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
Karl showed no sincerity in his actions and choices. I believe if he was truly sorry for what he did, he would have tried his best to convince other Nazis that what they were doing was wrong. It was his last opportunity to take a stand for the Jews and show sincerity, but instead he tried to save himself to die in peace. Simon did right by walking out of the room silently it was out of his hands to forgive. In order for Karl to be forgiven it is out of humans hands and only obtainable by God’s
After Blockalteste told Elie that he is in a concentration camp, he shouldn’t care about anyone else except himself even his old father. Elie began to thinks about what Blockaltest had told him, “Too late to save your old father----You could have two ration of bread, two rations of soup----“(111). When the SS officer was beating his father in front of Elie. Normally human been would protect his father getting hurt, but he chose to do nothing and just watched his old father getting whipped, because he was afraid to get hurt. Next morning when Elie found out his father got took away, he didn't weep anymore.
He was not involved with any decisions regarding the Final Solution or the Holocaust, his job was to solely present them as good to the German people. He was very manipulative as a result, and so this can be seen as an evil trait. After learning of Hitler’s suicide, Goebbels planned to kill himself and his family, an evil action which he eventually carried out. | Albert Speer | March 19th 1905 | September 1st 1981 (76) | Minister of Armaments and War Production | 4 | Speer is sometimes nicknamed ‘the Nazi who said sorry’. This is because during his Nuremburg trial he accepted his guilt and responsibility for his actions.
However, because of all these terrible things happening in the concentration camp that filled Elie with disappointment and anger, Elie realizes his faith is not unadulterated any more in the article. “But my faith was no longer pure. How could it be? It was filled with anguish rather than fervor, with perplexity more than piety… In the kingdom of eternal night, on the Days of Awe, which are the Days of Judgment, my traditional prayers were directed to you as well as against you, Master of the universe. What hurt me more: your absence or your silence” (Wiesel 1).
"I gave him enough wire to patch up his pen" (226, 3). Sartoris father was now on trial, and as Sartoris watches, he feared for the family and his father, not for himself. And he feels grief and despair "the smell and sense just a little of fear because mostly of despair and grief" (226, 1). The author uses the term despair a number of times. This denotes hopelessness, and shows us that Sartoris sees that there is nothing he can do about the situation.
Sunflower Wiesenthal’s belief of forgiveness is very right and frank: you cannot forgive someone who has not gone through the same tragedies and begs for your forgiveness, as if you are the representative of the whole who was suffered. I believe Wiesenthal should not have forgiven the dying Nazi soldier, although it was a dying man’s wise to be forgiven of mistreating the Jews. The soldier had no experience whatsoever in the tortures the Jews faced daily. The Jews embraced death every second of their painful lives and for some odd reason never decided to revolt against this tyrannical German government. This just shows that the Jews looked like the biggest danger or threat they faced while living in the concentration camps, was losing their
“At one point, I remember, we paused over a picture of Ted Lavender, and after a while Jimmy rubbed his eyes and said he’d never forgiven himself for Lavender’s death. It was something that would never go away, he said quietly, and I nodded and told him I felt the same about certain things” (Obrien 27). Another theme is fear of shame as motivation. Tim O’Brien experiences this himself when he is on the boat with Elroy. He decides to go to war because he is ashamed of running from it.
Hooper and his black veil because he hated anything that separated one from the rest of humanity. Hooper’s veil does exactly this. His face is shielded from the rest of the world: “It threw its obscurity between him and the Holy page” (Montbriand). None of the members of his congregation, or his fiancé can understand, and this causes Hooper to live a sad life alone. Hawthorne also places Mr. Hooper in the small town of Salem, the town where he was born.
At one point, when Chlomo was being beaten by Idek, he was ashamed of his father and he didn’t feel any grief for him. When Rabbi Eliahou’s son abondons him, Elie prays to God to never let him abandon his own father like that. Elie says “Rabbi Eliahou’s son had felt that his father was growing weak, he had believed that the end was near and had sought this separation in order to get rid of the burden, to free himself from an encumbrance which could lessen his own chances of survival. I had done well to forget that. And I was glad that Rabbi Eliahou should continue to look for his beloved son.