ipl-logo

Examples Of Dehumanization In Night By Elie Wiesel

454 Words2 Pages

From 1941-1945 over 6 million Jews had died at the hands of the Nazis and Adolf Hitler during the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel was one of few who survived these horrors. He wrote about his experiences in his book Night. In this scene from Night by Elie Wiesel, he and dozens of others have been stuffed into cattle cars on trains, and people are throwing bread into the cars to watch the people in the cars fight for it. Wiesel explores dehumanization to demonstrate how changed people become because of the horrors that they had seen and experienced.
Elie Wiesel writes about how he and others had been dehumanized and acted more like animals from what they had suffered at the Auschwitz concentration camp. The men fight each other for the bread like “Beasts of prey unleashed, [with] animal hate in their eyes” (Wiesel, 101). Wiesel personifies the men's eyes with animal hate. The word animal specifically shows that the …show more content…

This shows how dehumanized they and everyone else had felt after being tortured and starved by the Germans. More and more people were throwing bread into the car watching “these emaciated creatures ready to kill for a crust of bread” (Wiesel, 101). The choice of the words emaciated creatures creates an animalistic tone, these people are focusing only on their own instincts and not making their decisions morally, willing to kill someone just to eat. Having people throw bread in the car just to watch makes them feel less human because others are using them as entertainment while they are just trying to survive. One old man had a piece of bread and as he was getting attacked he was saying “Meir, my little Meir!

Show More
Related
308 Words | 2 Pages

The holocaust was one of the worst genocides that has happened to one race in the last 100 years it lead to the deaths of 6 million to 17 million jews. There are not that many people still alive that got saved for it because of the exprempit they were put through the time they were in the camps dieing. One of many ways the nazis killed so many jews was gas chambers and pizza type ovens they had mounds of people from the gas chambers piled up in the millions. When they got saved they had to did massov graves and use a bulldozer to get all the bodys in to the grave. In the book Night by Elie Wiesel there are many instes of dehumanizing for example they had to be put in to the cattle cars.

Read More
375 Words | 2 Pages

The Dehumanization of Jews Dehumanization is the process by which the Nazis gradually reduced the Jews to little more than things. In Night By, Elie Wiesel, Eliezer, his father, and the other Jews were dehumanized over time to they became nothing to the SS officers. In the first part of Night Moshe the Beadle was thrown onto the first load of cattle cars and sent off. ( Night pg. 6) “They stopped the cattle car that Moshe was on, and the officers made the Jews dig a big trench and then the shot and killed them.

Read More
269 Words | 2 Pages

In addition, through this memoir, Wiesel also provided us a true definition of what dehumanisation when Elie got separated from his family. Wiesel portrays the emotion that Elie was having when he and his father was separated from his mother "Yet that was the moment when I parted from my mother." Through the expression that Wiesel describe Elie we can see how cruelty and dehumanisation were the Germans to the Jewish people. They were making all the Jewish separated to many sections in the camp "Men to the left, women to the right." Wiesel also provided us the information that anything can happen in the camp to the Jewish people.

Read More
630 Words | 3 Pages

Wiesel also writes develops the theme of dehumanization in order to convey that the Nazi’s had consumed the feeling of humanity of the Jews. There were many acts that dehumanized the Jews which included starvation, beatings, murders, separation of families, theft of their belongings, and other things. Throughout the book, dehumanization grows and slowly exhausts the Jews until they have all sense of being human. After hearing about the bombing of the Buna factory, Wiesel writes, “We were not afraid. And yet, if a bomb had fallen on the blocks, it would have claimed hundreds of inmates’ lives.

Read More
994 Words | 4 Pages

They Smell Even Worse, When They Burn Propaganda comes in a number of forms, some being more subtle while other forms are far more blunt. Frequently major political figures or movements will choose to perform this propaganda by portraying some foreign or otherwise opposing group in a negative light, even to the extent of portraying them as inferior and subhuman. Once this has been accomplished it becomes but a simple matter to have people commit cruel action against said opposing group. This process of dehumanization has been discussed ad nauseam within the political and literary world, with the subject matter encompassing a number of events from the Rwandan Genocide to the Vietnam War, and including the all too notorious Holocaust.

Read More
571 Words | 3 Pages

“‘There are eighty of you in this car,’ the German officer added. ‘ If anyone goes missing, you will all be shot, like dogs.’” They were over packed in the cart. Treated as if they weren’t people and told if they tried to escape they’d be killed. Not only did they threaten to kill them but they compared to an animal, showing what the Nazis actually thought about them.

Read More
850 Words | 4 Pages

Imagine being nothing more than a number and having to suffer tremendously for months at a very young age. This idea of dehumanization became a reality when Adolf Hitler started the war of a century, the Holocaust. He and his followers, the Nazis, killed six million Jews and started up over 44,000 concentration camps which is where the manual labor and starvation occurred. Eliezer Wiesel is a survivor of the Holocaust and shared his personal experience through his memoir, Night. It also describes the concept of dehumanization being applied to himself, his father and everyone else.

Read More
710 Words | 3 Pages

The cattle carts would pass through German towns. Whenever they made a stop German Laborers would go to work and would stop to look at them as if it was some kind of zoo. For enjoyment, they’d throw rations of bread at them, “A crowd of workmen and curious passersby had formed all along the train. They had undoubtedly never seen a train with this kind of cargo. Soon, pieces of bread were falling into the wagons from all sides.

Read More
1090 Words | 5 Pages

Throughout the book Night, by Elie Wiesel, Wiesel goes through a lot of changes as he and his father are put through torture in concentration camps. When Wiesel was fifteen he was separated from his mother and sisters when they were being grouped into camps. For about a year Wiesel, along with everyone else in the camps, is stripped of humane treatment. They are dehumanized to the point where they are treated like objects. Wiesel is dehumanized and is no longer treated as a human with feelings, but as an object that doesn't deserve a life.

Read More
697 Words | 3 Pages

In “Night” by Elie Wiesel, Elie writes about numerous examples of the atrocities and acts of dehumanization committed during the holocaust and also writes about some redeeming moments that helped him to keep pushing and survive. When the story first starts out, Elie and the rest of the jews in sighet are living their everyday lives until one day the Germans come to town. Over the next few weeks, the Germans slowly but surely took control of sighet and began enforcing very strict laws. Then, everyone is shipped off to concentration camps by train, and somehow Elie and his father stick together through several concentration camps and numerous atrocities but eventually Elie's father dies. During this whole story, Elie is called “filthy dog”, he

Read More
656 Words | 3 Pages

The concentration camps are a symbol of the destruction of humanity: “Beneath me, an abyss opened wide. I was inside the abyss, with it's smells, it's thirst, and it's hunger” (24). The concentration camps were places where human beings were stripped of their dignity, reduced to mere objects, and subjected to the most heinous acts of violence. The symbolism used by Wiesel serves to emphasize the magnitude of the atrocities committed during the Holocaust and the importance of remembering these

Read More
575 Words | 3 Pages

Through the stages Dehumanization, the gruesome act of stripping one of their positive human qualities or traits. This process happens more than most people realize; it's especially common in any abusive atmosphere. However it is very common for many of the humans that have experienced the act of dehumanization to not even realize it has even happened to them. Alternatively those who do realize notice there are usually stages that one goes through during this time being naivety, survival, and finally acceptance. Being naive is something that almost everyone experiences at least once in their life.

Read More
422 Words | 2 Pages

(pg. 113) For them, food was equivalent to freedom. They fought aggressively like animals for a crumb of bread. It was unfair that prisoners were given a bit of soup or a slice of bread and shot at for being outside on sight .

Read More
361 Words | 2 Pages

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.

Read More
744 Words | 3 Pages

In which millions of Jews were innocently killed and persecuted because of their religion. As a student who is familiar with the years of the holocaust that will forever live in infamy, Wiesel’s memoir has undoubtedly changed my perspective. Throughout the text, I have been emotionally touched by the topics of dehumanization, the young life of Elie Wiesel, and gained a better understanding of the Holocaust. With how dehumanization was portrayed through words, pondering my mind the most.

Read More

More about Examples Of Dehumanization In Night By Elie Wiesel

Related Topics

Open Document