Throughout Night by Elie Wiesel, dehumanization is a recurring theme, as the Jewish victims are stripped of their basic human rights and treated as less than human. This essay will analyze the process of dehumanization that took place in Auschwitz as it is depicted in Night. Elie Wiesel demonstrates this process by depicting the suppression of victims' individuality upon arriving at Auschwitz, then by highlighting their eventual lack of humanity. Part of what makes humans human is our individuality, our ability to distinguish and express ourselves. When someone loses that individuality, he begins to lose his sense of his own humanity. Wiesel uses vivid imagery and language to illustrate the Nazis suppression of victims’ individuality, and …show more content…
This use of the word “equality” does not symbolize the justice or freedom we usually associate it with. Wiesel uses “equality” to indicate that as their clothes are stripped off, so too are pieces of their individuality. All the victims are dragged down to an equal standing of something less than human. To accentuate this notion further, “[the Nazi’s] clippers tore out our hair, shaved every hair on our bodies” (35). While clothing represents one's ability to express himself, hair is an integral part of our individuality. One’s control over his own body is vital to his sense of his own humanity. Without this control, how can one distinguish himself from an animal or from property? The imagery invoked by the phrase “tore out our hair” emphasizes this point. This phrase kindles feelings of hopelessness and of a loss of control. Each person’s …show more content…
Upon his arrival in Auschwitz, Wiesel’s emotions were still intact. He was horrified by the cruelty, scared for himself and his family, and loathsome of the Nazis. Upon leaving Auschwitz, “[he] was putting one foot in front of the other, like a machine” (85). The metaphor of a machine emphasizes his loss of emotion, feeling, and even his loss of bodily function. Auschwitz had robbed him of the essential things making one human, until he himself did not feel human anymore. Nor did he consider his fellow victims humans, recalling, “beneath our feet there lay men, crushed, trampled underfoot, dying. Nobody paid attention to them” (89). Wiesel juxtaposes the grim imagery of crushed and trampled men with the blunt and abrupt admission that the others did not care. Empathy is an essential quality of humanity. Whereas upon arriving in Auschwitz, many of the victims tried to help each other, upon leaving they had been robbed of that empathy. Furthermore, Auschwitz stripped victims of their beliefs, their faith, and their hope for any future. During the earlier stages of his time in Auschwitz, Wiesel witnessed people reciting Kaddish. Kaddish is a sacred prayer in Judaism which recognizes the greatness of God. It is said when someone dies to show the strength of one’s faith despite the loss. After Wiesel’s departure from Auschwitz, “The dead
During Elie’s time at the concentration camps, he experiences the many ways that the Nazis dehumanize the Jews. The Nazis causes unhamity between the Jews and turns them against each other. During one of the passages, Wiesel learns that one of his Kapo was taken out for being too humane to inmates. The Nazis put Jews in charge and give those Jews certain privileges in order to keep them in check. As a result, these Jews become more humane than the SS officers so that they may keep their position.
Man’s Inhumanity Towards Man Trapped in a world full of hatred between one man to another. In his memoir Night, Elie Wiesel gives countless examples of Nazi Cruelty towards Jews to emphasize the theme of man’s inhumanity to man. From a first-person point of view, a 15-year-old boy witnesses Nazi cruelty to not only others, but himself as well. Within the first few days of being at Auschwitz the Concentration Camp, after being separated from his mother and sisters, a “veteran” prisoner trying to strike fear in the eyes of his beholders exclaims, “Do you see that
It’s appalling and unbelievable for people to be treated in a manor like this, like animals. Although, not only is it terrifying to learn about what the victims had to endure during this horrendous time, but also what they had to witness. “Behind me, an old man fell to the ground. Nearby, an SS officer replaced his revolver in its holder” (30). This little snapshot of the book expresses what Elie Wiesel is seeing as he stands in the selection line at Auschwitz.
Wiesel uses imagery to expose the reader to the unsettled mood there is. “Behind the black gate of Auschwitz.” “Wrapped in their torn blankets, they would sit or lie on the ground, staring vacantly into space.” “And that ship, which was already on the shores of the united states, was sent back.” (Wiesel).
Gruesome details of how young Jews were murdered in Night illustrated how horrible the events were from Wiesel’s viewpoint, and gave the viewer a feeling of sadness when reading about the innocent lives that were taken away. When Wiesel’s father was suffering from sickness, he begged Wiesel to help him; the next day his father was gone and never seen again (Night 112). Wiesel’s father suffered from disease and continued to beg Wiesel for help, even to no avail. When his father “disappeared,” Wiesel could not cry or be emotional about his loss for he was “out of tears,” proving that what he experienced in Auschwitz was so horrible, it caused him to not even be able to properly mourn his father's death. Eliezer Wiesel’s inability to cry and mourn his father’s death proves how much of a negative impact the Holocaust had on his life, as well as the lives of millions of other Jews.
Wiesel comparing praying with living in breathing demonstrates how important his religion is to him. About halfway through his imprisonment in the concentration camps, Wiesel began to question his beliefs. While all the other prisoners were praying during a Jewish holiday, Wiesel wrote about how he couldn’t understand why the God he devoted everything to would make him suffer. He explained that he couldn’t bring himself to worship someone who brought death and torture to people. Before the Nazis took over his life, Wiesel’s religion and his God were important to him.
In the first part of this book Wiesel describes his life post-holocaust with his mother, father, and siblings. He writes about how he was forced into a ghetto where he was transported by a boxcar with his entire community. “There is almost no air to breathe, the heat is intense, there is no room to sit, and everyone is hungry and thirsty.” (Wiesel, Chat 3). He describes the journey to Auschwitz, the selection process, and the brutal mistreatment of people who had no idea where they were or why.
“Elie Wiesel’s views on society . . . were dramatically altered after he was victim of Nazi brutality” (Schulz 64). Years later he raised awareness for issues on ethnic and religious groups, as well as unfair treatment based on outside appearances. Today, it is easy to find groups supporting his beliefs. Wiesel’s experience gave way the world's recognition of the importance of life.
In Elie Wiesel’s speech, “The Perils of Indifference,” Wiesel uses a variety of devices to convey the powerful feeling of how immoral the circumstances of the Holocaust were. He expresses how ignoring the suffering of others only leads to worse outcomes, the dangers of acting with “no difference.” It is worse than to act with hatred. His argument leads with sharing his experience with being at a concentration camp himself as a young boy (1). The horrors that no one could possibly imagine.
Wiesel describes the tragedies that occurred over the past century, all of the bloodshed that stained human hands. He wove his lexicon beautifully as he spoke of his own pain and misery in the concentration camps and how his liberation by the American troops gave him renewed hope, tearing the hearts of all those listening in; surely Elie
It’s difficult to imagine the way humans brutally humiliate other humans based on their faith, looks, or mentality but somehow it happens. On the novel “Night” by Elie Wiesel, he gives the reader a tour of World War Two through his own eyes , from the start of the ghettos all the way through the liberation of the prisoners of the concentration camps. This book has several themes that develop throughout its pages. There are three themes that outstand from all the rest, these themes are brutality, humiliation, and faith. They’re the three that give sense to the reading.
From the small town of Sighet in Transylvania to the huge concentration camps of Auschwitz. Elie Wiesel, the author and victim of the book Night, the horrifying experience of the Holocaust. Wiesel is a 15 year old Jewish boy who was captured by the Germans or “Nazis” during WWII. He went through an overwhelming amount of trauma, like when he got separated from his mother and sisters and watching his father suffer an unbearable amount of pain that eventually killed him. The fact is, power is a tool that can corrupt itself and others, it can ruin people’s lives and it can do that without people even realizing it.
When Wiesel makes it clear that he has suffered personal loss, he is evoking an emotional response from his audience. By stating that he senses their presence “The presence of my parents, that of my little sister.” the audience empathizes with him and the horror of the Holocaust is made more clear for them. They cannot only understand his feelings; they can connect to them which strengthens their understanding of the need to act whenever they witness inhumanity.
Dehumanization in Night Innocent people change gruesomely when they are stripped of their humanity. Elie Wiesel’s Night narrates the author’s struggles to survive the Nazi party’s attempted annihilation of the Jewish people during WWII. Elie describes in his testimony that the Nazis seperate those under attack from their sense of humanity by treating them as worthless chores to empower their apathetic methods of genocide. An article elaborates that for those under persecution, “there is no soul, no self.
The human condition is a very malleable idea that is constantly changing due to the current state of mankind. In the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, the concept of the human condition is displayed in the worst sense of the concept, during the Holocaust of WWII. During this time, multiple groups of people, most notably European Jews, were persecuted against and sent to horrible hard labor and killing centers such as Auschwitz. In this memoir, Wiesel uses complex figurative language such as similes and metaphors to display the theme that a person’s state as a human, both at a physical and emotional level, can be altered to extreme lengths, and even taken away from them, under the most extreme conditions.