Dehumanization In Night By Elie Wiesel

Night the novel that I read is a memoir of the author Elie Wiesel and his experience in the concentration camps. Elie Wiesel writes this story as a protest to the death and unfairness that happened to the prisoners of war held by the Nazi leaders. Elie Wiesel uses detailed and vivid images to tell his and other Jews stories during the holocaust. My essay will show the themes of dehumanization, the loss of innocence, and struggle to maintain faith from the book night
One of the most shown themes throughout the book, dehumanization. Dehumanization: denying human qualities from a person or group,which is what the Nazis did to the Jews. In the novel, Elie wrote “A Jew was henceforth forbidden to own gold, jewelry, or any valuables. Everything had to be handed over to the authorities, under penalty of death.” (Wiesel 10-11) This shows how the Nazis took their belongings away denying them their right of owning

When Elie wrote “ His son had seen him losing ground, sliding back to the rear of the column. He had seen him. And he continued to run in front letting the distance between them become greater.”(Weisel 91) It showed the son having no compassion for his old father and how the son thought of his father as a nuisance. Even in the wretched situation that the Jews were going through, Elie prays that he himself did not think like the son that he would stay by his father. Elie, who still had his innocence and was not yet aware of the changes in his life, had a major shift of opinion later on in the book when he wrote “if I felt anger at that moment, it was not directed at the Kapo but at my father. Why couldn't he have avoided Idek's wrath?” (Wiesel 54) Elie had lost his identity and himself but that was what living in a concentration camp had made Elie turn into and eventually his survival began to mean