Elie Wiesel Dehumanize Animals At Night

In this memoir, Elie Wiesel uses imagery in order to develop the presence of animal-like behavior on people when they are being dehumanized. At this point of the story, Elie and the other prisoners are in a wagon traveling to a different concentration camp, and they are trying to survive in inhuman conditions. To begin, Wiesel describes, “We were given bread… We threw ourselves on it… Someone had the idea of quenching his thirst by eating snow.”( Wiesel 96). This fact emphasizes the alternatives they have to take just to survive because as animals do, that is the only thing they can look forward to. Later, when the wagon goes through German towns, Wiesel describes, “... a worker took a piece of bread out of his bag and threw it into a wagon. There was a stampede, dozens of starving men fought desperately over a few crumbs.” (Wiesel 100). Here, their almost hopeless desire to eat comes true, but because of the way the food is given, men have to confront each other, emphasizing that animal behavior by the use of the term “stampede.”After they get some of the

In this moment, if we juxtapose normal animal behavior with this description of the inmate's conduct it can be resembled a lot of similarities, after all this cruelty there is a shift in their behavior towards each other. As this action continues, Wiesel depicts that, “ Soon, pieces of bread were falling into the wagon from all sides. And the spectators observed these emaciated creatures ready to kill for a crust of bread.” (Wiesel 101). In this scene, the situation of the people feeding the inmates for entertainment it’s being compared to the idea of a zoo, in which people watch animals as they give them food, considered a form of amusement. Together, all of these examples of imagery develop the idea of the animal behavior of the story’s characters by depicting the atrocities and strident conditions the inmates face throughout the