Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas
explored in a literary work.
Eliezer’s Struggle to Maintain
Faith in a Benevolent God
Eliezer’s struggle with his faith is a dominant conflict
in Night. At the beginning of the work, his faith
in God is absolute. When asked why he prays to God, he answers,
“Why did I pray? . . . Why did I live? Why did I breathe?” His belief
in an omnipotent, benevolent God is unconditional, and he cannot
imagine living without faith in a divine power. But this faith is
shaken by his experience during the Holocaust.
Initially, Eliezer’s faith is a product of his studies
in Jewish mysticism, which teach him that God is everywhere in the
world, that nothing exists without God, that in fact everything
in the physical world is an “emanation,” or reflection, of the divine
world. In other words, Eliezer has grown up believing that everything
on Earth reflects God’s holiness and power. His faith is grounded
in the idea that God is everywhere, all the time, that his divinity
touches every aspect of his daily life. Since God is good, his studies
teach him, and God is everywhere in the world, the world must therefore
be good.
Eliezer’s faith in the goodness of the world is irreparably
shaken, however, by the cruelty and evil he witnesses during the
Holocaust. He cannot imagine that the concentration camps’ unbelievable,
disgusting cruelty could possibly reflect divinity. He wonders how
a benevolent God could be part of such depravity and how an omnipotent
God could permit such cruelty to take place. His faith is equally
shaken by the cruelty and selfishness he sees among the prisoners.
If all the prisoners were to unite to oppose the cruel oppression
of the Nazis, Eliezer believes, then maybe he could understand the
Nazi menace as an evil aberration. He would then be able to maintain
the belief that humankind is essentially good. But he sees that
the Holocaust exposes the selfishness, evil, and cruelty of which everybody—not
only the Nazis, but also his fellow prisoners, his fellow Jews,
even himself—is capable. If the world is so disgusting and cruel,
he feels, then God either must be disgusting and cruel or must not
exist at all.
Though this realization seems to annihilate his faith,
Eliezer manages to retain some of this faith throughout his experiences.
At certain moments—during his first night in the camp and during
the hanging of the pipel—Eliezer does grapple with
his faith, but his struggle should not be confused with a complete
abandonment of his faith. This struggle doesn’t diminish his belief
in God; rather, it is essential to the existence of that belief.
When Moishe the Beadle is asked why he prays, he replies, “I pray
to the God within me that He will give me the strength to ask Him
the right questions.” In other words, questioning is
fundamental to the idea of faith in God. The Holocaust forces Eliezer
to ask horrible questions about the nature of good and evil and
about whether God exists. But the very fact that he asks these questions
reflects his commitment to God.
Discussing his own experience, Wiesel once wrote, “My
anger rises up within faith and not outside it.” Eliezer’s struggle
reflects such a sentiment. Only in the lowest moments of his faith
does he turn his back on God. Indeed, even when Eliezer says that
he has given up on God completely, Wiesel’s constant use of religious
metaphors undercuts what Eliezer says he believes. Eliezer even
refers to biblical passages when he denies his faith. When he fears
that he might abandon his father, he prays to God, and, after his
father’s death, he expresses regret that there was no religious
memorial. At the end of the book, even though he has been forever
changed by his Holocaust experience, Eliezer emerges with his faith
intact.
Silence
In one of Night’s most famous passages,
Eliezer states, “Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which
deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live.” It is the
idea of God’s silence that he finds most troubling, as this description
of an event at Buna reveals: as the Gestapo hangs a young boy, a
man asks, “Where is God?” yet the only response is “[t]otal silence
throughout the camp.” Eliezer and his companions are left to wonder
how an all-knowing, all-powerful God can allow such horror and
cruelty to occur, especially to such devout worshipers. The existence
of this horror, and the lack of a divine response, forever shakes
Eliezer’s faith in God.
