When growing up in a certain environment and raised under certain narratives it can be easy to let emotion take control of particular circumstances. Is humankind inherently kind or inherently cruel? That is the question. The book Night by Ele Wiesel is a memoir that follows the story of a teen boy experiencing the holocaust toward the end of WWII alongside his father in Auschwitz, a concentration camp in Nazi, Germany. Due to Wiesel's experiences, we can conclude that humankind is inherently cruel. Humans will naturally choose themselves over others, this is one prime example. Moreover, humans will put others in terrible, torturous situations if it means they have a better chance of survival.
Humans will choose not to be kind if they are in a
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When the SS chose to slide away just proved that they were scared. Fear had consumed them to the point where cruelty no longer mattered, the officers wanted to survive just as the victims of the holocaust wanted to. Fear can corrupt someone to be cruel because it is a way to deny vulnerability and mask it with acts of aggression. They feel cruelty is the only thing that can save Them.
When one is faced with the option to care for another person or themself, their first instinct is to choose theirself. Eliezer says "Then, when a son killed his own father." (101) the son chose to kill his own father for just a mere piece of bread. His own son would rather kill his father than not survive himself. Selfishness can manifest itself in many ways, in this situation it's the choice of life or death. Throughout the Holocaust it is evident that the evil of selfishness played a crucial role in the genocide. In conclusion, humans have proven consistently to be proficient at attaining self-preservation, humans will go to extreme measures to ensure self survival. It is easy to think that with so many kind people, it's almost impossible for all humans