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Dehumanization In Night By Elie Wiesel

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The book Night was written by Elie Wiesel and published on January 1, 1956. It is about Wiesel's holocaust experiences with his father in the concentration camps in Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Throughout this story Wiesel and his father go through dehumanizing experiences and lose their faith and humanity along the way. He shares his story and survival as a teenager being taken away from home and threw into the torturous camps which he had to fight for his life. Night is written as a personal narrative that allows us to see his view of the darkness, suffering, silence, and identity that he experienced. It also provides insight to how Wiesel loses his faith in God during these rough times. The Nazi’s treated the Jews as if they were not even …show more content…

There are many scenarios all through the book that shows this happening to the Jews. They are treated as animals rather than humans and forced to follow the Nazi rules. “To make someone feel or appear to be less than human makes it easier to subject that person to abuse and torture, as was the case with the Nazis and the Jews” (Campo). This starts when the prisoners are forced to strip their clothes and tatted with random numbers. These numbers are used as their new names. After months of torture and violence the prisoners are pushed to their mental limit. One case where Eliezer experiences dehumanization is whenever he witnesses another prisoner beat his father over bread and realizes that this is their life now. They fight over bread to keep themselves alive. An example of Eliezer's father being dehumanized is whenever they are taken from their homes and cannot do anything about …show more content…

As the story continued, he begins losing his faith in God. He cannot wrap his head around the horrible things they are going through in the camps. During this his humanity and hope are stripped of him too. Eliezer reaches his breaking point whenever a child is hanged in front of the crowd, and they are made to watch. The young child does not die instantly but instead struggles to breathe. Eliezer says, “Where is he? This is where-hanging here from these gallows...” (Wiesel 65). This is where he loses all hope because he does not believe God would hang a child. He mentions his loss of faith multiple times because of all the awful events he is put through. The other Jews does not experience everything that Eliezer has. His faith is put to the test over and over until he cannot handle it anymore. This all starts from the moment he sees the burning babies and begins questioning God however he finally loses it

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