NIGHT THEME Elies Struggle to Maintain Faith in

NIGHT: THEME

Elie’s Struggle to Maintain Faith in God Elie’s struggle with his faith is a dominant conflict in Night. At the beginning of the memoir, his faith in God is absolute. His belief in 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.

Elie’s faith in the goodness of the world is forever shaken by the cruelty and evil he witnesses during the Holocaust. He cannot imagine that the concentration camps’ unbelievable, disgusting cruelty could possibly mean that God exists. He wonders how God could be part of such cruelty and how he could allow such things to take place.

Inhumanity Toward Other Humans Elie’s struggle is also because of his shaken faith in everything around him. After experiencing such the horrors of the concentration camps, Elie can no longer make sense of his world.

His conflict results from his painful experience with the Nazis, but also from the cruelty he sees fellow prisoners inflict on each other. Elie also becomes aware of the cruelty of which he himself is capable. Everything he experiences in the war shows him how horribly people can treat one another—a thought that troubles him deeply.

So many aspects of the Holocaust are difficult to understand, but the most is how human beings could slaughter millions of innocent victims. Elie highlights this tragedy by pulling the Nazis into focus first as human beings, and then, as the memoir shifts to the concentration camps, showing the brutal atrocities that they committed.

As well, Night shows that cruelty leads to more cruelty. Instead of comforting each other in times of difficulty, the prisoners respond to their circumstances by turning against one an A Kapo says to Elie, “Here, every man has to fight for himself and not think of anyone else. . Here, there are no fathers, no brothers, no friends. Everyone lives and dies for himself alone. ” The Kapos’ position symbolizes the way the Holocaust’s cruelty bred cruelty in its victims, turning people against each other.