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Joshua Martin
Mr. Bigelow
English 10
April 9, 2014
Lost, Not Broken
Faith serves a variety of purposes in the book from depicting Elie
Wiesels devotion, to help show the horror of the circumstances. Faith was
used by many in the camps as a source of hope and gave them something to
live for. Faith and the loss of it was used by the author as a sign that hope
was still alive, or the opposite, that one has lost all hope. In Elie Wiesels
Night, the author puts the idea of faith to good use to better show the mental
and spiritual cost of the Holocaust. At the beginning of the book faith was the
chief motive for how Elie lived and what he did, as the book progresses and
horrible occurrences befall Elie his faith starts to dwindle as does his hope,
late in the book the idea is portrayed that Elie has completely lost faith in not
only god, but god, himself, and those around him.
Early in the book Elies chief fulfillment of his life is religion. He devotes
all his time to the study of Kabbalah despite the fact that when he asked his
father for permission he said that one must be thirty before venturing into
the world of mysticism you are too young(4). His father even tried to drive

the idea of studying Kabbalah from his mind(4). This shows Elies devotion
to god to who he puts before his family and his father. Elie believes that
everything
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god does is right and sees him as a perfect being. By the time much of the
book is said and done, Elies views of his god change drastically as family
gains precedence over god.
There is a point in the story where Elies faith starts to dwindle as he
asks how god can let things like this happen to his children. Elie starts to
have instances where his thoughts point towards the idea where he has lost
faith Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever (34).
While later in the book he seems to revert back to his deeply religious and
faithful ways I thanked God, in an improvised prayer, for having created
mud in His Infinite and wondrous universe (38). This is the point in the book
where Elies faith is tested every day and slowly he starts to live for another
reason.
Near the end of the book almost all signs say that Elie has all but
completely lost his faith in god. In some instances Elie seemed to go as far
as rebel against god because he no longer accepted gods silence) (As I
swallowed my ration of soup, I turned that act into a symbol of rebellion, of
protest against Him (69). Some parts late in the books have hints that Elie
still contains a small scrap of faith although this idea of faith has changed

from his earlier ideas: And in spite of myself, a prayer formed inside me, a
prayer to a god in whom I no longer believed (91). All of these instances
seem to go back and forth between the total loss of faith and the possession
of faith but in a revised form that does not believe everything god does is
right. This change in belief helped Elie stay alive by giving him hope early in
the book and allowing family and more importantly his father come to the
front later in the book giving Elie someone and something to live for.
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To conclude, faith changed as the book Night progressed and every
form it embodied helped Elie survive. The early faith and belief in god gave
him hope which made him not give up. Later in the book the role of the
father took precedence over Elies belief in god which gave both Elie and his
father a reason to survive. Every from of belief Elie possessed helped his
survive the circumstances and without his changing views of faith he would
not have survived.