Abhinav ThiyaguThiyagu

Mrs. Marsella-Jensen
English 10H, Period 6
17 December, 2021

Straying Away
Elie’s faith towards god reshapes throughout the course of the novel when facing
certain circumstances in the concentration camp. The tragedy at the concentration
camp had made Elie slowly lose his faith in god and change his identity as a whole.
He was recognized by his religious dedication but without it, he was a completely
different person. As a result of losing his faith, his priorities shifted away from
religion and towards his physiological needs instead.
Before being taken to the concentration camp, Elie’s whole life revolved around his
faith towards good. He always prioritized religious practices above any other
activity. Elie had “studied Talmud, and by night would run to the synagogue to weep
over the destruction of the temple”, showing his dedication towards his God (Wiesel
3). The time of day shows that Elie is always participating in religious practices
throughout his day. However, Elie loses faith when he is transported to the
concentration camp. When Elie was being taken away from his home,“(he) looked at
(his) house in which (he) had spent years seeking my God, fasting to hasten the
coming of the Messiah, imagining what (his) life would be like later. Yet (he) felt
a little sadness”, he left some of his “faith” behind with his childhood home
(Wiesel 19). The faith he leaves at home is never recovered at the camp and marks
the start of his loss in faith.
Elie’s faith starts to deteriorate after he arrives at the concentration camp. At
the camp, “for the first time, (he) felt anger rising within (him). Why should (he)
sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe,
chose to be silent. What was there to thank Him for?” (Wiesel 33). After realizing
the horrors going on around them when entering Birkenau, Elie starts to lose faith
in his god. The diction “chose” implies that god didn’t want to help them rather
than he couldn’t help them. He questions why he should worship his god when his god
turns his back on his followers. His identity begins to change as he loses faith
because he feels betrayed by his god since had looked up to his god and dedicated
his whole life to him. His hope is lost from the constant trauma that dehumanized
him and beat him down and his god had simply neglected him. Though some of his
faith in his god has been lost, not all of it is gone. When approaching the pit, he
believed that if “(he) was going to kill myself, this was the time. (His) column
had only some fifteen steps to go. (He) bit (his) lips so that (his) father would
not hear (his) teeth chattering”, and found himself “whispering the words:
‘Yisgadal, veyiskadash, shmey raba … May his name be exalted and sanctified …’.
(His) heart was about to burst. There, (he) was face to face with the Angel of
Death” (Wiesel 33). Out of desperation, he prays to his god even if he believes
that he won’t respond to his prayer. The faith he still has in God, even if little,
the words of Jewish prayer gave him some comfort.
The faith he has in God eventually was completely lost. After witnessing
the atrocities at the concentration camps, Elie says, “Never shall I forget that
night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times
sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the small faces of
the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky. Never
shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget
the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.
Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my
dreams to ashes. Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live
as long as God Himself”, and the repetition of “never shall I”, emphasizes the
traumatic events he witnessed and how he will carry it around with him for the rest
of his life (Wiesel 34). Furthermore, he says that his god has been murdered,
representing his lost in faith. The diction “murdered” implies that his God and
faith had been ripped away from him and killed by the attrocities occuring at the
detention camps, instead of being just absent. These experiences forever stick to
him so his faith can never bebe rebuilt and his God can never be reborn. When
deciding whether or not the Elie and the prisoners should fast, he says, “To fast
could mean a more certain, more rapid death. In this place, we were always fasting.
It was Yom Kippur year-round. But there were those who said we should fast,
precisely because it was dangerous to do so” (Wiesel 69). They were already given
very little food so the unbearable feeling of hunger had resulted in him deciding
to give up his religion so that he could get an extra crumb of bread. In Maslow’s
Hierarchy of Needs, food comes before anything else since it is a physiological
need and since he is always hungry, his priority is to satisfy his hunger rather
than stick to his religion.
Elie’s identity had been reshaped from the scarring experiences Elie went
through in the concentration camps and affected his priorities. His priorities
changed to survival and physiological needs rather than religion. The camp made him
lose all faith in his god and left Elie unable to rebuild the faith he once had.
Even though he survived, the person he once was is dead and his identity has been
reshaped and molded by trauma into a completely different person. The traumatic
experiences and desperacy one experiences in their life shapes their identity.