In the book Night by Elie Weisel, Elie has an immense loss of hope in God. At the beginning of the book, Elie spent almost every day studying the Bible, wanting to know more. Later in the memoir, he loses more and more faith in God by the day: “Blessed be God’s name? Why, but why would I bless Him? Every fiber in me rebelled. Because He caused thousands of children to burn in His mass graves?” (67). Elie is starting to doubt the people who still have some hope in God. He believed that if God really cared, he would have helped the Jews already. He assumed that God no longer has any interest in the people in concentration camps and went on to deal with someone or something else. The only person that Elie really had hope it was his own father: “I no longer accepted God’s silence. As I swallowed my ration of soup, I turned that act into a symbol of rebellion, of protest against Him” (69). In this quote, Elie is becoming angry with God. He feels His silence is unacceptable at a time like this. It is Rosh Hashanah and a lot of the concentration camp is having trouble deciding if they should fast or not. They are wondering if they should risk their already crumbling health and bless Him or take the food they get. Elie’s first and final thought is ‘why should I fast when God will not do anything to help us?.’ The majority of the camp decides to fast. Because of that, Elie views taking his soup as a revolt against God. One of the connections I can make to America right now is the fact that some people are losing their faith in God today, too. For whatever reason they have, whether it is because they lost their home, they are having financial issues, they are depressed, etc. they believe that they can’t depend on God anymore. They believe that they have put their faith in God for too long now and can no longer depend on Him to help them in any way.
The way Wiesel writes his memoir is almost like it’s written in prose, he is extremely descriptive with his writing, and his sentences flow, but he keeps the plot fast-paced and moving like the greatest poems are. There was one part I read that almost brought me to tears: the uncertainty of it, the questions it left, and the horrifying thought that it was pure hope that was keeping these people alive when there truly was nothing to hope for. “Take care of your son. He is very weak, very dehydrated. Take care of yourselves, you must avoid selections. Eat! Anything. Anytime. Eat all you can. The weak don’t last very long around here”… And he himself was so thin, so withered, so weak… “The only thing that keeps me alive,” he kept saying, “is to know that Reizel and the little ones are still alive. Were it not for them, I would give up.” One evening, he came to see us, his face radiant. “A transport just arrived from Antwerp. I shall go to see them tomorrow. Surely they will hav...
Naiya-
ReplyDeleteYour blog post helped me understand Elie Wiesel's loss of faith better and you did a very good job writing it. The way you compared it to people today helped put it in better perspective than it already was. Do you think Elie Wiesel regretted being so faithful before the Holocaust? Do you think he was angry at the people who were still faithful?
Naiya,
ReplyDeleteYour blog post is well written and gives me a good understanding of your theme. I think the first quote was a good example of how whatever book Elie was using the pray out of, told Elie to be blessed by Gods name. Elie found this so ridiculous because all the bad things that were happening he believed that this was gods fault. Great work on your blog!