Night Essay

The Loss of Faith

    In the novel, Night, Elie Wiesel narrates his personal experience as a Jewish child during the holocaust. Many Jews were forced into hard labor and experienced the worst forms of inhumane treatment. Such brutality also induces psychological effects on those unfortunate to receive it. These mutations of their personalities are attributed to the treatment they receive. The prisoners form into primitive people and through the concentration camps lack of faith, abandonment, and false hope are symbols of three key aspects that change the conscience of people. This proves that the effects of the concentration camps have scarred prisoners eternally with abhorrence and have transformed them into brutes.
    Such atrocities and environmental change can trigger ones personality from pleasant to paranoid.In such an instance Elie feels that his character has changed from the brutal events he has seen and heard of. One would be the lack of faith in God. This is because he has experienced hunger and brutality that the prisoners are facing. He questions why God has not resolved this horrible matter “ I did not deny God’s existence, but I doublet His absolute justice” ( Weisel 42). Through Elie’s lack in faith with God he has chosen to rely on himself for survival. This portrays a major turning point in the novel due to Elies self motivation, a characteristic which many prisoners did not act upon in the concentration camps. “ Where is He? Here He is He is hanging here on this gallows” (Elie 56). Elie’s conscience feels that God is there in the concentration camps but is not saving lives, a trait that Jesus is known possess. Through this belief Elie is forced to not only denounce his faith but become angry at God. This shows how a person’s personality and thoughts changed in the concentration camps.
  Not only does Elie change but his father begins to beg for Elie’s comfort and assistance.Throughout the novel Elie is told once by a prisoner that in the...