Hanging in Night by Elie Wiesel Essay Example

In Night, his memoir of Holocaust survival, Elie Wiesel recounts two hangings he witnesses at Buna. In one incident, a young thief rejects a gallows blindfold and uses his last moment of life to shout, “Long live liberty! My curse on Germany!” thus inspiring his fellow-prisoners.  In the other, the servant of a saboteur and thief, a “child with a delicate and beautiful face,” strangles slowly for half an hour, causing the onlookers to despair.  Wiesel uses these two contrasting scenes of execution to show Elie’s loss of faith in God.

Although Elie grows up devoted to learning about God and practicing Judaism, several months in concentration camps affected him so much that he says, “I no longer prayed”. Instead, Elie transfers his faith to humans such as the Allies who bomb the camp factories. Recent air raids have given hope and joy to the people in the camps. A week later, the Germans stage a public hanging to try to dampen that hope.  As they wait, Juliek tells Elie  “They’re expecting trouble…”(61) referring to the guards. The trouble being expected is a side product of hope. The Jews have had their hopes diminished more and more since arriving that it ends up with the guards trying to scare them and diminish this new found hope. According to Elie, the victim is “tall and strong, a giant compared to [him]” (61). The man seems to be at peace with his upcoming death. He is “pale, but seem[s] more solemn than frightened. His manacled hands [do] not tremble” (62) as two guards lead him to the gallows.  The Germans announce that the execution is meant to be “a warning and an example to all prisoners,”(62), but the prisoner turns it into an inspiration for them by shouting his defiance.  Elie is so impressed with this show of courage that he says his ordinary soup, “taste[s] better than ever…” (63).

However, Elie recalls another execution that has the opposite effect on him.  The reader can see how often the Germans try to provide examples when Elie refers to “the usual ritual” of being surrounded by guards with machine guns (64), but this hanging is different: the soldiers “seem more preoccupied, more worried, than usual” since one of the three victims is a “beloved” adolescent “with a delicate and beautiful face” (63) who has already been tortured. The inmates watch the boy trying to hold back tears and then stare in horror as the boy, too light to have his neck broken by hanging, suffers for half an hour, strangling. A man behind Elie asks “For God’s sake, where is God?”(65) and Elie thinks that God himself is “hanging … from [the] gallows…”(65). This theme of everyone losing hope is shown throughout Elie’s recount, but most are pleading for God and for him to save or comfort them. Elie is so appalled by the barbarity of the Germans against such a helpless victim that he is beyond comfort. Elie says after this, “the soup taste[s] of corpses” (65), showing how his mind is overwhelmed by death and suffering. 

In ordinary life, it takes a lot for a person to lose hope, especially when religious practice has been a huge focus and interest.  For Elie, for whom prayer was once as natural as breathing, the pain in his soul is intense. The description of these two hangings show how fragile the emotions of the inmates are and how easily their spirits can be crushed.