Madi Wissmueller's Blog!

Madi Wissmueller's Blog!

Monday, June 14, 2010

Night

Bad things happen to everyone, some worse to others. People all suffer in pain but they recover mentally and physically at some point. In 1944 Elie in Night suffered more pain and suffering than we can ever know. Getting sent to a camp that treats you like dirt, getting barely enough food to survive, and being separated from half his family. That pain and suffering is nothing like breaking a bone, or losing a loved one. Before entering the worst place on earth at the time, Elie was a very religious teen. He loved to be Jewish and the qualities it came with, well most of them. Before entering the concentration camp, religion was very important to Elie, and then he lost that and didn’t believe in God.

Elie used to be very religious and tried his best to follow Jewish rules and laws. “‘By day I studied Talmud and by night I would run to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the temple’“.(pg.3) He always wanted to have religion in his life. He grew up like this and loved how it was involved in his life. He was like the little kid who is so excited to go to church Sunday morning. He is ready to do his part to make God super proud. Once he was in the concentration camp wasn’t like this for long.

Slowly but surely he lost belief in God. Elie kept asking himself how God could let this happen to everyone. He didn’t understand how God could let these entire innocent people die for just being Jewish. This made him not want to be Jewish. “I was no longer able to lament. On the contrary, I felt very strong. I was the accuser, God the accused”. (pg. 68) For example, when the planes crashed into the Twin Towers on 9-11, people blamed God. This is how Elie felt; he couldn’t understand why this happened. Elie wasn’t the only one who felt and thought this way.
Elie completely lost faith in God. Near the end of his time in the camp people totally lost hope and trust in God. Even a Rabbi said “‘it’s over. God is no longer with us’“(pg. 76). When Jewish holidays came up most people celebrated them. Elie felt no need to because he lost faith. A holiday included fasting; he didn’t because he said they were always fasting. Losing religion was the least of his worries, he wanted to live.

Elie had such horrible times in the camp. Once he was released he got very ill and went to the hospital for two weeks, in and out of life and death. He finally got up and looked at himself. “From depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me.”(pg.115) He seems to be more effected by seeing himself than going through the worst experience of his life.

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