As Elie believes God’s excellence along, his beliefs start to be disfigured from the cruel treatment the Jews take in the treacherous camp. At first Elie believes that his mass killing was just “God testing”(65). The testing shows whether The Jews are capable of overcoming dilemma to see their character. Elie also believes that God wants to see what the Jews do in the face of adversity. “If he punishes you, it means he loves you” (65). If one would die or was cruelly beaten it meant God only cared. As the treatment continues without stop his beliefs start to be manipulated. He starts to question God and his doings. The cruel treatment at the camps does not stop and continues its vicious circle in front of Elie’s eyes. Elie’s anger towards God starts to become revealed in Elie’s actions. Elie says God has “betrayed us, allowing us Jews to be tortured, slaughtered, gassed and burned” (68). Elie still believes in God but questions him on how this disastrous situation is continuing. If God exists how could he let this happen to the Jews? If God truly exists would not he stop this from happening? Elie’s faith in God continues to erode away because of what horrible things God continues to let happen. As the horrifying German acts in the concentration camps go on further, more Jews are tortured and dying. Elie kept seeing this first hand. Either the vile acts would happen right next to him or around him in the camp. He kept experiencing dreadful acts from human beings afflicted upon another human being. This finally got to Elie; he had no more hope left in him. Elie had no “Reason to live, and no reason to fight” anymore (99). Every ounce of his hopes and beliefs in him of the greater power was drained. This was the beginning of Elie losing complete faith in God.
At first, lie had complete Faith in God, and then his faith starts to become entirely altered and wizened with little faith left. Finally followed by completely shattering Elie’s faith in God. In the beginning of Elie’s journey even “The last moment people clung to hope” (68). At first People used God as their hope and found meaning in their lives through him. But as time went on though the concentration camps people quickly reject God to guide their lives. Then as Elie’s journey went on the mass killing of the Jews shook up Elie. He completely lost faith in God because God did not stop from the unbelievable genocide the Germans did to the Jews. Elie “Never shall I forget those flames that consumed his faith forever” (45). He could not believe God would let such a mass killing of people happen for just their religion. This made him realize that there was no God to him. He had nobody to believe in. Now Elie’s “eyes has opened and he was alone, terribly alone in a World without God” (68). Innocent people were being beaten and killed just for being a Jew. People are being inhumanely tortured for just being of a certain religion. Elie losses his faith in God because he knows of no God that would let this inhumane treatment continue with no attempts to try to stop it from happening.
The way that Elie’s faith has been obliterated by the inhumane treatment and selfishness of the prisoners can be similar to the way that blacks lost their faith due to slavery. Whites treated blacks in Slavery tremendously horrible. Whites would force the blacks do whatever the whites needed done. The whites would make the blacks do their farm work, all their household chores, and even tend to their every need. This can be similar to the Jew treatment because The Nazi’s made the Jews do their work in the concentration camps. The blacks were treated this way just because the color of their skin was a different, darker color then a whites person skin. Similarly to that of Jews, which were treated different just because they were of a different religion. The blacks would lose their faith in a higher power because they were being controlled just because the color of their skin. They had no life or a personality. The blacks were just controlled by their owner. The whites did not care what kind of people the black people were. They just controlled them for their labor they did. Slavery and the concentration camps caused people lose their faith in a greater power, God, because of the terrible suffering because of the inhumane treatment of lack necessary goods and mass killing.
Work cited
Wiesel, Elie. Night. New York: Hill and Wang, 2006.
