It is common opinion that in times of turmoil, love is the strength that allows us to experience the "dark". However, Albert Camus and Elie Wiesel in their stories The Stranger and The Night challenge the idea that love will be the hero who ultimately saves everyone. Authors create characters who gain and lose love for family, community, and religion. They both start out on different paths, Eliezer a boy with family, love and everything good, and Meursault, an existentialist. Yet, they both end up on the same path. Religion is a great force in books, for whose love is that of God most forgiving, benevolent, and easiest to attain. However, religion in the worlds of Camus and Wiesel is a factor in isolation and loss of faith for both characters. Eliezer, in Sighet, is very religious, he goes to the Synagogue with everyone and then stays with Moishe the Priest learning Kabbalah. At first he feels "deeply observant" as Moishe gives him a glimpse into the more mystical side of religion, giving him an "answer" to God and how things work. «Man gets closer to God through the questions he asks him, [he loved to say] This is where true dialogue lies. Man asks and God answers. But we do not understand His answers… The true answers, [Eliezer], you will find only within yourself” (Wiesel, p.5). This quote shows us a vision of God, we do not understand God, yet we know that He is there and is benevolent. In this stage Eliezer feels a close love and bond towards God. There is no experience with the evils of the world so there are no evils in the world. Once in the concentration camps he sees everything, and that vision changes rapidly, at first they believe that “God is testing them”. The longer the stay, the lower the... center of the card... and yours holds you in place. At the end of both novellas, The Night and The Stranger, the protagonists Meursault and Eliezer have lost their strength. of humanity, are merely empty shells of the men who once were or might have been. One tried to hold on to love during his journey into the Night and ended up losing everything. The other tried to distance everything from life and not retain any meaning, but only when faced with the end could he truly let go of life and "accept nothingness". Is Elie and Albert's vision of love correct? Is love just a melancholic desire that we cling to to try to protect ourselves or is it just a burden that ultimately gives no shelter, useless and worn out by use. Bibliography: Camus, Albert. The stranger. New York: Everyman Library, 1993. Print.Wiesel, Elie. Night: Elie Wiesel. New York: Hill and Wang, 2006. Print.