Night Essay
Night EssayDead of Night
�From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me.
The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left
me.� Many may know the raw emotion of hurt and anguish, but how
often does that anguish arise from internal conflict? In the
novel Night by Elie Wiesel, the conflict over Wiesel�s
diminishing faith in God is parallel to his decreasing loyalty
to his father. He is troubled and tormented by feelings of
guilt. His lack of faith and loyalty account for the deadness
in the young man�s eyes as he gazes into a mirror after his
liberation.
In the onset of the novel, Elie�s faith in God is
prominent. As the novel progresses, however, Elie loses faith
little by little. At the age of twelve, he asks his father,
Chlomo, to find him a master to teach him the studies of the
cabbala. His faith in God is very strong for such a young
child, and his faith continues to flourish as time goes on. �I
believed profoundly. During the day I studied the Talmud, and
at night I rant to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of
the Temple�(1). However, once the deportation of the ghettoes
occurs, Elie�s faith begins to grow weaker. On the day of Rosh
Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, thousands of prisoners attend the
services. The air rang with cries of, �Blessed be the Name of
the Eternal!� But in Elie�s mind, he wonders,
Why, but why should I bless Him? Because he had thousands of children burned in His pits? Because He kept six crematories work-
ing night and day, on Sundays and feast days? How could I say to Him: �Blessed art Thou, Eternal, Master of the Universe, Who chose us from among the races to be tortured day and night, to see our fathers, our mothers, our brothers, end in the crematory? Praised by
Thy Holy Name, Thou Who has chosen us to be butchered on Thine altar?�(64).
He saw thousands of men, women, and children dying everywhere he
turned; where was God then? When his father fell ill with
dysentery, where was God when all the old man wanted was a drink
of water, knowing full well it would kill him?
When horrible things happen, and we are pulled away from
our families, who else is there to turn to but God? The
Almighty being intended to protect and serve us no longer bears
a name. He becomes a fleeting memory of something we once knew
well. Elie was deported with nothing but his love for family
and his faith in God. When he sees the terror galloping blindly
about him, his faith is all but gone.
With...
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