Prompt #2-Night Blog Post #4- Myles Peyton Holloway

Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night introduced many important themes as it progressed. One of the most important themes of the book was faith which significantly altered Elie’s perception of humanity. Learning about Elie’s relationship with God and a higher power was so powerful that it made me question my own beliefs. Elie’s main question throughout the book was basically that if there is such a God with infinite power, why would he allow something this terrible to occur? Sadly, the question is never answered in the book, (and I’m not sure if anyone can answer this) but the message that I learned from it was that good goes around. Since Elie looked out for his father throughout his whole journey, Elie was blessed enough to survive. This is important because it ties in with the role of luck in the novel. The roles of faith and luck are constantly counteracting each other in the book. Elie discusses multiple incidents where his family could’ve been saved, or Elie himself could’ve died a lot earlier than he did. For example, If Elie’s family was quick enough to answer the knock on the door at the beginning of the book, his whole family could’ve fled the Holocaust as a whole. Elie could also have been sent straight to the furnace if a random figure hadn’t told him to lie about his age. Luck and faith are similar in that nothing is guaranteed with either. However, the suspense that builds when your life is in the hands of luck is unbearable. When dealing with faith, you feel safe since faith is all about being hopeful and optimistic. In short, depending on luck is unsettling and leaves you anxious. While faith is thinking of all the best possible outcomes and disregarding the negatives. These examples directly connect back to how having a bit more faith could have carried Elie and his family through all the rough times. A common question that is often brought up when it comes to preventing the Holocaust in the first place is “Why didn’t other countries help out?” or “What took other countries so long to intervene?” Although the Holocaust ended almost eighty years ago, this is an issue that we still struggle with in the world today. A problem we often run into is being hesitant to help others due to our fear, doubt, and assumptions. In Elie’s case, he was hesitant to stand up for his father when the guards would yell at him. This is a result of depleting faith. We, as humans, tend to wait until the very last possible moment to take action. For example, America is losing trees at an alarming rate and not enough is being done. I have a feeling we won’t take action until the very last tree when it’s too late. Worldwide procrastination has been a problem as far back as World War II and I believe that many lives could’ve been saved if we had acted faster. I’ve also noticed that society tends to protect children from the horrors of our past mistakes instead of acknowledging that they happened and learning how we can stop them from happening again. In the movie Life is Beautiful, the main plot point is that the father kept his son from even knowing what was going on during the holocaust. Although this was a very interesting aspect of the movie, maybe it wouldn’t be the best way to take care of a situation like this. An alternative could be telling the kid what is going on so he can be strong and better educate people later on in his life, similar to how Elie was able to.

Comments

  1. Jameson M.November 2, 2019 at 8:33 AM

    I love your paragraphs! Though it was hard to read because of the glitch, I liked your theme of Faith and comparing it to luck in that neither can guarantee your safety and livelihood. Overall, you did a great job including the different questions that she asked in the prompt, and there is not really anything i can point out immediately that I would change.

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  2. AnonymousNovember 3, 2019 at 2:32 PM

    Myles, early on here you say you learned that good goes around. you say "Since Elie looked out for his father throughout his whole journey, Elie was blessed enough to survive". Yet you don't give any example of this happening. If anything, he would have benefited by not looking out for his father. If Elie took his fathers rations and did not use his own energy for his father wouldn't he have had a better chance of surviving?

    You also talk about the difference between faith and luck but what you say really doesn't make sense. You talk about people depending on luck or faith. You say, "depending on luck is unsettling and leaves you anxious. While faith is thinking of all the best possible outcomes and disregarding the negatives". While I agree with you that Faith is about positivity, having faith does not change the fact that the negatives exist. If one is ignorant of the negatives and thus are not prepared for them, would it not hurt them more when the negatives come? Also, depending on luck is practically no different than depending on faith, both really come down to hoping something good will happen. You say "having a bit more faith could have carried Elie and his family through all the rough times".
    But how? They were about as faithful as one can get but his mother and sister still died right off the train, and faith can't cure his father's dysentery.

    When you talk about the problem with sheltering children from the events of the Holocaust I disagree. His son was around six. No six year old should be taught about gas chambers and Nazism. Think about how many nightmares you would have gotten after going to the Holocaust Museum as a six year old.

    -James

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