When Did Elie Wiesel Believe God Again in the Book Night
One of the main themes of Nighttime is Eliezer's loss of religious organized religion. Throughout the book, Eliezer witnesses and experiences things that he cannot reconcile with the idea of a merely and all-knowing God.
At the beginning of the narrative, Eliezer declares, "I believed profoundly." He is twelve years old and his life is centered around Judaism—studying the Talmud during the day, praying at the synagogue at night until he weeps with religious feeling. He wants to study the cabbala (Jewish mysticism), but his begetter says he's too young. Despite this, Eliezer finds a teacher in town, a poor human named Moché the Beadle, and the two of them pore over cabbalistic questions. Eliezer'south religion in God is shared by many of his fellow Jews in the town of Sighet. On the trains to the concentration camps, people discuss the adjournment from their homes as trial sent from God to exist endured—a examination of faith.
But Eliezer'south belief in God begins to falter at the concentration camps of Birkenau-Aushwitz. Here the furnaces are busy night and day burning people. Hither he watches German soldiers throw truckloads of babies and small-scale children into the flames. The longer he stays in the concentration camps, the more he sees and experiences cruelty and suffering. People treat others worse than they would livestock. He can no longer believe that a God who would let such nightmare places to exist could exist just. The fact that many Jews do continue to pray, to recite the Talmud, and to look for comfort in their faith while in the concentration camp amazes and confounds Eliezer. That people would still pray to a God who allows their families to be gassed and incinerated suggests to Eliezer that people are stronger and more forgiving than the God they pray to. Later, every bit more people die, and others effectually him lose hope, starve, and succumb, Eliezer ceases to believe that God could exist at all. He is not solitary in his disillusionment. Akiba Drumer (whose faith helps Eliezer suffer for a while) likewise as a rabbi whom Eliezer talks to, likewise eventually come up to believe that God'southward beingness is impossible in a globe that contains such a large-scale, willful horror as the Holocaust. The final boom in the coffin, for Eliezer'southward religion, comes at Buna, where the prisoners are gathered to watch the hanging of a young boy. A man in the crowd asks, "Where is God now?" Eliezer's internal response is that God is that boy on the gallows. The boy dies slowly as the prisoners are forced to watch.
Having and Losing Religion in God ThemeTracker
The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Having and Losing Faith in God appears in each chapter of Dark. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Having and Losing Religion in God Quotes in Nighttime
Beneath you lot will notice the of import quotes in Nighttime related to the theme of Having and Losing Faith in God.
I was twelve. I believed profoundly. During the mean solar day I studied the Talmud, and at night I ran to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the Temple.
Related Characters: Eliezer (speaker)
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"I have been saved miraculously. I managed to get dorsum here. Where did I get the strength from? I wanted to come back to Sighet to tell you the story of my death. So what you could prepare yourselves while there was even so fourth dimension… I wanted to come dorsum, and to warn you. And see how it is, no one will listen to me…"
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Night. No one prayed, so that the nighttime would pass quickly. The stars were only sparks of the fire which devoured us. Should that fire die out ane day, at that place would be aught left in the sky but dead stars, dead eyes.
Related Characters: Eliezer (speaker)
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Humanity? Humanity is not concerned with us. Today annihilation is allowed. Anything is possible, fifty-fifty these crematories.
Related Symbols: Fire
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Never shall I forget that dark, the commencement night in campsite, which has turned my life into i long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the fiddling faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever.
Related Characters: Eliezer (speaker)
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Some talked of God, of his mysterious ways, of the sins of the Jewish people, and of their future deliverance. But I had ceased to pray. How I sympathized with Job! I did not deny God's existence, but I doubted his absolute justice.
Related Characters: Eliezer (speaker)
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Behind me, I heard the same man asking:
"Where is God now?"
And I heard a voice within me answer him:
"Where is He? Here He is—He is hanging hither on this gallows. . . . "
Related Characters: Eliezer (speaker)
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"Yep, man is very stiff, greater than God. When You were deceived by Adam and Eve, Y'all drove them out of Paradise. When Noah'due south generation displeased You, You brought down the Alluvion… But these men here, whom Y'all have betrayed, whom You lot have immune to be tortured, slaughtered, gassed, burned, what exercise they do? They pray before You! They praise your name!"
Related Characters: Eliezer (speaker)
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That day I had ceased to plead. I was no longer capable of lamentation. On the contrary, I felt very stiff. I was the accuser, God the defendant. My eyes were open and I was alone, terribly alone in a world without God and without man. Without love or mercy. I had ceased to be anything but ashes, withal I felt myself to be stronger than the Almighty, to whom my life had been tied for so long. I stood amid that praying congregation, observing it like a stranger.
Related Characters: Eliezer (speaker)
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"I've got more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He'southward the but 1 who'due south kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people. "
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Hundreds of cries rose upward simultaneously. Not knowing against whom we cried. Not knowing why. The death rattle of a whole convoy who felt the terminate upon them. Nosotros were all going to die here. All limits had been passed. No one had whatever strength left. And again the night would be long.
Related Characters: Eliezer (speaker)
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Source: https://www.litcharts.com/lit/night/themes/having-and-losing-faith-in-god
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