie 's faith excites him from a young age and he wants to learn more about God.

Read More
1039 Words | 5 Pages

Eliezer has not only lost faith in god but he has begun to feel hatred towards him for letting innocent men and women be slaughtered and burned. Elie now feels strong hatred towards god for not protecting the Jews. Elie’s view of god changed for the worse. He was very religious and close to god in many ways. He slowly began to lose faith and hope in god.

Read More
712 Words | 3 Pages

The cruelty of the German officers at the concentration camps change Elie’s personality throughout the novel. At the beginning of the novel, Elie is deeply religious and spends most of his time studying Judaism. However, by the end of the novel, Elie believes that God has been unjust to him and all the other Jews, and has lost most of his faith. The cruelty of the German officers also changed the other Jews as well. The events of the Holocaust forces the prisoners to fend for themselves, and not help others.

Read More

More about Theme Of Night By Elie Wiesel

Related Topics

Open Document