Response to "Night"

This is one of the most amazing books I have ever read. So far Elie has lost himself and his religion. Watching all the cruelties of the Gastapo and SS have forced a soulless body to become the boy once known as Elie to become prisoner A-7713. Throughout the book Elie has been left alone, even with his Father still near him, he feels hatred to his Father when he is attacked and beaten. He feels that his Father should have been smarter and avoided getting beat. I think his Father's beating had this effect because his Father was the only thing Elie had left, he had even lost a golden crowned tooth. Watching the only possession he had left get destroyed by crippling blows from an iron pipe.

Elie experience a friend's character change drastically. His friend Beadle, at first he was a stereotypical "class-clown" kind of person, but after the Nazis took him he changed. He and other deportees were told to dig a large hole, not to many questioned what was the motive for this job. After doing so they got in a line and prepared themselves to die. The men, women, and children were slaughtered in the same brutal fashion, the only exception were babies, they were used as shot targets. The only way Beadle survived was because he was only wounded in his leg, but he still had to fall in the pit of bodies and fake death. When he told stories of this the town thought he went mad because no one could be this inhumane. Sadly they were wrong, the Gastapo came a few weeks after Beadles escape.

Another experience Elie encounters is his loss in faith. In the beginning chapter he wants to go forth in a religious life but as soon as he saw the crematories and his friends and friends children get cremated he lost all hope in God. After a hanging with two adults and one little boy that everyone loved, known to Elie as and angel-faced boy, he hears a man behind him ask, "Where is God now?" and Elie mentally responds, "Where is he? Here he is--He is hanging here on this gallows..." This is when I feel Elie had lost all relationship with a higher power.