Elie Wiesel Mercy And Grace Analysis

The Holocaust inspired many works of art such as the memoir Night and the poem “Mercy and Grace,” which both show how faith and religion declined with the Jewish people, with the more suffering, and torture they endured. For example, in the memoir Night, by Elie Wiesel, a Jewish citizen of Sighet, and a Holocaust survivor, is watching the world slowly drip into chaos. Often times in his society, people are being dragged to concentration camps, and their families are separated. Then, as Wiesel arrives at the camp, where he is intoxicated by the smell of death surrounding the atmosphere, he starts to lose hope in life, and in God. While Wiesel lives in the camps, his faith is slowly being tested until he runs out of hope. Also, the purpose …show more content…
Many of his poems reflect his own thoughts and actions. However, the poem that links Wiesel's suffering and Olere’s, is called “Mercy and Grace.” In this poem, the Jewish people start to question the methods of their god, and why they are being tortured by him. This is explicitly shown through Olere’s style of rhetorical questions to get his point across by sparking thought. Clearly, the purpose of the poem is to express the severity of torment the Jewish people suffered by showing how they lost their trust in god. Olere wrote about this aspect because when a person loses faith, it is not for a trivial reason, a person may lose faith because of a death, or extreme trauma, which many of the Jewish people went through during the Holocaust. Overall, Olere’s poem “Mercy and Grace.” and Wiesel's Night, both highlight how the loss of faith is a recurring problem within the times of the …show more content…
For example, “Mercy and Grace” describes people in the camps as being reluctant and “Stiff necked, we still love you our lord...more than you deserve.” This shows that some people at the concentration camps still believe god is good, even if they are reluctant to think that way, due to the pain and suffering all of them have tolerated. Wiesel's experiences also correlate to the poem because he feels betrayed by God, but “against [his] will, [he] found myself whispering the words, ‘may his name be exalted and sanctified’” (Wiesel 34) This shows that Wiesel still believes that he can trust god, and as the poem stated the people are stiff-necked, Wiesel is too, because it was “against his will”. Weasel also explicitly states that, “I was not denying the existence, but I doubted his absolute justice.” (Wiesel 45) Here, Wiesel explains that he still believes in God, but he doubts his powers. Combining the two quotes, and the poem stanza together, it can be seen that they are very similar, for example, Wiesel is saying that his feelings about God are positive, as he still wants to pray to him, showing he still loves him, and believes that God will take care of him, but states that it is difficult for him to do this because of all the trauma he, and the other Jewish people have went