Connotation Of Animals In Night By Elie Wiesel

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In the autobiographical Holocaust novel, Night by Elie Wiesel, the motif of Jewish people being animals illustrates how genocide makes people resort to animalistic senses. When Soviet forces were approaching the concentration camp where Elie Wiesel was enslaved, Buna, the Nazis forced the Jews to walk for hours to another camp in Germany. While on the march Wiesel describes how “if one of us [Jews] stopped for just a second, a quick shot would eliminate the filthy dog”(Wiesel, 85). Wiesel is referring to his own community as a “filthy dog”, the connotations of this phrase imply submission and inferiority. The non-human connotations of this phrase demonstrate how torture and harrassment from the Nazis is making him see himself as less than

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