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Devout
"Why did I pray? Strange question. Why did I live? Why did I breathe?" Ellie compares his faith to living and breathing. -
Faithful
"By day I studied Talmud and by night I would run to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the Temple." -
Begins to hate his oppressors
"That was when I began to hate them, and my hatred remains our only link today. They were our first oppressors. They were the faces of hell and death." Elie traces his hatred back to this moment when he recalls the treatment they faced upon being deported. -
Questioning faith
I looked at my house in which I had spent years seeking my God, fasting to hasten the coming of the Messiah, imagining what my life would be like later. Yet I felt little sadness. My mind was empty." (pg. 19) Ellie begins to question his earlier faithfulness -
Alone
"I those days, I fully believed that the salvation of the world depended on every one of my deeds, on ever one of my prayers. But now, I no longer pleaded for anything. I was no longer able to lament...I was nothing but ashes now, but I felt myself to be stronger than this Almighty to whom my life had been bound for so long. In the midst of these men assembled for prayer, I felt like an observer, a stranger." (pg. 68) -
Doubt
"I concurred with Job! I was not denying His existence but I doubted His absolute justice." (pg. 45) He isn't saying there is no God, he believes there is a God but that his life is unfair. -
Yom Kippur (Rebellion)
"I no longer accepted God's silence. As I swallowed my ration of soup, I turned that act into a symbol of rebellion, of protest against Him. And I nibbled on my crust of bread. Deep inside me, I felt a great void opening" (pg. 69) In his perspective, he sees God allowing all the massacre and torture to ensue. He felt the loss of God that is supposed to protect him and he feels alone. -
Never shall I forget
"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." (pg. 34) Wiesel explains the mental scars he is left with after seeing such horrific events. How there is no more hope, an endless night with forever darkness. -
The Bell
"The bell. It was already time to part, to go to bed. The bell regulated everything. It gave me orders and I executed them blindly. I hated that bell. Whenever I happened to dream of a better world, I imagined a universe without a bell." (pg. 73) is a metaphor for his hatred towards God as like the bell had told him what to do and when. -
Forgotten
"And three days after he left, we forgot to say Kaddish." (pg. 77) Ellie and his dad promised Akiba Drumer to gather ten men, hold a special service and all his friends would say Kaddish in three days when he is sent to his death. Kaddish is a Jewish prayer however by three days they forgot to say Kaddish representing the insignificance of God's existence to them as the torture is too overwhelming, that God allowed this to happen. -
Reliance on Hitler than on God
"I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises to Jewish people" (pg. 81) Hitler followed up on his promises. Whereas the patient thought that God was not blessing the faithful. Hitler kept his word to the Jewish people. -
Liberation for Non-Followers
"After the war, I learned the fate of those who had remained at the infirmary. They were, quite simply, liberated by the Russians, two days after the evacuation." (pg. 82) if Ellie and his dad were to stay back at the infirmary they would have been liberated sooner by the Russians. -
Endless Road
"The road was endless. To allow oneself to be carried by the mob, to be swept away by blind fate...Our legs moved mechanically, in spite of us, without us." (pg. 87) maybe a metaphor for saying how being born/forced into the Jewish religion without much choice was like following the heard of sheep, following the status quo. -
Father to Never be Left Behind
"And in spite of myself, a prayer formed inside me, a prayer to this God in whom I no longer believed. "Oh God, Master of the Universe, give me the strength never to do what Rabbi Eliahu's son has done." (pg. 91) At this point in time in the dead of winter after enduring so much with his father, he never wanted to leave his side like how Eliahu kept running with the heard while his father slowly got dragged further and further behind. -
Father to Maybe be Left Behind
"During the alert, I had followed the mob, not taking care of him. I knew he was running out of strength, close to death, and yet I had abandoned him...I was aware that I was doing it grudgingly. Just like Rabbi Eliahu's son, I had not passed the test. " (pg. 106-107) Ellie's bond and connection that keeps him sticking with his father are deteriorating. He values his own needs rather than using the last of his strength and food rations for his father. -
Father to be Left Behind
"They must have taken him away before daybreak and taken him to the crematorium. Perhaps he was still breathing...No prayers were said over his tomb. No candlelit in his memory. His last word had been my name. He had called out to me and I had not answered. I did not weep, and it pained me that I could not weep...I might have found something like: Free at last!..." (pg.112) Ellie has found no meaning in caring for his father. His father already died long ago, he is just a body without a soul. -
A Corpse
"One day when I was able to get up, I decided to look at myself in the mirror on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me." (pg. 115) Ellie finally was liberated by the Russians and Americans, and finally looking at himself after since the ghetto he has taken the shape of a corpse. He was once a boy, but now a corpse contemplating life or death.