Tora Finch Ms.
Daniel Honor’s lit. 1B 9 November 2011 The Eve of Rosh Hashanah The eve of Rosh Hashanah had come but Wiesel had no reason to bless God. Why should he bless him? Is it because God had thousands of children burned in his pits, or that he, out of every race, chose to torture them instead and created Auschwitz and the other camps. Wiesel has lost all faith in what he believed in; is there a turning point from there? In Night, Elie Wiesel uses diction and syntax to describe the hardships of his experiences in the Holocaust.The Jewish year was nearly over and nothing had changed Wiesel’s opinion on God.
Every prisoner crowded in just to attend the solemn service of forgiveness of their sins to which Wiesel asked these questions, “What are You, my God, compared to this afflicted crowd, proclaiming to You their faith, their anger, their revolt? What does Your greatness mean, Lord of the universe, in the face if all this weakness, this decomposition, and this decay? Why do You still trouble their sick minds, their crippled bodies? ” (Wiesel 49). To him, he had no God.It was just him praying to what others thought of was a magnificent being of which help did not come from. Why did they depend on God so much? Why did they praise him when “…Thou Who hast chosen [them] to be butchered on Thine altar” (Wiesel 49)? The entire congregation was sobbing uncontrollably to which the officiant rose, as powerful as he was, and through the broken tears and sighs of “all the earth and the Universe are God’s” (Wiesel 50).
Wiesel thought things over just to come to the conclusion of that “man is very strong, greater than God” (Wiesel 50).After what he had been through his conclusion was, in his mind, right. God betrayed him, his dad, and every single prisoner kept at the camp to which he “allowed [them] to be tortured, butchered, gassed, burned…” (Wiesel 50). There was little hope in which he believed in. He was not capable of continuing lamentation, but all the same “[he] felt very strong. [He] was the accuser, God the accused” (Wiesel 50).
Alone in the world without man and without man is how he carried himself. As Wiesel looked around, he noticed the congregation praying to the Almighty to whom they have been tied to for so long.The prisoners at the camp all got up from their praying knees and were starting for the Kaddish. Before they could begin they recited it, the Kaddish, over and over.
The Jewish year was over. No more would Wiesel have to question what he believed in until the next year around, and who knows, maybe everything will be better by then so he thinks. In the end, Wiesel had appeared to give up on what he believed in, but who could blame him with all of the events of the Holocaust surrounding him. Was there faith? There was some and it dissipated over the years to which he never thought would happen.His mood changed from this God-loving, young fellow to this inquisitive person of which he questioned if there even was a God. If there were, why would he do this? The language he used hit along the element of pathos.
He showed emotion and where his downfalls were. He, in a sense, questioned you to think to yourself, is there a God? The courage, sacrifices, moments when he wanted to break down were all thoughts that Wiesel put into words is what make this an emotional setting. Works Cited Wiesel, Elie. Night: with Connected Readings. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2000. Print.
