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Symbolism In Night

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Night Analysis “The three ‘veterans’ with needles in their hands, engraved a number on our left arms. I became A-7713. After that I had no other name (31).” The book Night, by Elie Wiesel is about the author’s life during the Holocaust. At the age of fifteen, Elie’s normal life crashed as he was taken into the world of concentration camps. Throughout the book, Elie is met with many things. Nazi’s physical and psychological abuse that was given to the prisoners, the Jews acquired animalistic behaviors and . The act of dehumanizing the prisoners is shown through physical and psychological abuse. For example, when Elie’s father asks a gypsy officer a question, he gets back a violent response. “The gypsy looked him up and down slowly from …show more content…

For example, when Elie, his father, and the other Jews he came with were waiting for the first selection, they are greeted with a prisoner that has been there way before them and says something offensive. As a person who came into the camp with Elie replies to him, the prisoner responds by saying, “You shut your trap, you filthy swine, or I’ll squash you right now! You’d have done better to have hanged yourselves where you were than come here. Didn’t you know what was in store for Auschwitz? Haven’t you heard about it? In 1944 (23).” This response with the prisoner is surprising because he calls the people that are like him a swine and tells them that they should’ve just died. The way this prisoner acts may have changed due to the harsh and violent things he went through in the concentration camps. Another example is when Elie’s father is being hit by Idek, he think about the situation like, “ I had watched the whole scene without moving. I kept quiet. In fact I was thinking of how to get farther away so that I would no be hit myself. What is more, any anger I felt at that moment was directed, not against the Kapo, but against my father. I was angry with him, for not knowing how to avoid Idek’s outbreak. That is what concentration camp life had made of me (40).” The way Elie felt at that moment is unreasonable as he starts to show reflexes to protect himself. The harsh treatment and

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