Elie Wiesel: His Journey of Faith What are people without faith? Some find it a necessity, unable to function without it. Others find it pointless, untrusting God’s of will. This question is answered in Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, with his journey of faith throughout the Holocaust. Elie struggles to find trust in God, for he feels his God has abandoned him, allowing his people to live in such pain.
And in His benevolent service we will stay (page 169).” Furthermore, Nathan despises the Congolese people. He loathes the sinful behavior, as seen when he says “They are living in the darkness. Broken in body and soul, and don’t even see how they could be healed (page 53).” Nathan is actually selfish. Although he claims he is working for the good of everyone, he is really urging the Congolese toward Christianity so he can profit, so he might gain a greater appreciation from God. Finally, Nathan seems to hate his family.
Flaws Within the Flawless As an inherently flawed element, human nature will continuously battle with right and wrong, and failure will persist without guidance. Dostoevski highlights this conclusion in his work The Grand Inquisitor. According to the Grand Inquisitor, the most important aspects of our human nature are the inability to handle freedom and a yearning for a miraculous being. In his approach to governing these aspects, the argument he defends that Christ’s rejection of the temptations has permanently hindered human nature may appear true. However, the Grand Inquisitor’s rejection that the nature of man has potential to change when we accept Christ as our savior highlights the weak link in his argument.
Luther was also disappointed in man and felt that they should take the consequences that go with their sins and hope that these lessons could be taught to them before it would become too late. In expressing his disappointment with the church, Luther goes on to discuss the real ways a man should repentance his sins and not the way the church is having them repent at the current time; which is by having them pay for pardon of their sins and guilt. He states what he believes is to be worthy of god when it comes to recognizing the wrong in something that you have done and now want to be sorry about. He also goes on to state that the pope does not have the power to forgive someone’s sins that is the power of the lord and only him. The pope can only remit sins or guilt by announcing that GOD has actually remitted the guilt.
This action leads to him being considered a tragic hero. Creon’s human flaw of arrogance causes him to ignore reasoning and advice and listen only to his own thoughts. He states, "My voice is the one voice giving orders in this city". He is afraid to go back on his word because it will hurt his pride and he is afraid that it will cause him to lose power with his subjects. This action causes him to lose everyone that he loves.
Wiesel starts to blame God for the misdoing he has posed on him especially since he was a devout worshiper. This soon turns into Elie completely rejecting God and doubting his entire existence. For most of us, at first glance, this seems extremely harsh and irrational but I too would feel this way. Wiesel put his heart and soul into the loving of God and he felt as if he was betrayed. “Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust.” In the book, many literary terms are used to depict the silence portrayed through many characters.
In the next stage, the narrator is faced with the emotional struggle of not choosing to help the man. His extreme guilt and apprehension tests his mental state. Although the narrator does not end the struggle stage with a period of peace or fulfillment, he understands and comes to terms that he was wrong in not helping the man. “That I was wrong, dreadfully wrong, not to step forward in his time of need.” In the final stage of return and reintegration, the hero does not want to return home because of a lack of desire to return to the disorder and turmoil, or the struggle stage may have weakened the hero to such an extent that he does not want to risk facing further danger. The hero is then faced again with some sort
However, if God exists and one does not believe he/she will receive eternal punishment. Therefore, any sensible person should believe in God because the risk is greater to do otherwise. By breaking down this wager one is able to perceive what he/she risks by not believing in God and in turn causes them to evaluate their future in the after-life. One of the most criticized elements of Pascal’s Wager is that it assumes God rewards belief. Is it really rational to believe that God will reward blind faith and punish those who do believe in moral justice but do not necessarily believe in him?
He begins to lived by what he had seen experienced rather than by faith and hope. In the last paragraph Hawthorne, introduces Goodman Brown as an insecure and fearful character, in which his suspicions become the reason for him to lose his faith. "A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distasteful, if not a desperate man, did he become, from the night of that fearful dream. "(271) Further more, Goodman Browns life continues, with doubt,uncertainty, and without faith,:"They carved no hopeful verse upon his tombstone; for his dying hour was
“I'm Andy, he screamed wordlessly, I'm Andy.” (P. 196) He began to hate his identity as a Royal and he want to die as Andy. Being a Royal was not important for Andy anymore. Being himself meant much more than being a Royal. At the same time, he also realized that he was going to miss a lot of meaningful things that he hadn’t even started yet. He was mourning how short to end up his life.