Category: Night by Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel was a devout Jew during his childhood, just before the Holocaust wounded his soul. He survived the events of the Holocaust, but in his waiting for the Lords intervention, just like it was in the bible, his doubts in God and his mercy began to develop. The book Night tells us of the journey that Wiesel took in his dilemma whether to forgive Gods cruelty towards his people or to define his own fate.

He finds it difficult to understand the role of God in the world, and poses many questions to try and understand why God would stand by and watch the horrors of the Holocaust. When the Jews of Sighet first heard of the crimes of the Nazis, they strengthened their faith in God, and believed that God would provide them with security from such horrifying things, as Wiesel stated, And we, the Jews of Sighet, were waiting for better days, which would not be long in coming now (5).

The Jews, Wiesel included, believed that God had greater plans for everyone, and everything that happened was for their benefit, since God was both their defender and righter of wrongs. The faith that Wiesel had in God was enormous, in spite of the increasing abuse and hatred that the Nazis had for the Jews (Wiesel 5).

Just like the other believers, he believed that their suffering was a punishment from god for their evil deeds, and therefore they did not resist or fight back. God was supposed to present himself at the last moment and show his glory for their perseverance, but this did not happen. God is testing us. He wants to find out whether we can dominate our base instincts and kill the (Wiesel 42) within us. We have no right to despair. And if he punishes us relentlessly, its a sign that he loves us all the more (Wiesel 42).

Eventually, Wiesel got to a point where he did not want to praise and thank God anymore. His fellow men were suffering and dying, yet God was still not manifesting his power. `For the first time I felt revolt rise in me. Why should I bless His name? The Eternal, Lord of the Universe, the All-Powerful and Terrible, was silent.

What had I to thank Him for? (Wiesel 31). The Jews had lost faith in God, and despair crept in, since they wondered who would save them. By this point, Wiesel was already feeling betrayed, and at the hanging of the angel-faced pipel, he declared that God was dead to him, bringing an end to his long lived faith in God (Wiesel 62).

The events of the Holocaust brought a lot of anger to Wiesel, which he directed to both God and men, for their cruelty. He could not understand the numerous killings, and it appeared that the lack of intervention from God implied that he approved the killings. Many believers had died, but Wiesel was alive and hurting.

He therefore redirected his energy to accusing God and asking for him to explain his ignorance of the cries of his people (Douglas 5). In addition to the Jews doubting the love that God had for his people, and amidst all the questions, Wiesel and other Jews decided to become God (Douglas 7).

This meant taking charge of their lives and doing things that they had never done before, and the most significant one was to hate. The Jews had been humiliated and killed while believing that God has a greater plan for them. They believed that hate would lead them to fight back, as they no longer believed in suffering and persevering for a God who failed to answer the cries of his people (Douglas 7).

The questions raised by Wiesel bear no answers. What comforted him were the words that he had received from Moshe during his childhood, telling him that the relationship between man and God was based on question and answer, where the answers for the questions that people asked God came from the depths of the soul, where they stayed till death (Wiesel 2-3).

The variety of questions came from his childhood observations, whereby the people initially shared their possessions but eventually became violent towards each other, killing for food, and not caring for others.

Wiesels lack of faith led him to stop fasting when Jews were required to, and he no longer observed the Sabbath day. He believes that the many questions that he has will be answered one day, by God himself, and hopes that no other Holocaust will happen, as he continues to wonder why the first one was, in the first place. One thing that Wiesel advices is that faith alone is not enough to stop tragedy, but the decisions and active participation of people.

Works Cited

Douglas, Robert. Elie Wiesels Relationship with God. 1995. Web.

Wiesel, Elie. Night. United States: Bantam Books, 1982.

In Night, Elie Wiesel describes the suffering of the Jewish people during the Holocaust. After reading this book, I realized how strikingly different the perception of the horrors of this period was between Jews and people of other nationalities. The fact is that in ordinary life, we do not think about how inhuman people can be and what tortures they can condemn their fellow human beings to for personal purposes. Aside from the horrific stories of both the main characters and those they encountered in this hell, I was hooked by the very beginning of the story. Then the characters did not believe the man who told them what could happen, someone who had experienced similar things before 44 when the events described in the story occurred. The belief that bad things happen to everyone, but not to us, still won out, and the Jews missed the opportunity to avoid at least some of the horror precisely because of their carelessness. Moreover, had they heard the older man, had they believed him, had they been more vigilant, perhaps they could have been saved.

The lesson to be learned from this is that one should always listen to intuition and look out for the signs. All in all, the events described in the book are horrific and leave an indelible imprint on the readers soul. Based on my experience, many people do not want to read such books precisely because of the moral gravity of the events described. However, the books horror is that it is not fiction but a true story that took the lives of thousands of people. There is a lesson to be learned from this book about the need to maintain morality and humanity to pursue ones goal. In addition, an important lesson is that all people suffer equally. Whether Jews, Arabs, or Hindus, all people feel the same pain from losing loved ones, the destruction of lives, and finally from hunger and exhaustion. Modern society has come a long way in tolerance and acceptance, but we still need to remember where we began. The treasure of life and liberty is the most important thing a person has, and it must not be taken away.

The book Night is a warning to future generations and an admonition about the suffering hatred and non-acceptance can bring. It is also impossible not to mention the poignant accuracy with which the events in the book are described. The category of memory and the motif of testimony connects the two directions that can be distinguished in Wiesels work by external, thematic features. The first direction is the theme of the Shoah. The second is the history of the Jewish people, read and retold by a man who grew up in a Hasidic environment, who went through attempts at genocide. For Elie Wiesel, the writer is first and foremost a witness, and his work is a witness and a moral act.

It is also worth paying attention to the writers Nobel Prize acceptance speech. He recalled his memories of the horrors of that time and called on the assembled diplomats to learn from the mistakes of the past. He called the main mistake the indifference of the whole world to the efforts of the Jews of that time. The ethical implications of this speech are that people are finally reflecting on their ignorance. In todays world, one cannot turn a blind eye to the suffering of ones neighbor, for trouble is always shared equally. To maintain the democratic order and avoid repeating the terrible events of the Holocaust, the world needs to defend and celebrate tolerance and mutual assistance.

People rarely value their relationship with others, especially with parents who they believe will always be around and therefore allow themselves to be rude to them. Yet, when people experience a traumatic event together, they often become closer and start realizing the significance of honoring and respecting their loved ones. In Night, the novel by Ellie Weisel, Ellie, and his father did not have a close relationship before they were taken from their families by force and placed in a concentration camp. Nevertheless, only while at Auschwitz camp, Ellie and his father were able to strengthen their father-son bond out of fear of losing each other. Their relationship gets deeper as their time in the concentration camps develops, and they learn to love and care for one another. In the novel Night, the author portrays how a son who, due to being placed in an extreme situation together with his father, rediscovers his love and responsibility to his parent.

At the beginning of Night, the reader can observe a conflict that exists between Ellie and his father and which arises due to the lack of attention. Ellie openly states the main reason for his attitude by saying, he was more concerned with others rather than his own family (Weisel 2). Essentially, Ellie feels that he does not receive much attention from his father, who chooses to spend his time with other people rather than his own family. Ellie, as a teenager, needs his parents to be involved in his life, but the distance from his father makes him resentful of him. As a result, Ellie stops valuing his relationship with his father and disregards him as a person who does not participate in his life.

Yet, as the story progress and Ellie and his father become placed in a concentration camp, Ellies attitude towards his parent start to evolve. Ellie recognizes that he and his father are one family who has a responsibility towards each other and says, I had no right to let myself die& I was his whole life support (Weisel 86). In other words, the difficult situation forces Ellie to discover that despite having a negative attitude in the past, he still loves his father. The experience in the camp enables Ellie to reconsider his feelings towards his father, and he once again begins to value their relationship. Moreover, Ellie comes to understand that as a son, he also has a responsibility to his father to support him during hard times.

The novel Night highlights the capacity of extreme conditions to make people once again start valuing their relationship with their friends and family. The concentration camp experience enables Ellie to reconsider his resentful attitude towards his father and begin to love him and recognize his responsibility for him. The book allows the reader to remember that the relationship with loved ones should never be taken for granted and be full of resentment.

Works Cited

Weisel, Ellie. Night. Hill and Wang, 2006.

In Night, which is a semi-memoir dedicated to Elie Wiesels harrowing experiences in concentration camps, the topic of a father-son relationship and its development is very important. Elie, along with other Jewish people of his town, falls victim to the German occupation of Hungary. In 1944, Elie and his family are relocated to a concentration camp where he and his father are deemed strong enough for work. The relationship between the men is strongly affected by the events that they are forced to endure, and they are brought closer while Elie struggles not to let the need for survival destroy this bond.

In work camps, Elie and his father seem to find some solace in each other. They even save each others lives, for example, by preventing another from falling asleep in the snow. As Elie cares for his ill father, he notes that the mans gratitude of a wounded animal is a testament to how much his help means now (Wiesel 106). Because of the horrible conditions they live in, Elie feels like by getting the man some hot water, I had probably given him more satisfaction than during my entire childhood (Wiesel 107). The extreme suffering that Elie and his father had to endure seems to have brought them closer in an attempt to survive and, possibly, preserve some level of comfort in a friendship with another human being.

However, as their health deteriorates, it becomes apparent that they can slow each other down. More than that, as his father becomes weaker than he is, Elie sees that he might be better at survival on his own. Repeatedly, Elie witnesses other father-son relationships, for example, during a death march or a fight for bread. In those situations, sons leave or attack their fathers in an attempt to preserve their own life.

When thinking about one son who decided to leave his father behind, Elie prays: give me the strength never to do what Rabbi Eliahus son has done (Wiesel 91). However, later, when he searches for his father, he finds that a thought crept into my mind: If only I didnt find him! (Wiesel 106). Elie cannot help but feel that he disperses his strength by caring for his father, limiting his chances for survival, and such thoughts cause him intense shame.

The scene of the fathers death incorporates these two aspects of the relationship. The father is sick and beaten, and that night, Elie remained more than an hour leaning over him, looking at him, etching his bloody, broken face into my mind (Wiesel 112). This moment shows how much love Elie feels for his father and how much he aches because of his pain. Yet, when the morning comes, and another man is found on his fathers cot, Elie confesses: deep inside me, if I could have searched the recesses of my feeble conscience, I might have found something like: Free at last! (Wiesel 112).

While one could argue that this statement may be interpreted as Elie being glad that his father is free in death, the recurrent themes of sons abandoning their fathers, and Elies shame about not responding to his fathers last call suggests that it is probably not the case. The horrors of the concentration camps, while bringing the two men together also taint this relationship as the basic need for survival clashes with the similarly basic need for a supportive connection.

By examining the changes in the relationship between Elie in his father, I think that a reader may uncover the most insidious and dehumanizing consequences of the abuse that the two men experienced. Their bond is strengthened by their suffering, but the same suffering makes it more difficult for Elie to remain compassionate and caring. Elie clings to this relationship, correctly assuming that it is an important aspect of his humanity, but he feels like the need to survive strips it away from him.

Work Cited

Wiesel, Elie. Night. Hill and Wang, 2006.

Elie Wiesels book, Night, recalls about his experiences as a young Jewish boy; throughout the events and occurrences, Eliezer develops new relationships with his father as they surpass challenges they faced on their journey towards freedom. This paper addresses how Eliezers relations with his father change throughout the novel.

Wiesels book, Night, portrays Eliezer as an innocent child, who was an observant Jew. I was almost thirteen and deeply observant. By day, I studied Talmud and by night I would run to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the Temple (Wiesel 18). Eliezer enters the concentration camp as a child. He is holding his fathers hand innocently. My hand tightened its grip on my father. All I could think of was not to lose him. Not to remain alone (Wiesel 38). Life events and occurrences lead to renewed relationships between Eliezer and his father.

Inside the camp, the Germans would slaughter the Jews. Eliezer experienced starvation, mental and physical abuse; the experience resulted in a change in relationship with his father. Before the Nazi camps experiences, Eliezer had never been that close to his father; it is through the hardships they underwent together that they began to bond. At the camp, Eliezer tightly held his fathers hand. This reveals how he did not want to lose his father. Both Eliezer and his father got separated from their mother and sibling.

Their stay at Nazi camp and the oppression they face make them bond more and their relationship becomes extremely valuable. Elie showed great determination to live with the father. However, the oppression and events at Nazi were slowly killing the bond between father and son. The progress at the camp caused the relationship changes from a father-son relationship to a peer like a relationship. Elie was cooperating with his father at the camp in order to achieve and get some tasks done.

This is evidenced when Elie teaches his father how to march: I decided to give my father lessons in marching, in step, in keeping time. We began practicing in front of our block. I would command: Left, right and my father would try (Bloom 57).

During this stage of the relationship, the father gets teachings and advice from the son. The forty two-mile runs to Gleiwitz was vital for the development of Elie and father peer like a relationship. They promised to take turns watching over each other. At this time, Elie noticed the reversed roles. His father had become childlike, getting some advice from the son. After the night, the son went looking for his father the same way his father looks for his son. The questions Elie asks Chlomo shows the concern about him.

Time progresses at the Nazi camp. The bond between Elie and his father still exists. There is a noticeable aspect of the reversed roles where son shows care for the father. Eliezers father was selected to participate in the death marches. This made Elie ceaselessly worry about his father until he passed the decisive selection. Elie believed that his fathers presence encouraged him to keep going. When his father was selected again, they are rounded in the back of the cattle cars. Elies father was weak, and he was thought to be dead. Elie slapped his father hard so as to make him move and give a sign that he is still alive. The bond between son and father proved to be strong against all the horrors and oppression at the camp.

The relationship kept Eliezer living. Elie loses the will to live when his father is beaten up to death. My father was pleading: my son, water& Im burning up& My insides& (Wiesel et al. 96). He regrets leaving his father to die alone calling out his sons name.

Works Cited

Bloom, Harold. Night  Elie Wiesel, New York: Infobase Pub, 2001. Internet resource.

Wiesel, Elie. Night, Norwalk, Conn: Easton Press, 1996. Print.

Wiesel, Elie, and Wiesel Marion. Night, New York, NY: Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006. Print.

Tough and gruesome times caused by events happening around an individual’s life play a critical role in triggering emotions which can impact on the relationship that person has with others.

Empirical-based research studies indicate that different individuals who have strong faith in God and also enjoy firm relationship with family and friends may lose faith in both God and mankind during trying moments. However, although relationships can be impacted upon by circumstances, strong family ties play an important role in holding individuals together as this paper examines from the relationship of Eliezer and his father.

A respectful relationship

The relationship Eliezer has with his father at the beginning of the story can be compared to the one he has with God soon after the tough experiences and problems at the Nazi concentration camps hits him (Spector 40).

The author claims that even before going to the camps, there seems to be no cordial relationship between him and his father. This was due to the fact that his father seemed to care more about other people and issues and ignore his son Eliezer altogether.

For instance, at the sighet ghetto, Eliezer had demonstrated positive attitude, passion and interest in studying mysticism. Therefore, he thought of seeking approval and mentorship role from his father who was at that time a respected member of their community and in good position to help him. Unfortunately, his father downplayed his request as a less important matter (Misco 11).

Even though Eliezar’s father refuses to take the mentorship role over his son, his son still looks up to him, obey his will and regards him with utmost respect as his father and also due to his position in the Jewish community. In addition, he also respects his father because it was expected of him to do so according to the orthodox Jewish laws (Frunza 21).

A caring relationship: Eliezer demonstrates his great care and willingness to protect his father from the uncertainties at the concentration camp. At Auschwitz Birkenau, Eliezer develops fear of being separated from his father whom he sees as helpless individual in need of support and care when men and women are separated (Hospital 360).

Despite the weak bond he has with his father, Eliezer begins to feel that he would lose his father too. As a result, he is gripped with fear and develops a deep feeling of care and love for his father. When he is eventually separated from his father, the uncertainty of forthcoming experiences and need to protect his helpless father leads him towards guilt and resentment.

When Eliezer is transferred to block 17 after he is separated from his father, he worries about his father’s well being and continues offering support (Jablon 320). They rely on each other for strength to live despite hardships, work and survival. On the other hand, Eliezer’s father also demonstrates great concern for his son.

For instance, on the first night at Bikenau, a big fire pit is dug in the camp and children are brought in by a lorry and tossed into the fire. While Eliezer is waiting in the line for his turn, his father weeps at the thought of what Eliezer will go through. Besides, his father worries about what his son might have to face alone at the death camp and the expression of emotions by his father assures Eliezer of care and concern for his plight (Bauer 21).

Works Cited

Bauer, Markus. “Coming to Terms with the Past: Romania”. History Today 57.2 (2007): 21-23. Print.

Frunza, Sandu. “Ethics, religion and memory in Elie Wiesel’s night” Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies9.26 (2010): 94-113. Print

Hospital, Clifford. “Towards maturity in inter-faith dialogue” Cross Currents 57.3 (2007): 356-365. Print.

Jablon, Rachel Leah. “Witnessing as Shivah; Memoir as Yizkor: The Formulation of Holocaust Survivor Literature as Gemilut Khasadim ” Journal of Popular Culture 38.2 (2004): 306-324. Print.

Misco, Thomas.””Nobody told us about what happened”: the current state of holocaust education in Romania. ”International Education 38.1 (2008): 6-21. Print.

Spector, Karen. “God on the Gallows: Reading the Holocaust through Narratives of Redemption ” Research in the Teaching of English 42.1 (2007): 7-55. Print.

Introduction

Faith entails loyalty to a person or thing or the secure belief in God, the Supreme Being, which goes hand in hand with a trusting acceptance of God’s will. There are various things that help us keep our faith in God while others tend to make us deviate from our belief. In this peace of work, we see how Eliezer Wiesel struggles to keep his faith in God in relation to what he faced in life and how his understanding of God changed.

Eliezer’s Struggle

The book, night, by Wiesel talks of the holocaust during the second world war when Hitler opted to make all the Jews suffer by sending them to extermination camps where they were subjected to very harsh treatment which in most cases caused death. “Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself, Never” (Lombardi 1).

This shows the extent of the suffering. Eliezer Wiesel was lucky to have survived and he wrote of his experiences in the camp where they were poorly treated due to the fact that they were Jews and not because they had committed any offenses. It shows the awfulness he endured, for example, the loss of his family and his struggle to survive in a hostile world where humanity, faith and dignity were undermined (Wisel and Wisel 10). It shows the hardest life of human beings and how hope is essential in keeping us going.

The expression, ‘‘a universe where God betrayed his creatures and covered his face in order not to see’’ can be explained through the scenario where Job experienced a lot of suffering and illness as his faith was tested and also in Wiesel’s experiences in the concentrated camp. They both suffered having not committed any crime and God did not rescue them when they expected him to do so despite the fact that he had the Power.

Wiesel was a very strong believer and believed that God was everything and that He could save him from all evils. It was after he joined the camp that his faith decreased as he could not clearly understand why God could not rescue him and others that he deemed to have suffered more than he did, “I was thinking of my father. He must have suffered more than I did” (Lombardi 1). Despite the suffering, he never stopped believing in God completely, “I did not deny God’s existence, but I doubted His absolute justice.” (Lombardi 1).

Conclusion

Eliezer’s experience in the camp teaches us on the complexity of the journey of faith. It is through his experiences that he discovered that God is always present even in our suffering.

He therefore encourages us to always have hope in whatever we do having the confidence that no matter the challenges and suffering we experience in our lives, there is a powerful God working out good plans for us in mysterious ways which we cannot understand and that He wants the best for us. He also emphasizes on remembering the past for it is through this that we can see the far that God has brought us and have hope of having a better future.

Works Cited

Lombardi, Esther. “Night’ Quotes – Elie Wiesel.” About. 2011. Web.

Wisel, Elie and Wisel, Marion. Night. New York: Penguin Group, 2008.

The book, Night, outlines Eliezer’s religious and psychological journey during the holocaust. The main conflict is Eli’s struggle to remain faithful and maintain his trust in God despite the inhumane conditions he is subjected to in the concentration camps. At first, Eliezer believes in a present and powerful God. However, his ideas about God and the divinity of the world change overnight, and he repeatedly denounces God. Interestingly, he manages to leave the concentration camps with unwavering faith. This paper will give further details about Eliezer’s personal revelation of the transformation knowledge of God.

Omnipotent, Omnipresent and Omniscient

Eliezer’s faith plays a significant role in Wiesel’s book, Night. A critical analysis of the beginning of the text opens a window linking Eliezer to devotion and commitment in God. His unshakable and unconditional faith in God is demonstrated at the beginning of the text through his interest in Talmud, and expressing grief over the destruction of the Temple (Wiesel 3). His desire to seek more knowledge in Jewish religion directs him to Moishe, who asks him why he cries whilst praying. Wiesel records his reply, “I don’t know” (4), an element that demonstrates his total believe and faith in God. Even though he was not aware of the reason as to why he was praying, the emotions elicited through weeping were enough to comprehend the seriousness in which he perceived the prayers.

Even so, Eliezer admits that an inner force triggered the sobbing “something inside me felt the need to cry” (p.4). His Godly acts are manifested through religious studies and devoted night prayers at the synagogue. His desire to expand drives interest in studying cabbala, which his father opposed.

Fuelled by an attempt to communicate with God, Eliezer finds Moishe and Beadle, who initiates him into reading Zohar. His interest in Jewish mysticism gives him insights about the true nature and character of God as omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient. He believes that the physical world is a reflection of God’s divine world, which reflected His goodness, holiness, and power. The deportation of Jews from their homes does not separate Eliezer from his trust in God. He remains strong, praying in the morning, and even thank God on arrival at Auschwitz.

Absent and Unjust

A number of experiences in the course of the holocaust shake Eliezer’s faith (Perry and Natchez 9). As documented by Wiesel, his first night in the camps exterminated his faith, as he believes the moments assassinated his God and soul (Wiesel 34). Eliezer witnesses cruelty and brutality, which he believes does not reflect the divinity of the God he trusted. The thoughts of God allowing people to go through much sorrow and distress pained his heart. For the first time at Auschwitz selection camp, Eliezer confronts God and asks why his name should be sanctified while he chose to be silent. In Wiesel’s text, Eliezer asks, “What was there to thank Him for?” (33).

During his days in the prison camps, Eliezer lives in a world absent of both man and God. He is engulfed by superior feelings, which make him feel stronger than God. At that time, he feels God’s absence in his world, and wonders why the Supreme Being, who had supernatural powers, could allow such cruelty to happen. He goes to the extent of believing that people had the right to disrespect God if he was not dead at that time (Bloom 43). According to Eliezer, God tolerated selfishness, evil, and cruelty through the holocaust, which if his fellow prisoners could preserve his belief in the goodness of humankind. At this stage, Eliezer stops believing in God, and even questions His existence. The gruesome murder of young children makes him doubt the concept of God.

Dwindling Faith in God

Interestingly, Eliezer only feels the absence of the Lord and believes in His existence. Nevertheless, he questions God’s honesty and fairness to humanity. Eliezer believes his prayers would give him the strength to ask his God the right questions, which he regarded important in his faith (Perry and Natchez 9). During the holocaust, his belief in God does not diminish, but he loses his faith through questioning the Supreme Being. For example, In Wiesel’s text, Eliezer asks “Where is God… Where He is? (65). Another example that indicates that he still believed in God was at Auschwitz, where even though he condemned God, he referred to Him as “ The … Master of the Universe” (33)

Besides, he refers to biblical passages by blaming his reactions towards God as in agreement with Job. He acknowledged the existence of God but doubted the validness of His power. Eliezer also prays to God when he realizes that he may lose his father, and desires for a religious memorial. Clearly, Eliezer is confused by the atrocities carried out by the Germans and fails to understand why God would let such a thing happen in the World he believes is divine. By the fact that he believes in the existence of a supreme being, Eliezer gets confidence and courage to soldier on with life. Miraculously, he does not loose complete faith in God, and the holocaust experience strengthens his faith.

Works Cited

Bloom, Harold. Elie Wiesel’s Night, New York, NY: Infobase Publishing, 2010. Print.

Perry, Josh, and Jon Natchez. Night, 2003. PDF file. Web.

Wiesel, Elie. Night, 2006. PDF file. Web.

Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night gives a thought provoking account of the ruthless maltreatment of his family during the Holocaust by Nazi Germany. Wiesel was brought up in the mountains of the present day Romania and in 1944, at fifteen years old, his family was captured as part of a mission by the Germans to torture the Jews. Thereafter, Wiesel and his dad were detached from his youngest sister and mum at Auschwitz.

All the family members died in different circumstances leaving the young Wiesel behind. Alan Paton’s novel Cry, the Beloved Country, is a commanding, spare, poetic modern classic that protests against the structures of the South African society that would lead to apartheid in the 1940s. The novel tells the story of Reverend Stephen Kumalo who undertakes the difficult and expensive journey to Johannesburg from the remote village of Ndotsheni (Paton, 1).

He makes the journey in order to find his wayward son, Absalom, and assist her sick daughter, Gertrude. In as much as the two novels are distinct, they portray the same thematic link: good and evil in the society.

To begin with, both the two novels give a portrayal of social breakdown and racial injustice in the society. The society represented in Cry, the Beloved Country, is unjust, segregated along racial lines in which the white people have assumed ownership of the most profitable farmland from the black people.

For that reason, blacks have been compelled to migrate from their tribal villages to try to find work in cities like Johannesburg. In the cities, white businesses rely so much on the labor provided by the blacks, for which they work for subsistence wages.

Since the blacks have been forced to leave their traditional social structures such as adherence to morals and reverence for the elderly in the society, social breakdown has inevitably followed. Because the blacks left the traditional social structures that lent stability to their lives, the crime rate among the blacks is increasing at a fast pace.

The novel Night, by Elie Wiesel, also portrays the theme of social breakdown and racial injustice in the society. The Nazi’s captured and killed so many Jews after forcing them to endure treacherous situations. Wiesel notes, “Without passion, without haste, they slaughtered their prisoners” (4). Their oppressors did not even spare the weak among them.

The Nazis purposely withheld proper means of transport and forced the Jews to travel in cattle cars to the concentration camps. By doing this, they placed their voiceless prisoners on the same level as the animals. Therefore, this undermined the significance of the Jewish existence, dehumanized them, and belittled their self-esteem.

The novel depicts instances of the breakdown of the Jewish social structures. Wiesel witnessed occasions when sons turned against their fathers by abusing them, abandoning them, or fighting with them. The Jews themselves abandoned the traditional social structures that lent stability to their lives when they started turning against each other in the concentration camps. In addition to the kapos, who were also Jews, they never treated each other as brothers and sisters.

Even though the two novels give an illustration of extreme social injustices, they also have a human heart. In Cry, the Beloved Country, the sense of despondency is envisaged by the likelihood of reunion amongst the races and the blacks coming together once again.

Even in the evil parts of the book, bright spots wherein individuals show human love to each other, not considering the race, are evident in the story. For instance, a white man offers free transport to blacks who were on foot because of a bus boycott. Another show of human heart is whereby Kumalo and Jarvis desperately search for their sons to reconcile with them. Although Kumalo finally discovered that his son had changed to an evil man, he endured the ordeal of the trial with him until he was sentenced to death.

Jarvis is depicted to have undergone a change of heart when he tried to reconcile with his dead son through his writings that he had left behind. In the book, Paton seems to imply that societal change is possible if it can start to be effected from people’s heart. The novel upholds that such change is possible in the future.

In Night, instances of compassion, as depicted by the relationship between Elie and his father, are evident. In the concentration camps, Elie did not want to give up because he never wanted to leave his father alone since they had been separated from the other family members.

A number of kinships portrayed in the novel are very different from that of Eli and his father in that the sons abuse, abandon, mistreat or kill their fathers. During the Holocaust, the Jews changed dramatically because there was scarcity of food and everyone was struggling for his or her own survival.

Amidst the cruelty and selfishness that ruptured familial bonds, Elie showed compassion to his father. This strong bond between the father and the son illustrates that Eli’s compassion and solidarity are stronger forces for his continued existence than his instinct for self-protection.

In Night, Eli seeks to find an answer to the questions he was having, but there is silence and he seems to get no answer. Eli asks, “Where is God?” but there is no divine response. He failed to understand why God could permit such a torture to be experienced by devout worshippers. Another type of silence in the book is seen when the Jews failed to resist the oppression that they underwent during the Holocaust.

On the other hand, in Cry, the Beloved country, Kumalo is able to get answers to the questions he was having. Even though he was going through tough times, his only solace came from faith in God. The trial of his son shook his faith but never broke it. He spent most of his time in prayer in order to get the answers from God. Unlike Eli’s case, Kumalo was able to find comfort from fellow compatriots.

These two books are so rich, so proficient in describing the trouble, the dissatisfaction, and the unbelievable misery in a torn planet. Understanding the past is important when one wants to understand the future. Therefore, these novels remain relevant in our current society.

Currently, the world is full of various atrocities that parallel the situation in South Africa before apartheid and the oppression of the Jews during the Holocaust. In spite of these violence and gloom, the novels remind us that we have the power to change the world. Everyone has the potential to do good. Although the novels are set in different parts of the world, they indicate that at times good can prevail over evil or on the contrary, evil prevailing over good.

Works Cited

Paton, Alan. Cry, the Beloved Country. New York: Scribner, 1948. Print.

Wiesel, Elie. Night. New York: Hill & Wang, 1960. Print.

In “Night”, Elie Wiesel describes his early experiences of the Nazi genocide against Jews and his subsequent life in a concentration camp known as Auschwitz-Birkenau. Given that the events are seen through the eyes of the young person, the major emphasis is placed upon the main character’s perception of the violence and death taking place around him and gradual loss of faith and belief in humanity; for this reason, the novel is actually entitled “Night”. It depicts the night of human existence, interpersonal relationships, human values, and religious beliefs.

The main character of “Night” is Eliezer, a pious and studious teenage boy, who daily studies Talmud and lives in accordance with the principle of mutual support, common for his people. The events Wiesel writes about refer to WWII when the Nazis started almost worldwide “racial purification” and sought to establish the rule of the superior Aryan race. Jews were viewed as the participants of the global conspiracy against non-Jews and a cause of economic crises like the Great Depression. Eliezer grows in a small Hungarian town Sighet, populated mainly by Jews when his spiritual friend and teacher Moshe the Beadle is taken to Poland, after being declared as unable to prove his citizenship. He returns in some time narrates that his survival is purely accidental, as all of his companions were shot by German soldiers. Whereas the majority of Sightet’s Jews mistreat and disbelieve him, Eliezet takes Moshe’s story close to heart and begins to lose his childish belief injustice. This period of doubts and hopes that Moshe’s narrative is fantasy can be characterized as a twilight: “Yes, we even doubted that he wanted to exterminate us. Was he going to wipe out a whole people? Could he exterminate a population scattered throughout so many countries? So many millions! What methods could he use? And in the middle of the twentieth century!” (Wiesel, p.6). As the Nazi-led government gradually introduces additional restrictions on Jews’ lifestyle and behavior (probation of visiting cares and synagogue, the obligation of wearing a yellow star), people still have the light of hope for survival, as these rules generally do not refer to extermination the Jews of Sighet fear. The last sparkle of light is probably their life in the ghetto, where the Jewish autonomous government was established and the little society enjoyed self-regulation. Accordingly, Eliezer resumes his study of Jewish mysticism and reflections upon the sanctity and justice of the divine rule. However, this almost idyllic life soon ended, as the ghetto dwellers were forcefully taken to the concentration camps. Eliezer is separated from his mother and sisters, who are immediately taken to the gas chamber, and himself closely faces death when witnesses the murders of small children and is on the verge of his own death. The subsequent chapters of “Night” are filled with descriptions of violence, which represents almost Dantean Hell: “Never shall I forget that night, the first night in the camp, which has turned my life into one long night…Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke…Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever” (Wiesel, p.44). Thus, the main character’s faith in the goodness of the world seems shattered irreparably, as the main question he first asks is how God can expose his people to such disgusting cruelty. The loss of faith is also accelerated by the psychological transformations how fellow prisoners undergo. If they united against the oppressors, Eliezer would probably maintain his belief in the goodness of God and His care about humanity, but instead, he encounters a totally different picture: driven by selfishness, his peer readily become the camp guard and betray the other inmates by losing connection with them and ignoring those in deeper need, those who are even more disabled or disadvantaged. One more factor contributing to Eliezer’s personality changes and the development of cynicism is his own guilt for becoming de-humanized, similar to his fellow prisoners. Therefore, the psychological elements of the novel essentially refer to human behavior in critical and physically exhausting situations, when the very human life is threatened. Wiesel reveals that the camp community, treated like cattle, become inescapably brutalized, as the survival instinct stimulates everyone to neglect others. The main character also experiences this sense of disunity, as he soon begins to respond to his father’s care with indifference, almost hating himself for emotional and psychological passiveness in those issues which directly relate to his nearest and dearest person.

The struggle with faith as an aspect that interferes with the realization of the survival instinct is also evident in the book. On the first night of his imprisonment, the protagonist seeks to avoid thoughts about the justice and humanity issues in the mass murders of children he has recently witnessed. When he sees the hanging of a little child for an imaginary crime, Eliezer also desperately tries to abandon his thoughts about the divine authority, but they nevertheless persecute him, proving that Eliezer’s world is not the one where “God is dead”. In many years after the Auschwitz horrors, the main character states he has reconciled himself to his religion and found answers to his questions.

As one can conclude, “Night” is a sincere account of the Holocaust witness, which focuses primarily on the spiritual trauma caused by the Fascist genocide. In this book, the cruelty the young protagonist witnesses are immediately directed by him against his faith, so Wiesel’s intention is the description of his spiritual journey from the rejection of faith to the return to Jewish mysticism, associated with the horrifying events of years 1943-1945.

Works cited

Wiesel, E. Night. New York: Bantam, 1982.