Striped From Our Identity By Elie Wiesel Summary

First Body Paragraph: Stripped from Their Identity One’s name, address, age, gender and other qualities are what makes one different from another, but when that is taken away from them and it is replaced with a code or number, what value does that person have over another? In the memoir, the protagonist, Elie is stripped from his own identity and his identification is replaced with the code A-7713. At this time in history, the Jews were considered inferior races, and their existence was almost “allergic” to the Germans. When the block secretary summoned Elie after returning from the warehouse to get his gold tooth extracted, he was referred by his new signature. “‘A-7713?’ ‘That’s me’” (Wiesel 51). The book had reached a point in the plot

But taking away one of man’s most important needs: food and water, is not going to make one last too long. Poor nutrition is one of the main causes for death around the world and this was demonstrated in various situations in the memoir. Not just the protagonists but all the characters in the story were given very little food, thus decreasing their energy and making them very weak. In the beginning of the story, people thought they could handle this injustice but as the story goes on, the situation becomes too heavy for Jews to handle and they start to kill their own kind as they are desperate even to get a little crumb of bread. “Some workers amuse themselves by throwing pieces of bread into the open wagons and watching the starved men kill each other for a crumb” (Wiesel 59). This sort of inhumanity is not just cruel but something that the Jewish people cannot help to fix because the fault is not amongst them, it is the situation that makes them helpless to do it and the current situation of war and discrimination. Elie is enraged when he realizes that sons betray their fathers for food and does not feel that even helpless situations should result in deaths of their dear ones. He fails to understand at times that many sons feel that their fathers are huge weights on their backs that they can only hold for a little while but not for long and he strives to rebel against that and protect his father to his full potential. Another example is when Elie is struggling to find food for himself and his father and is desperate that he relies on the scrap potato peels and grass to relieve from hunger. “We were tormented with hunger. We had eaten nothing for six days, except a bit of grass or some potato peelings found near the kitchen” (Wiesel 63). When one is hungry they would eat anything, they can find to relieve themselves from the hunger feeling, but food is something