Night Essay

Night Essay- Character vs. Religion

     During World War Two, many Jews were persecuted by the Nazi’s for their religion. The Jews had to endure torturous works in concentration camps and were forced to be separated from the people they hold the most dear to their hearts. Elie Wiesel writes a Holocaust memoir called Night. In this book, Wiesel faces unbearable torture, heartbreaking losses and many conflicts. Yet, there is on that stands out above all. The central conflict Wiesel faces is the loss in faith in the God he used to be devoted to as he experiences the horrors of a Nazi concentration camp.
In the beginning, Wiesel describes a moment in which he is talking to Moshe the Beadle, another devoted Jewish man who everyone in town pities. Moshe finds Wiesel praying and crying at the same time and asks Wiesel about why he cries when he prays.
Wiesel thinks to himself, “Why did I pray? A strange question. Why did I live? Why did I breathe?” (2) Wiesel is already devoted to praying to this God he has and his thoughts portray that he has never questioned his religion or his existence before; he just simply had faith in the God. As a young child, Wiesel simply accepts everything that he is told and everything that he had grown up with. Never before has he questioned the very things that he thought were the truth, but when these “truths” get questioned, he begins to shed the naivety of his young age. His extreme attachment to his religion begins to fade as he questions everything he’s known to be true, but fades even further as the story moves on and as he sees the suffering of his people.
When Wiesel is deported out of the Ghetto and into the concentration camp, Auschwitz, he sees the torture the Jews are being forced to endure.  As they stood in line, his father shows the regret and sadness that everything has brought him, so he prays. Wiesel expresses his loss in faith: “For the first time, I felt revolt rise up in me. Why should I bless his name? The Eternal, Lord of the Universe, the All-Powerful and Terrible, was silent, what had I to thank Him for?” ( 31). This is the first time Wiesel expresses any hate towards the God he had been so devoted towards. Wiesel sees the crematory and the killing of all the innocent babies, old, crippled, and the inhumanity of the Nazis. He brings himself to blame everything on the God he believed would help and protect his people. Day by day, the more horrors he sees him and his fellow Jews endure, the more he loses his faith in his almighty God.
One day at camp, three people are being hung for having weapons: two adults and one child. The adults died after a few minutes, but the child hung there for half an hour fighting between life and death. Someone asks “Where is God now?” (62) and Wiesel thinks “Where is he? Here he is-- He is hanging here on this gallows...” (62).  Here, the little boy represents God to Wiesel. He is implying that God is dead to him and all faith in him is lost. He finally reveals to himself how much he despises God for all the things that he did not do for  the Jews when they needed him most. When Wiesel experiences New Years in the concentration camp, he shows the contrast between how he accepted and worshipped God when he was younger and the way he feels and hates God now. “Once, I had believed profoundly that upon one solitary deed of mine, one solitary prayer, depended the salvation of the world, This day I had creased to plead. I was no longer capable of lamentation...I was the accuser, God the accused” (65). He believes that he is “alone terribly alone in the world without God and with man” (65). New Years is was once an extremely important date for Wiesel as a child, but now that he has no more faith in his religion, he struggles to feel complete. Although he is constantly fighting his belief in God, he cannot help but face the pain of reminiscing about his past and the way things had been when he was young and innocent. His conflicting feelings about God lead him to question his life and how he feels so empty without someone guiding him and someone to believe in. Wiesel mostly describes his own experiences with religion, but he also observes the loss of faith in God among his fellow Jews in the concentration camps.
When the Red or Russian army is attacking, Wiesel talks to another Jewish man about what my happen to hem. Wiesel still hopes that he will be freed, but this other character begs to differ: “I’ve got more faith in Hitler than anyone else. He’s the only one who’s kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people“ (77). This person represents the thought of all Jews. He says that although Hitler is evil and is prosecuting the Jewish people, he at least keeps the promises he makes makes. God had promised to protect his people and when this does not happen, all the Jewish people seem to have more faith in Hitler’s promises than in God’s promises and expect to die but do not expect to live.
Throughout this book, Wiesel's main conflict is with religion. As a child he had accepted it, but as he matures and is forced to endure suffering, he loses the acceptance he once had for God. He describes not only his own feelings but also his experiences with fellow Jews and their views on God and his abandonment of their people.