...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...
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...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. The Jews people begin to lose their rights as citizens. Eventually they are stripped of their identities, and are 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 Jews in Elie's community spent in the ghettos, which separated them from the rest of society, they were sent away. The Jews were transported using...
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...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...
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...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...
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...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...
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...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...
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...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...
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...Once said by Fulton J. Sheen “communism is the final logic of the dehumanization of men”. In Night a novel written by Eliezer Wiesel uses of figurative and connotative language to demonstrate the victims to view other less than human. For example on page 93 Wiesel says “two gravediggers took him one of the feet and one by the arms and threw him out the wagon like a sack of flour” this quote demonstrates the there fellow Jews didn't see the bodies as their friends but as a sack of flour. In conclusion the victims viewed others less than human. Dehumanization causes people to go to extremes in order to survive for example Wiesel says “there was a stampede. Dozens of starving men fought each other to the death for a few crumbs”...
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...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...
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...The book ¨Night¨ by Elie Wiesel is a nonfiction essay about his own personal life during the Holocaust and death march, which he both lived and survived through until his liberation. When the Germans first invaded Romania in 1940 Elie and his Family of his mother, father,and 3 sisters)were living there during that time period. The Germans would go on to persecute and dehumanize the Jewish people along with other groups such as Homosexuals,Gypsies,and the Jehovah’s witnesses. The Germans´ first thing on the agenda to accomplish after invading Romania was to create a separation of the Jewish people into what was referred as ghettos. On Page 11 of Night, the writer gives us a description of the Ghetto they were put into. For instance, Elie comments, ¨Little by little, life returned to ´Normal´ ¨The barbed wire that encircled us like a wall did not fill us with fear.¨ This act shows to the Jewish people that they do not belong to the “normal” part of society and the barbed wire just symbolizes their separation this can really make them question themselves as if people and the religion that they worship. Another example of how Germans showed a separation between the Jewish people and the ¨Other People¨ was on the night of Kristallnacht Nov 9, 1938-Nov 10.The night of Kristallnacht is a night in which Jewish businesses, homes,and places of worship (Synagogues) were vandalized looted and in some cases burnt to the ground....
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...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....
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...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...
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...pools of spit, rocks, and sticks and on top of that he was bleeding. The attackers were a submarine crew stopping over the island. This quote shows dehumanization because even though Louie and Phil did nothing wrong, and did nothing to deserve the harsh attack, the men still decided to throw things at them, spit...
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...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...
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...Comparing Beloved and Night The two novels I am writing about are "Night" by Elie Wiesel and "Beloved," by Toni Morrison. Beloved tells about slavery and an ex-slave mother's struggle with a past which is projected as the haunting of her people. It tells the story of Sethe, a mother compelled to kill her child, rather than let the child live a life of slavery. Toni Morrison uses ghosts and the supernatural to create an enhanced acceptance of the human condition and the struggled survival of the Black American. The novel is set in Ohio in the 1880's. The Civil War had been won, slavery had been abolished, however, the memories of slavery still remain. Although the story itself is fictional, the novel is based on real events. The events are based on the trial in Cincinnati of Margaret Garner, who with her husband, and seventeen other slaves (Kentuckian) crossed the Ohio where they supposedly found safe shelter. When it was discovered that they had been pursued and surrounded, and her husband overpowered, Margaret knew that any hope of freedom was in vain. She refused to see her children taken back into slavery. Without delay, Margaret quickly took hold of a butcher's knife which was laid on a table and cut the throat of her young daughter. She then attempted to kill her other children as well, then herself, but she was overpowered and held back before she could follow through. She was arrested and put on trial on the grounds that...
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