...What is dehumanization? Dehumanization is the act of depriving someone of human qualities or attributes. In the novel, Night, Eliezer Wiesel tells his personal experiences as a young Jewish boy during the holocaust. Jews were captured and sent to concentration camps such as Auschwitz and Birkenau; where they would experience the worst forms of torture, and abuse. Torture has obvious physical effects, but it also can cause psychological changes on those who are victimized. In the novel, Night, Elie Wiesel uses figurative and connotative language to demonstrate that dehumanization causes people to become indifferent about life or death, the victims behave less than human, and people see themselves as less than human. To begin, In Night, Elie Wiesel uses rhetorical...
Words: 513 - Pages: 3
...Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator and philosopher once stated, “Dehumanization, [...] is not a given destiny but the result of an unjust order that engenders violence in the oppressors [...].” In Night, Elie Wiesel details his experiences in the Holocaust, from living in the Ghettos as a young Jewish boy who feared the Lord. Who was transported to concentration camps, and became just a number who questioned life. To finally, being liberated at the age of 16 and starting his life over as a dead man walking. During the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel and his peers experienced dehumanization that changed Elie’s outlook, identity, and attitude in life. Arriving at Auschwitz, Elie experiences dehumanization for the first time. “A truck drew close and unloaded its hold. Small children. Babies! Yes, I did see this, with my own eyes...children thrown into the flames” (Wiesel 32). Elie sees the small children being thrown into the crematorium and starts to see what is really going on. Another instance Elie...
Words: 757 - Pages: 4
...In the memoir, Night by Elie Wiesel, dehumanization is a common theme that is demonstrated through the treatment of the prisoners in Auschwitz. Elie Wiesel is a fifteen year old, Jewish boy who is forced into Auschwitz, a concentration camp, with his family during the second World War. Elie and his father are separated from the rest of their family upon their arrival at the camp, but they remain together and face the horrors of Auschwitz together. When they arrive at the camp they are mandated to remove their clothes and give up their belongings. As a replacement for their clothes, they are given uniforms to wear that are not the correct sizes. Elie looks at all the men in their uniforms and expresses, “In a few seconds, we had ceased to be...
Words: 385 - Pages: 2
...In Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night, the narrator describes how he struggled to survive in numerous concentration camps during the Holocaust. Eliezer changes throughout the text from a religious to an unemotional, lifeless being; the dehumanization he endured in the camps caused him to lose his childhood. Elie Wiesel uses simile, personification, and metaphor to demonstrate the effects of dehumanization. Wiesel uses simile to demonstrate that dehumanization causes people to act like animals. For example, Eliezer states how inhumanly his actions are: “ A man appeared, crawling like a worm in the direction of the cauldrons”(Wiesel 66). This quote demonstrates that people would do anything for the survival of themselves. Even if they were shot down, they would want to help themselves first before others. This quote is animal-like because, in the story, Eliezer is describing this prisoner to a worm. Elie dehumanizes others because he is jealous and wants what others have. The use of the word worm implies to an animal who slithers on the ground. In conclusion, Wiesel uses simile to demonstrate that dehumanization causes people to act like animals. Wiesel uses personification to demonstrate that dehumanization causes people to go crazy. For example, Eliezer states, “We...
Words: 407 - Pages: 2
...good luck trying to find it. Sayonara, au revoir, adios, bye. Elie Wiesel’s Night deals with his loss of faith in his God. Wiesel’s problem can be root all the way back to 1942, the beginning of Elie’s awakening, his first insight into the real world, his first insight into the Holocaust. The Holocaust was a horrid event, of ruthless killing, of senseless slaughter, destroying families, and a whirlwind of destruction. Under strain, ones happiness and ones faith is slowly whittled under the knife of opposition and pressure. Elie has lost so much through out his life, losing his family, his friends, but most importantly his faith. The first example of Elie loosing his faith is when he arrived at Auschwitz, Elie and his father are directed to go to the left; a prisoner then informs them that they are on their way to the crematory, Elie’s father recites the Kaddish or prayer for the dead, revolt rises up inside of Elie and he questions God, “Why should I bless His name? The Eternal, lord of the Universe, the All-Powerful and Terrible, was silent. What had I to thank Him for? (Wiesel 31)”. Elie is hopeless, his situation rendering him of his beliefs unable to believe that a holy being could cause such grief. He was stricken with terror that even after his prayers, his deep devotion to the great “lord” that God has thrust him into this “hell”. Another example of prisoners in the concentration camp loosing their faith in Night is when the Pipel, a young child, was hung in front of the...
Words: 779 - Pages: 4
...Dehumanization in Night Dehumanization; the process that made the Jews living during the Holocaust seem less than human. In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, Wiesel writes about his life as a young Jew trying to survive while living in a concentration camp during the Holocaust. Throughout his story, multiple examples of dehumanization are shown. Jews begin to lose their rights as citizens. Eventually they are stripped of their identities, and are being treated as if they are nothing but animals. Elie, his father, and the rest of the Jewish people were seen as not being worthy of humane treatment. Millions of Jews were murdered as if they were nothing but objects for the Nazi's to work and starve to death. Following the period of time that the...
Words: 570 - Pages: 3
...The Psychology of Evil: Night "Nobody is ever just a refugee. Nobody is ever just a single thing. We dehumanize people when we reduce them to a single thing and this dehumanization is insidious and unconscious," said Chimamanda Adichie, a Nigerian novelist, and former refugee. As Adichie said, dehumanizing, being treated like animals, is a horrendous thing and it has happened in the past and continues to happen today. History is full of situations where victimizers abused their power resulting in deindividualized and dehumanized victims. Such as Elie Wiesel was not just prisoner A-7713, he was a human being as were others put into concentration camps and many who have been oppressed and dehumanized. In Philip Zimbardo’s experiment the guards dehumanized and deindividualized the prisoners (Zimbardo). In Night the prisoners were dehumanized when Dr. Mengele made them...
Words: 1993 - Pages: 8
...No Longer Human “Night” Dehumanization, a word that haunts millions during the time of the 1930s. Throughout the Novel Night, written by Elie Wiesel, dehumanization plays a major role. Wiesel portrays much of his story through similes and other forms of literary devices. Dehumanization is the process of stripping a person of every quality that makes him/her human, including his/her identity, individuality, and soul. Throughout the book dehumanization occurs in different situations, some examples are “If anyone goes missing, you will all be shot, like dogs.” (24) “He looked at us as one would a pack of leprous dogs clinging to life.” (38) “He went by me like a shadow, passing me without stopping, without a glance.” (107) These similes are what...
Words: 420 - Pages: 2
...Elie Wiesel describes many experiences in Night where his father, other Jews, and himself were dehumanized by the Nazis. Dehumanization is the process the Nazis used to belittle Jews and treat them like an inconvenience instead of an equal individual. The Nazis dehumanized Jews by beating them, insulting them, and malnourishing them. Dehumanization was not only physically abusive to the Jews, but it was also mentally abusive to them because it caused them to question everything they ever knew about themselves and the world. The Jews that lived in concentration camps during the Holocaust were dehumanized by the Nazis by being treated like little more than objects. Stripping someone down, literally and figuratively, causes them to lose all dignity they had. In Night, Elie says, “We were naked, holding our shoes and belts”(Wiesel 36). Being naked is something that a majority of people feel very insecure about. The Nazis forced the Jews to strip down into nothing in front of everybody. This treatment is not harmful to the body, but it is to the mind. It caused them to feel all kinds of emotions, such as humiliation, shame, and more. However awful this treatment may seem, it is actually mild compared to some of the other techniques the Nazis used on the Jews. Physical abuse was very common throughout the Holocaust...
Words: 595 - Pages: 3
...Night Essay According to dictionary.com, fear is a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid. Fear is an emotion known far too well for the Jews during the holocaust. Nazis have taken over their lives and left them with nothing, but fear. Jews fear for the lives of themselves and their loved ones. Elie Wiesel was a lucky individual that got to escape this fear. His book Night describes the trepidation of physical abuse, the consternation of stolen identity,and the apprehension of the way they are transported. Night has an overall theme of dehumanization. The Nazis take away all of the Jews human qualities in three ways that cause their fear....
Words: 634 - Pages: 3
...Nazi Germany had one major requirement if they wanted to be successful in the extermination the Jewish race: Dehumanization. The belittling of a person and their identity of a person puts an oppressor above the oppressed and sets up a course for action against the oppressed. The Nazis took advantage of this fact, as evident in the book Night by Elie Wiesel. Shaving the heads of the prisoners, the hanging of a child in front of thousands, and the civilians watching the prisoners fight to the death over bread are all prime examples shown by Elie of how dehumanization was used as a tactic in Nazi Germany. One of the first significant acts of dehumanization displayed in Night was the shaving of the heads of the Jewish people when they arrived...
Words: 639 - Pages: 3
...In the Holocaust during WWII, victims were taken from their homes, separated from their loved ones and shipped off by train, to concentration camps. They were told that work would lead them to freedom. They were often starved and beaten. If one was too weak to work efficiently or at all, he was killed. On the Bottom by Primo Levi, The War by Marguerite Davis and Never Shall I Forget By Elie Wiesel, are texts written by survivors of the Holocaust. They work together to express the brutality and dehumanization that took place, along with the idea that human nature led victims to lose faith in their belief systems, governments and even the desire to live… Even after the day of liberation. It takes extreme circumstances for people to hit sincere ‘rock bottom.’ The Holocaust accomplished this with ease, the first night for some prisoners. Levi is trying to convey how mortifying and dehumanizing the Holocaust...
Words: 770 - Pages: 4
...brief summary, title and author’s name, and C). A thesis statement. See below: Example intro: Isaac Asimov once said that “to insult someone we call him 'bestial. For deliberate cruelty and nature, 'human' might be the greater insult.” Animals aren’t cruel because they mostly kill for survival, to eat, feed their young, and defend themselves, but humans they kill for racial hatred, jealousy, and power. A perfect example of the latter would be the Holocaust where humans tortured and killed other humans because they were different. In Eliezier Wiesel’s memoir, Night he describes the extreme cruelty and suffering he endures in Auschwitz and other concentration camps as a child inmate during the Holocaust. Wiesel can neither explain nor understand the reasons for human cruelty that he witnesses and endures during the Holocaust, but learns that cruelty breeds more of the same and in the end survival and self-preservation is all that matters. Night sample thesis statements: You may borrow one, make it your own or write one from scratch: 1. Question: Analyze Elie and other characters’ struggle with faith. You can approach this chronologically or by effects. What is Elie’s final judgment on the benefit/cost of faith? Consider Elie’s interpretations of God’s intentions and use of visual imagery (such as death and night imagery). Thesis: At the beginning of the novel Elie has a desire to grow his religious faith and connection to God; however, as the story...
Words: 420 - Pages: 2
...stab to the heart, one more to hate. One less reason to live” (Wiesel 109). Countless victims of the Holocaust gradually lost the desire to live due to the cruel acts of Hitler’s regime. Even after WWII, victims still would cling to the fear of enduring the abuse of the Nazis. Several victims wish these memories would vanish from their subconscious, but instead Elie Wiesel took the liberty of writing Night, which is a memoir that valiantly recounts his experience as a Holocaust survivor. His autobiographical account of the concentration camps grimly illustrates the agony felt by the victims and exposes to the public how the actions of the Nazi regime would mentally, physically, and emotionally affect the...
Words: 1080 - Pages: 5
...Jonathan Zarate Ms. Davis World Literature 15 December 2016 Is the Holocaust Considered Genocide? In 1944, Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish lawyer, used the Greek word ‘genos’ (race, tribe) and the Latin word ‘cide’ (killing) to make up the word we know today as genocide. The Holocaust was a genocidal occurring during the 1940’s. During this time about six million Jews were killed. Jews were forced to work in harsh conditions and were given very little food to eat. This resulted in a tragic event that will be remembered throughout history. Some believe the Holocaust is not considered genocide, however they are incorrect. The Holocaust should be considered an example of genocide based on the United Nation’s definition, the stages of genocide, and specific evidence provided in the memoir “Night”....
Words: 769 - Pages: 4
