The Vicissitude of Faith in Night by Elie Wiesel Essay Example for Free

The Vicissitude of Faith in Night by Elie Wiesel Essay The Vicissitude of Faith in Night When we’re young and we have a toy or a play thing, we get angry if that thing is taken away from us; we throw a tantrum. This is because the toy retains our focus and interest, and then it’s just ripped away. Elie Wiesel was prematurely ripped from his world of family and faith, forced to the infamous concentration camp of Auschwitz to wither away along with the burned remains of his past and hopes. The drastic change from Wiesel’s rendition of his experiences during the Holocaust, Night, portrays many themes throughout the entirety of its pages, with one of the most prominent themes being Elie’s own faith and its vicissitude over time, of which is seen in the early years of his life where he was devout to his religion, to the train ride and arrival at Auschwitz where he begs God to help, ending in the death of his God as the children are hung, and the total rejection of a God altogether. As a child, before the Holocaust, Wiesel was a fervent and dedicated Jew. Early in the pages of Night, Wiesel recalls a question that his father had asked him. â€Å" ‘Why do you pray? ’ he asked me, after a moment. Why did I pray? A strange question. Why did I live? Why did I breathe? † (Wiesel 2). Wiesel’s life is centered around his religion; he finds it completely abstruse for his father to question his praying, because praying is what he does. Praying, faith, Judaism; all these things are his toys. Wiesel doesn’t just worship to worship, he worships because that is the thing he gets to play with. Imagine if these toys were taken away from him? These are just any toys, these toys are essential to his sanity and well-being. He compares his faith and prayer to his breathing. Not only does he need them, but losing them would be a debility that Wiesel isn’t sure he can face. Despite the necessity to retain this, they ignore the warnings and threats that the Nazis pose, and he and his family remain almost blissfully ignorant of the fact that there is the threat of their toys being ripped away and everything they know languishing into little more than a memory. This threat is sitting right in their front yard, and they have no idea of the vicissitude that will come and change their lives when the threat walks onto the porch, rolls up its sleeves, and knocks on the door. â€Å"Anguish. German soliders— with their steel helmets, and their emblem, the death’s hand. † (Wiesel 7). Everybody had denied it, but there they were. The Germans had come to Elie’s home of Sighet despite everyone’s belief. The Germans seemed nice at first, but this view would be ephemeral. The Germans first housed themselves inside the homes of the Jews, but this soon cascaded into constantly forcing them to give up their valuables, pushing them away from their homes until one day they were loaded onto the train and all Elie had left were the clothes on his back, his family, and God. The events leading up to his arrival were periods where he begged for God. He begged to God, whom he had dedicated his life, to save him and his family from the abrasive fist of the concentration camp. Once at the reception center, this is where he the game changes. When he watches the people around him pray for their lives, he just wonders â€Å"Why? † Why should he bless His name, when He has gone mute? In just a few short weeks, everything that he ever based his life on he questioned and went against. This changes his view on the world entirely. He now knows that God, the one who has always been beside him, can turn away from the torture of millions of people like it were nothing. He went from wholeheartedly giving his life to God, to eventually abjuring him altogether and getting angry at him. This is totally different for him; he’d never felt any distain for him until then. This shatters him, but at least his God is still there; still existent even though he looks away from the destruction. Unfortunately, this can’t last long. Wiesel had endured a lot during his time in concentration camps. Knowing that his God had turned his back on him was painful; without God the conditions made him extremely vulnerable and blighted. The Germans were persistent in crushing every one of them. They were determined to teach those who stepped out of line a lesson, and give an example of punishments to everyone else. And so, thusly, there were hangings. And, at one of these hangings was a child, who had been accused of something by the Germans and was thusly hanged. You can tell that all of Wiesel’s hope in God is lost when he says, â€Å" ‘Where is He? Here He is— He is hanging here on this gallows†¦Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ † (Wiesel 62). Whilst everyone is looking for God, he already knows where he is. He is dead; he has been hanged just like everyone else. Before, he just rejected his God. God was just a figure who had ignored him in a time of need. But when he witnessed those hangings, he realized that God had not turned his back on him. God had tried to enter and was murdered. The safety of God and the sanctuary that comes with it was dead inside all of them. It was not God who had turned his back; it was the Germans who had forced him away. Wiesel went through many treacherous experiences during his time in concentration camps, but one of the worst was the change in is faith. Judaism used to be his world, he used to dedicate his life to it. It says early on in the book that every day he would study the Talmud in the first half of the day, and then he would go to the synagogue in the other half. One day, this was all ripped away from him. He used to be faithful, but soon afterwards he was left with the dawning realization that the God he was begging for help would no longer listen. He wouldn’t listen because his God couldn’t listen anymore. The Nazis made sure that anything having to do with Judaism was punished and murdered, and that goes for his God too. His toy was faith, the God that lay inside him where he could go for hope. But the Nazis took it away from him. At first, it would seem as if God had betrayed him. This was not the case, God had not betrayed him. The God that he held inside him, the God he loved and lived with and the God who had always been there had been beaten out of him and killed. This toy was a piece of him he can never have back. All because someone came up, took it, and crushed it. The toy became broken, and just like that, so did Wiesel.

Gay Marriage Should NOT Be Legal :: Argumentative Persuasive Essays

  The Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the Constitution guarantees a right to same-sex marriage. Yet, same-sex marriage continues to be a highly debated issue that leaves our society searching for answers. Traditionally marriage is the union of a man and a woman. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition of marriage reads "to join as a husband and wife according to law and custom; to take as husband or wife; to enter into a close union" (452). Dictionaries are not a biased publication and serve as a guide to what words mean. The words "husband" and "wife" show that marriage is a close union between a man and a woman. This idea could be disputed if we only looked at the third part of a definition?"to enter into a close union." But if we only look at the third part, then we change the definition altogether. Obviously we can not look only at a dictionary to gain a deeply rooted belief; so let us continue with the search for a firm foundation. Elections are being affected by the way people stand on this issue. After the 1992 election, President Clinton, who is said by Human Events to be the most "pro-gay President in history," adamantly tried to abolish the ban on gays in the military. This was a victory cry for many homosexual activists. Then in the 1996 election, President Clinton admitted he would not openly oppose the bill in Congress that defines marriage as "a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife" ("Same-sex Marriage Imperils the Family"). President Clinton, who generally supports gay rights, gives Americans a reason to believe that perhaps gay marriage is one step too far. Even First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton agreed that marriage should be a union of a man and a woman in her statement, "Marriage has got historic, religious, and moral content that goes back to the beginning of time, and I think a marriage is as a marriage has always been: between a man and a woman" (State of the Union"). In the recent 2000 Election, both George W. Bush and Al Gore agree with the Defense of Marriage act (DOMA), which "implies that allowing homosexuals to marry constituted an 'attack' on the existing institution" ("State of the Union"). It is difficult to find many issues with which these two candidates can agree. So, it seems that since they do agree, we can assume that a gay marriage would in fact intrude upon the values of not only marriage but also we as a people.

Chance & Story Essay

In third grade through sixth, I had a friend named Chance. We were best friends and often spent long days and nights over at each other’s house. Whenever I stayed at Chance’s, the house was filled with noise from the two of us and his six brothers and sisters. Chance’s family was Mormon, a religion that my family knew nothing about except the name. He once explained why his family was so large, but it made little sense to me at that time. During the summer between sixth and seventh grade Chance’s family moved away to Utah. I’ve learned a bit more about Mormons since but this assignment offered me an opportunity to learn more about the religion of my friend and how Mormons feel about how they are perceived in the United States, especially concerning the law and discrimination. Chance’s family was only one of many Mormons in my town and surrounding areas. Patty is a good friend of mine who attends the Mormon church in town since she was a baby, so through her I was able to find three people to interview. Her parents were not available, but she introduced me to a Mormon missionary Brian, a neighbor Barbara, and Chris, her mother’s home- teacher. Brian is twenty years old and is originally from Nova Scotia, Canada. He is currently nearing the end of his Mormon mission, which is a semi-required two year work for Mormon young men to an area chosen by the head church in Salt Lake City, Utah. He had just graduated high school when he began the training for the mission. His mission is to go door to door in the neighborhoods to share his beliefs and teach anyone interested about the basics of the church. Barbara is also not originally from this area. She was born and raised in Provo, Utah, which is where the Mormon university Brigham Young is located. She moved here ten years ago when her husband’s job transferred. She is forty-three years old, has five children between six and fifteen, has a college degree from BYU in marketing but doesn’t currently work outside her home, and has been married for twenty-three years. Chris is from this area and has lived here all of his fifty-six years. He is an elder at the church, has four children and sixteen grandchildren so far, works as a machine repairer, and volunteers for the church as a home-teacher in which he regularly visits church members for further teaching about the church. Having such different subjects to interview proved very interesting. Each shared that they have dealt with some sort of discrimination in their lifetimes as Mormons. They all indicated that the problems are rarely very serious and never violent, but are more subtle. Barbara notices the negative attitude towards Mormons most of the three because she lived for so long in Utah, which is heavily populated with Mormons, especially where she lived in Provo. She said that when the family moved, she was surprised to find that there are people who still believe Mormons are the many-wives religion. One woman at her children’s school even asked once if Barbara was one of several wives of her husband. Neither Brian nor Chris said that they have had this problem. Brian said his problem is more centered on his mission work. He has often heard people say ‘there go the two-by-twos. ’ The missionaries work in pairs, so he said the term stuck. For the most part, he says people are friendly towards him and often comment that Mormons are the nicest people they know, but very few choose to actually discuss the church’s teachings. Instead Brian and Chris both said that most people are interested in if Mormons are a cult that traps unsuspecting victims. Barbara also said this is something people have asked in round-about ways such as through her kids. All three said that it is often frustrating the poor view that they feel the majority of Americans have toward the Mormon Church. Barbara and Chris’s children mostly have other Mormon friends, and those that are not Mormon are seldom allowed to attend activities organized for the Mormon youth such as dances, outings, or sport activities if they are to be held at the church. They say that no one has said directly why the kids can’t attend, but all three believe that it is related to the negative view of the church. They all also indicated that any issues that arise are always social in nature, that they have never had a problem with employers or the law regarding discrimination. Interestingly, as I interviewed each person, I found myself also curious about the ‘oddities’ of the Mormon church. When Barbara mentioned the many-wives idea, I wanted to know more about it. So I was doing exactly what the three had said most people do: expressing curiosity about the strangeness instead of the good qualities of the church or its teachings. However, I did learn quite a bit about the basic structure of the church, why it is based in Utah, and how Mormons view the world and the after-life. Since the problems that Mormons experience are almost always social, it is a matter of slowly changing the public’s view of the church. Chris believes that the commercials the church has put on television have gone a long way in changing perceptions about the church. Brian said that attitudes are better in Canada towards the church most likely because it started in the USA, where it experienced a lot of discrimination in its beginnings. So it is a matter of time and continued sharing for the Mormon Church to be recognized as a legitimate religion and not as a cult.

The Heart Reading And Writing The Medieval Subject

In â€Å"The Book of the Heart: Reading and Writing the Medieval Subject†, written by Eric Jager, he states that in the world of visual art in the medieval era, â€Å"book of the heart† was a commonly used image. Mr. Jager point out the different trends the term â€Å"book of the heart† goes through. Focusing on how the term went from literal to a commonly used figurative phrase, he tries to show how a frequently used term made such an impact on the past and the present. Using medieval art, literature, and other authors’ works, he analyzes the use of hearts and books, to show how the term takes on different trends. Jager examines the significance of the heart and how it was looked at as a book, and then uses art and literature to corroborate his idea. Jager’s work is an interpretive work that reflects history of the use of language as a trope. Using a book by Ernst Robert Curtius, he shows how the heart was used as a trope, but was deeply imbedded in interior writing that went back to ancient times. Also, to use more recent work, Jager quotes Jacques Derrida, when he said â€Å"a history of this metaphor had yet to be written†. Linking the trope with a platonic standpoint, I was reminded of St. Augustine. Jager, in a brief description, says that hearts and books were things, which symbolized different signs. The things were the hearts and books, while the sign was that the hearts and books represented a concept of knowledge, truth, and totality. Starting out, the heart was the central part ofShow MoreRelatedWilliam Chaucer s Chretien De Troyes 1659 Words   |  7 PagesWhen asked to envision medieval courts, often images from Game of Thrones or The Tudors come to mind -- maybe even Sir Lancelot and jousting. 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