"Night" by Elie Wiesel Analytical Essay Essay

In the book night, Elie continually struggles with his faith in God. At first, Elie believes very much in god. He studied his religion relentlessly, he freely choses to be mentored and taught of his religion, and of god. However, his faith is questioned by his experience during his time in the concentration camp. However, at the end of the book, even though he has been forever changed by his Holocaust experience, Elie remains with his faith intact.
  First, Elie is closely in touch with his religion and the study of his religion. Elie grew up thinking that nothing could exist without god. His faith is based on an idea that God is everywhere all the time . Elie soon begins to question his faith in god, by the inhumanity and evil he witnesses during the Holocaust. He can not fathom the fact that god would allow such cruelty. His faith is is shaken just as much by the cruelty and selfishness he sees among the prisoners. If the world is so terrible, then God either must be terrible or must not exist at all.
In the book, Elie mentions a boy who is caught trying to steal bread. The Nazi’s feel they must make an example of him, because that kind of behavior could not be tolerated. So they made a spectacle of him, and called the entire camp out to watch him be hung. The boy struggled for thirty minutes as the jews had to watch, helplessly. That was the last straw for Elie. That was the last act that he could endure before realizing, or deciding, that there was no God, and even if there was as far as he was concerned   “God died on the noose with that boy.”
“My anger rises up within faith and not outside it.” Only in the lowest moments of his faith does he turn his back on God. Even when Eliezer says that he has given up on God completely, Wiesel’s writing conflicts with what Elie says he believes. Elie even refers to biblical passages when he denies his faith. When he says that he might abandon his father, he prays to God, and, after his father's death, he regrets that...