Luke Boesveld
Shaped by Experiences:
Character Change of Eliezer in Night
HIS 105 B
Professor H. Vreugdenhil
Friday, November 14, 2014
Mankind, although credited with all the good to be found in the world, always falls back to the inevitable characteristic of human nature that is evil. Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the holocaust, shares his experiences of the brutality of man during World War II as he and his Jewish family get taken by German soldiers and sent to the concentration camps. The novel Night gives us a personal testimony as to what actually happened to the Jews by following the life of the narrator Eliezer, in place of Elie himself. The brutality that the Jewish people were faced against caused many good people …show more content…
At the beginning of the book, his dad asks, “Why do you pray?” and Eliezer thinks to himself, “Why did I pray? Strange question. Why did I live? Why did I breathe?”2 His faith is so strong that he puts praying to his God in the same category as living and breathing, therefore implying each are essential for his survival. Although he attempted to remain faithful near the beginning of the war, his attempts diminish quickly as he sees an increased amount of violence and inhumane murdering, and he eventually cannot believe there is a God. When he and his family arrive at the Auschwitz concentration camp, he begins to understand what is going on and thinks to himself, “For the first time, I felt anger rising within me. Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank Him for?”3 We can clearly see that Eliezer is upset with God because of what is happening to them, yet he does not realize what is to come. Similarly, we see an example of Eliezer’s discontent with God later on when a young boy is publicly hung. Eliezer thinks to himself, "Why, but why should I bless Him? In every fibre, I rebelled. Because He had had thousands of children burned in his pits? Because He kept six crematories working …show more content…
Elie Wiesel vowed not to speak of his experiences for ten years after the war ended, therefore, he wrote his story after ten years had passed. Although the novel is written by Elie himself, it has been translated and shortened, and therefore changed, to appeal to a wider audience, but is nonetheless based on the real experiences in which Elie went through. Though we may look upon Elie’s changes being dramatic, we can never know what it feels like to see the things he saw, and go through the things he had to. The novel gives us some understanding, but to live it is a completely different story, and once we understand that, we also have better insight to the changes that occurred to Eliezer. Elie’s account of the holocaust is about as close as we can get to gaining understanding, but even yet, we will never fully grasp the feelings one would have felt. And if one of us did? I am sure we would have gone though a change at least as dramatic as
Shaped by Experiences:
Character Change of Eliezer in Night
HIS 105 B
Professor H. Vreugdenhil
Friday, November 14, 2014
Mankind, although credited with all the good to be found in the world, always falls back to the inevitable characteristic of human nature that is evil. Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the holocaust, shares his experiences of the brutality of man during World War II as he and his Jewish family get taken by German soldiers and sent to the concentration camps. The novel Night gives us a personal testimony as to what actually happened to the Jews by following the life of the narrator Eliezer, in place of Elie himself. The brutality that the Jewish people were faced against caused many good people …show more content…
At the beginning of the book, his dad asks, “Why do you pray?” and Eliezer thinks to himself, “Why did I pray? Strange question. Why did I live? Why did I breathe?”2 His faith is so strong that he puts praying to his God in the same category as living and breathing, therefore implying each are essential for his survival. Although he attempted to remain faithful near the beginning of the war, his attempts diminish quickly as he sees an increased amount of violence and inhumane murdering, and he eventually cannot believe there is a God. When he and his family arrive at the Auschwitz concentration camp, he begins to understand what is going on and thinks to himself, “For the first time, I felt anger rising within me. Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank Him for?”3 We can clearly see that Eliezer is upset with God because of what is happening to them, yet he does not realize what is to come. Similarly, we see an example of Eliezer’s discontent with God later on when a young boy is publicly hung. Eliezer thinks to himself, "Why, but why should I bless Him? In every fibre, I rebelled. Because He had had thousands of children burned in his pits? Because He kept six crematories working …show more content…
Elie Wiesel vowed not to speak of his experiences for ten years after the war ended, therefore, he wrote his story after ten years had passed. Although the novel is written by Elie himself, it has been translated and shortened, and therefore changed, to appeal to a wider audience, but is nonetheless based on the real experiences in which Elie went through. Though we may look upon Elie’s changes being dramatic, we can never know what it feels like to see the things he saw, and go through the things he had to. The novel gives us some understanding, but to live it is a completely different story, and once we understand that, we also have better insight to the changes that occurred to Eliezer. Elie’s account of the holocaust is about as close as we can get to gaining understanding, but even yet, we will never fully grasp the feelings one would have felt. And if one of us did? I am sure we would have gone though a change at least as dramatic as