Trauma In Elie Wiesel's Night

Effects of Trauma in Night How can extreme suffering change a person? Going through a German concentration camp causes many people to have life changing differences in their lives. Elie Wiesel tells his personal experience of going through a concentration camp in his book Night. He shares the horrific events that he, his father, and others had to experience. After going through so much, many people do not have the same mindset as they did before. Being tortured and watching others being tortured changes a person’s life, especially Elie’s, his father’s, Moshe the Beadle’s, and Rabbi Eliahou’s. Elie Wiesel, the author of Night, shares his own experience of going through a concentration camp, and it is clear that many things in his life changed

He was a well known person in Elie’s community who had almost been captured by the Nazi’s, but luckily escaped. Moshe’s love for God changes and “[he] struggles desperately to believe that God is perpetually at work, even during the massacre of which he was nearly a victim” (Nurick, “Identity” paragraph 1). Moshe was once a man with a strong faith in God, but after seeing many awful things happen such as, people being killed and tortured and babies getting thrown in the air to be used as targets, he struggles to believe in God. He often pondered whether God was real, and if he was, why would he let such awful things happen to innocent people? It didn’t make sense. Moshe had always preached about God, but after witnessing so much, “he ceases to talk of either Cabbala or God… Instead, he speaks almost exclusively of his tragic experiences” (Nurick, “Identity” paragraph 1). Moshe used to talk about God all the time, but now the only thing he could focus on was his traumatizing experience. Going through such extreme trauma can cause people’s attitudes to drastically change. Moshe changed greatly, “[he] was not the same. The joy in his eyes was gone. He no longer sang” (Wiesel 7). Once a happy, cheerful man who would speak the word of God, he is now just a shell of his former self. Moshe used to be empathetic, but now, he’s a skittish, traumatized person who could only focus on what had happened previously. Even Moshe,

Suffering does not always change the morals of a person, “Literature depicting suffering also inspires hope and confidence in the resilience of the human spirit” (Cerullo, paragraph 7). Rabbi was one in Night who kept a strong faith throughout all of his suffering, and while his body was getting weaker, his faith remained strong. His faith was one thing that kept him pushing to survive in the harsh conditions of the concentration camps. Wiesel observed that “strangely, his words never provoked anyone. They did bring peace” (Wiesel 90). Rabbi didn’t make things worse for anybody in life; he could always make people feel comfortable. The only person who he irritated was actually his own son, who was annoyed that his father was getting too weak to carry on. Many Jews realized that “suffering can also lead to a crisis of (or loss of) faith” (Cerullo, paragraph 4), but Rabbi didn’t lose his faith. While some may lose faith, Rabbi’s crisis just made his faith stronger. He could depend on God for anything and it could make him feel better. Having a faith in something can help people through extremely difficult times, and difficult times and sometimes it even makes people stronger. People who go through a lot of suffering often have an extreme change of attitude, including Elie, Shlomo, Rabbi Eliahou, and Moshe the Beadle. Elie Wiesel sharing his story about German concentration