Night by Elie Wiesel

Essay by Anonymous UserCollege, UndergraduateA+, October 1996

download word file, 4 pages 3.0 2 reviews

Downloaded 165 times

Madame Shacter was screaming about the fire, the huge flames and the furnace that she could see. Then she was begging the people on the train to believe her but instead they gagged her and tied her up. In a way, Madame Shacter was prophesying about the crematories at the death camps, the huge flames and the furnaces that turn the Jewish nation into ashes.

'I believe profoundly. During the day I studied the Talmud, and at night I run to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the Temple.' (p. 13)

Elie Wiesel was a child of such high religious values, who at the age of just twelve, before even Bar-Mitzvah, wanted to delve into Jewish mysticism. As he states, he was studying Talmud during the day , and praying during the night. You would think that a man like this would never, ever loose faith in his God, let alone a young child.

In his novel it clearly states in many places that the sights he saw caused his belief in God to diminish.

'For the first time I felt a revolt arise 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?' (p. 44)

Although Elie is saying how he should not be blessing God's name because he was silent when the Jewish people needed him most, he still is reluctent to say that no God exists. Afterwards though, he does recite the words of the Kaddish.

'Some talked of God, of his mysterious ways, of the sins of the Jewish people, and of their future development, but I have ceased to pray. How I sympathised with Job! I did not deny God's existence, but I doubted His absolute...