- When the young boy is hanged, a prisoner asks, “For God's sake, where is God?” Eliezer hears a voice answer, “Where He is? This is where–-hanging here on this gallows.…” What does this statement mean? Is it a statement of despair? Anger? Or hope?
- On Rosh Hashanah, Eliezer says, “My eyes had opened and I was alone, terribly alone in a world without God, without man. Without love or mercy. I was nothing but ashes now.…” Eliezer is describing himself at a religious service attended by ten thousand men, including his own father. What do you think he means when he says that he is alone? In what sense is he alone?
- Why does Eliezer direct his anger toward God rather than the Germans? What does his anger suggest about the depths of his faith?
- At the beginning of Night, Eliezer describes himself as someone who believes “profoundly.” How have his experiences at Auschwitz affected that faith?
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Consider how Eliezer struggles with his faith.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I think when Eliezer says that his eyes were "opened to a world without God" and that he was "terribly alone" and "nothing more than ashes", it is due to the severance of his connection with anything humane or divine. His connection with God gave him life and let him feel like he was never alone, and when his love of God died, he was left alone in a way that was part of his very being. That loss of love of the divine, I think, took away the love he had for himself and his life. Then he was just a body, he had only his father to live for, and that seemed like less and less of a valid reason as his love of life faded. When he said that he was "nothing but ashes now...", I think it was because the only thing he fought for was survival, he was nothing more than a body, transient and ephemeral, destined to end at any time. There is a power of joy and vitality, I think, that one experiences with a connection with God, and Eliezer's vitality, joy, and will to try in life ended when he lost faith in God.
ReplyDelete-Eva
Eliezer’s loss of faith does not seem to be losing belief in the existence of God, but rather losing belief in God’s immediate presence and ability to help. There are moments where Eliezer acknowledges God in some way, being angry toward God or believing that man has overpowered God, but Eliezer does not deny the existence of God. I agree with Eva, that the change in Eliezer’s relationship with God caused Eliezer to feel alone and to live only for survival, but I disagree that it is the severance of a connection to God that caused it. Eliezer is most hurt not by a lack of connection to God, but by what he perceives as God’s inability to stop the Nazi’s and the harsh treatment. Eliezer sees that humankind can bring great harm to humankind, and that God does nothing. Eliezer is made to suffer at the hands of fellow humans, despite the connection to God he had when the internment was beginning. Eliezer realizes that neither God nor man will protect him, that in times of such crisis, he must fight for his own survival. In his fight for survival, Eliezer is reduced to a primal being, not caring for God or fellow man, only for self. When his father dies, Eliezer says that had he searched his conscience, he “might perhaps have found something like—free at last!” (106) Eliezer realizes that with his father’s death comes an easier struggle. He is free from the need to support and care for another, and is free to simply try to survive.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Andy. I feel that God's presence in Eliezer's life is deteriorating little by little. His connection with God is slacking because God has done nothing to show that he is helping the Jews pull through the horror that the Nazi's are putting them through. Like Andy said, "Eliezer realizes that neither God nor man will protect him...he must fight for his own survial." When Andy said this, it reminded me of a part of the book when Eliezer and his father witness a young boy beating his father in order to get his father's slice of bread. "'I'm your father...you're hurting me...you're killing your father!'...He collapsed...His son searched him, took the bread and began to devour it" (96). I was astonished to see that the boy did not care that he had killed his own father over a piece of bread, truly showing how their situation became survival of the fittest. This scenario also proves true what Eliezer thought on pages 64-65, “’Yes, man is very strong, greater than God’….I felt very strong. I was the accuser, God the accused.” Eliezer lost hope and lost faith in God long before the situation with the young boy and his father. He began to understand that God was not powerful enough to overwhelm the strength of the Nazi’s.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you all about how Elie’s relationship with his father slowly deteriorates throughout the book. However, I think that they really need and rely on each other for the majority of the war. Truly, they were together every minute possible in the camps and on their marches. During a time where they were so vulnerable, Eliezel and his father needed each other for hope. I believe that in many ways they lived merely for each other and that kept them strong. Eliezel is constantly worried about losing his father as a result of exhaustion or starvation that is distracts him. Around him people are dying left and right, but he is focused not only on himself but his father too. It is not until when Rabbi Eliahou comes looking for his son that Eliezel realizes his own situation. “A terrible thought loomed up in my mind: he had wanted to get rid of this father!...My God, Lord of the Universe, give me strength never to do what Rabbi Eliahou’s son has done” (87). Ever since that point, Elie kept seeing himself more and more alike the Rabbi’s son. When the time came for his own father to pass, he had to reevaluate his survival. Surely his father would die no matter how much soup and water was smuggled to him, so Elie should keep it for himself. In the big picture, Elie’s father had died way before his death; he had died when everything he ever loved and relied on was taken away from him.
ReplyDelete-Hannah
I don’t see how anyone can be expected to maintain faith in an almighty creator of life when everyone around is being slaughtered. Eliezer grew up very religious. He was good in all ways that his religion mandated, but still he loses all of him family at the hands of man. How can he be expected to believe that God is real if he has done all he can and only been rewarded with loss? We see this in the book around the time of the Jewish New Year when Eliezer cannot allow himself to partake in the celebrations. I completely empathize with him. There is no reason in his life at this point to thank God for the past year. The only thing he has to be thankful for is his life, and his life has been filled only with suffering. Even the rabbis around him are unable to retain strong faith in the concentration camps, and I think that is completely normal. Some people may be able to use their faith as a tool to get them through hard times; however, the extreme circumstances experienced by the people in the Holocaust certainly warrant a loss in faith with no questions asked.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Pat that it is hard to expect someone to maintain their faith in God when there are mass killings that are happening everywhere around you and death is right around the corner. At the beginning of Night Eleizer tells his father that he wants to go into advanced studies of cabbala. Eleizer is so determined to immerse himself in the Jewish religion that when he prays he cries. As for why Eleizer directed his anger at the events that were occurring towards God and not the Germans, it may have been simply that he though God would protect him. Eleizer had been praying and devoting his young life to God for as long as he could remember. He argued with his dad over learning religious material that his father had deemed him “too young for.” Eleizer obviously had such passion and devotion for the Jewish religion that he truly believed that if a God did exist he would not have been subjected to concentration camps with his family. Also, the fear that the Germans instilled in him most likely allowed him to take his anger out on something that he knew he could which was his own faith. His extreme anger suggested that he may have thought that he wasted his childhood devoting his mind and energy to something that could not help him when he needed it the most.
ReplyDeleteSandhya
I totally agree with Andy and Rachel. In the beginning it shows how eager he is to learn about his religion, to the point where his father basically tells him he's just too young. He builds a really strong faith, but as he goes through everything in the camp, and watching the weaker Jews be taken to be killed, it seems like he begins losing faith, not understanding why God isn't helping him or the Jews. And as Sandhya said, he believed so much that if a God DID exist, there would be no suffering. However, although there were people like Elie, who lost faith, there were also people who only had their faith and believed so strongly.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Pat, Sandhya and Tom that no one can be expected to keep their faith after seeing what Eliezer and the other Jews saw. If one feels that their trust in their faith has been betrayed, anger and despair can manifest themselves and take over what was once believed in. In Night, people react to the atrocities they see in different ways, with some relying on their faith and others abandoning it. In order to cope with the horrors that were going on all around them, people had to choose the method that would be most likely to help them prevail. For Elieser, it was to turn against what he had once strongly believed in, as he “no longer accepted God’s silence” when there was no divine intervention to stop the killings (65). In his mind he felt that God was no longer there to protect him, and looked to other ways to ensure his survival. For his father and others though, faith in their religion gave them hope in times of complete despair. They operated with the mindset that God acts in ways that are beyond our comprehension, and coped with the notion that whether they lived or died, they would be serving His purposes.
ReplyDeletePS, I'll use a late day on this post.
When the young boy was hanged, the prisoner asks, “Where is God? Where is he?” but rather a quick death, the young boy suffered a more agonizing death by dying slowly “struggling between life and death,” and Elie answers, “Where is he? Here he is –He is hanging here on the gallows…” (61-62). This statement that Elie answered meant that God is there on the gallows just watching like any other person. More likely, Elie felt more despair then anger, in the beginning Elie would always believe God, but when the young boy was hanged, it made Elie lose all his innocence as child. The more Elie experiences the Holocaust, the more he loses his faith in God and as Andy pointed out that Elie doesn’t just lose his belief but God’s inability to help. So when Elie’s answers that statement he felt despair of how God just lets this atrocity to keep on going. This same situation happened to Moshe the Beadle, after he arrived, “Moshe had changed. There was no longer any joy in his eyes… He no longer talked to me of God or of the cabala”(4).
ReplyDeleteBefore the Holocaust, Elie, spent much of his time studying his religion in many different aspects. He was constanly searching for new ideas and perspectives on how to study and show his faith. As the Holocaust starts to come underway, he starts to questions God and the reality of putting his faith into a seemingly imaginary source. When Elie questions "Where is god?" he is starting to lose faith in the religion which has been his main purpose in life since childhood (68). As he sees horrific, and traumatic events occur before his eyes, the only explanation is that there is no god, for if there was, how could he allow such things to happen, to so many of his followers. His questioning of the killing of Jews reminds me of the story of Noah's ark (might have been mentioned in book, I forget). In that case, god destroyed all of humanity except for a select few because he was angry with all of mankind. In this case, Elie could not justify why god would want to punish just the jewish people who, to his knowledge had remained faithful.
ReplyDeleteJulia
I totally agree with Sandhya about why Eliezer got angry at God and not the Germans. Eliezer at the beginning of the book was a person of strong faith. He believed in the teachings of Judiasm, saying that he hoped that the teachings of Moshe the Beadle “would draw him into eternity” (3). This all changed when the Germans started controlling their lives. He felt betrayed by his faith because of what was happening to them, and could not believe that God would allow such horrible things to occur. As Sandhya points out, it is also true that God was a much easier target to be mad at than the Germans. If the officers were to find out about negative feelings towards them, they could have reacted badly and done harm to those who complained. Staying angry at God was Eliezer’s way of expressing his anger safely. It was also a way for him to face reality in that he knew that having faith in himself was going to give him the best possible chance to survive. He did not believe that God was going to help them, and looked for other ways to try to make it out alive.
ReplyDelete