Night is a horrible tale of murder and man’s inhumanity to man. Wiesel ( the author ) saw his family, friends and fellow Jews degraded and murdered. Wiesel also states in his book that his God, to whom he was so devoted, to whom he had so much faith, was also “murdered” by the Nazis. In the novel Wiesel changed from a devout Jew to a broken young man who doubted his belief in God.
As a young fourteen year old boy, separated from his only home and family and sent to a concentration camp in Birkenau; which his mother and sister were tortured and killed in the fire pits. Wiesel was then filled with innocence and disbelief, “ The night was gone. The morning tar was shinning in the sky I had become a completely different person. The student of the Talmud the child that was, had been consumed in the flames. There remained only a shape that looked like me. A dark flame had entered into my soul and devoured it,” Wiesel couldn’t believe that this is real. He feels that he might be dreaming. However, as Wiesel faces each day and witnesses the starvation, the beatings and murder of innocent people, and the tortures, his faith in God begins to waiver. By the end of the book Wiesel’s faith and belief in God had disintegrated. If there is a God, how could he allow this to happen, he wonders.
As the days go by, there are frequent selections. A man with a little stick decides who will live and who will die. This man acts like God. To the right you live, to the left, you die. As Wiesel watches the evil that exists, his belief in the existence of God continues to deteriorate. Wiesel asks, “ Where is my God? Where is He?”
The Essay on Jewish People Wiesel God Faith
In Night, by Elie Wiesel, there is an underlying theme of anger. Anger not directed where it seems most appropriate- at the Nazis- but rather a deeper, inbred anger directed towards God. Having once been a role model of everything a good Jew should be, Wiesel slowly transforms into a faithless human being. He cannot comprehend why the God who is supposed to love and care for His people would ...
Living under conditions of extreme privation, freezing winter nights-and days, and only the little ration of bread and soup; Wiesel continues to witness hangings, bearings, starvation, and torture. One day when Wiesel comes back from a day’s work, he sees three gallows being assembled. The whole camp has to witness the hangings. Among the 3 people who would die that day, was a young child. Wiesel watched the boy struggling between life and death. The death was a slow agony. At this point Wiesel lost all faith in the existence of God. “Where is God now? Where is He? Here is – He is hanging here on this gallows…” After this incident Wiesel could no loner believe in God. He felt that no one could believe in God when one saw innocent children die such terrible deaths.
Night tells the story of people who were destroyed because they were Jews, they were innocent victims. These people had done nothing and yet were tortured, degraded and liquidated for no reason other than they were Jews. Wiesel is a witness to all the horrible things including the death of his family, the death of his childhood and the death of his God.
