| Silence is a very ubiquitous theme in Night. The first type of silence that Eliezer encounters is the silence of God. He believes that God has abandoned the Jews, his chosen people. He and his fellow Jewish prisoners wonder how an all-knowing, all-powerful God could allow such a horrific and cruel thing as the Holocaust to take place. The existence of this horror, and the lack of some form of divine intervention, shakes Eliezer’s faith in God. | This silence that the Jews experience from God is similar to the biblical story of the Akedah, or the binding of Isaac by Abraham, found in Hebrew Scriptures. In the Akedah, God tests Abraham’s faith by asking him to sacrifice his son, Isaac. Abraham does not doubt God, and he ties Isaac to a sacrificial altar. He raises a knife to sacrifice him, but at the last minute God sends an angel to save Isaac. The angel explains that God only wanted to test Abraham’s faith and that God would never allow him to shed innocent blood. God speaks out and saves an innocent in the story of the Akedah, but he remains utterly silent during the horrors of the Holocaust. |
| Another form of silence prevalent in Night is the silence of the Jews themselves. When his father is beaten at the end of his life, Eliezer remembers, “I did not move. I was afraid,” and he begins to feel guilty about not helping his father or standing up for him. Eliezer notes throughout the book that it was the passivity and inactiveness of the Jews that allowed the Holocaust to continue. Once Eliezer’s faith in a merciful, benevolent God had started to fade, he began to see the Nazi massacre of the Jews as simply that, a massacre. If the Jews were to put up a fight, to struggle against their Nazi oppressors, then Eliezer would be able to see the Nazis as an evil force working against God, and that God was still on their side, though not intervening directly. | |
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