Elie Wiesel's Portrayal of God Essay

"And we, the Jews of Sighet, were waiting for better days, which would not be long in coming now." (Night 5) Even as they were taken to death camps, many Jewish individuals continues to believe that God was with them and that they needed to act in agreement with his plan, despite the fact that it involved them having to suffer.

While Wiesel started to doubt God's plan, he continued to have blind faith as he expected suffering to end at one point and the Jewish people to be praised for their ability to remain unaffected by such horrible happenings. The narrator's theory concerning his trust in God is very similar to the biblical figure of Job, especially considering that he lives through events that trigger similar feelings of despair. The writer tried to understand the situation he was in and used the example of Job in an attempt to do so.

The fact that the Holocaust caused a great deal of suffering makes it difficult for the narrator to concentrate on the traditional role of God and influences him to consider a scenario in which divinity is not necessarily interested in the well-being of mankind (Berenbaum 154). Night contains a great deal of theological ideas discussed by a person who is certainly entitled to consider the role of God in the world.Night is not only meant to discuss God's failure to protect the Jewish people, as it also relates to the general condition of this community. The Holocaust virtually defeated them as death came to dominate this group in a dark nihilistic way (Bloom 8). The book is generally meant to emphasize contrasts: readers are initially provided with devout Jewish individuals who believe that God is always going to protect them and the text then proceeds to display an increasing amount of unfortunate episodes that actually destroy this type of thinking. It is practically as if the book is meant to gradually put across evidence that God is not real and that it would be absurd for someone to look for him, especially in a place like a Nazi death camp.

Works cited:

Bloom, Harold. Night - Elie Wiesel. Infobase Publishing, 2001.

Berenbaum, Michael. Elie Wiesel: God, the Holocaust, and the Children of Israel. Behrman House, Inc., 1994.

Wiesel, Elie. Legends of Our Time. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 07.09.2011.….....