Examples Of Dehumanization In A Child Called It

____________________. When Dave Pelzer authored A Child Called “It,” _____________. During the final pages of this book, the abuse of young Dave continued. His mother, Catherine, discovered several new ways to torment ‘the Boy.’ There was the cold bath treatment, in which David would be forced to hold his entire naked body (including his head) under frigid waters for hours. Another demented concoction of Catherine’s was the rollerblade treatment. During this, Dave would be forced to spend hours at a time rollerblading in the street outside of his home with no coat in the dead of winter. This is not the end of the list, however. It goes on and on with appalling ‘games’ that Catherine would create and perform. When I read this section in

A prominent theme in Elie Wiesel’s Night was dehumanization of the prisoners. It also occurred in A Child Called “It.” One noticeable event that displays this takes place after Catherine force-feeds David dishwashing soap, and it causes some unfortunate side effects involving the requirement of a restroom. “I felt so degraded... I felt lower than a dog” (77). Dave was dehumanized immensely in this way, but it did not stop there. As the name of the book suggests, Dave was deemed and ‘It.’ “‘Get one thing straight, you little son of a bitch! There is nothing you can do to impress me! Do you understand me? You are a nobody! An It! You are nonexistent! You are a bastard child! I hate you and I wish you were dead! Dead! Do you hear me? Dead!’” (140). She screamed at poor little Dave like she never had before. Catherine rarely, if ever, called Dave by his given name. It was always “The Boy” (65) or ‘It,’ as seen previously. These fake, dehumanizing names are suspiciously similar to what Elie Wiesel was called during his time in the camps: “A-7713” (Wiesel 42). For a third time, an undeniable comparison has been drawn between the lives of Jewish prisoners during the Holocaust and Dave Pelzer, the abused