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Comparing Maus And Night

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There have been horrible events throughout history, causing people to do some unfathomable things. This is seen in Elie Wiesel’s Night as well as the graphic novel Maus by Art Spiegelman, through the eyes of Jewish people trapped in the horrors of the Holocaust. In Night and Maus, it is evident that when treated less than human, one can begin to act in unfavorable ways. It is seen throughout Night that when the victims of the Holocaust were treated less than human, some of them began to act in unfavorable ways. When Eliezer was on a train, going to Buchenwald, the Jews were forced to go for days without eating, and this causes some of the prisoners to act in awful ways. When German civilians threw some bread into the train car, a massive brawl broke out. Eliezer sees an old man saying “Meir, my little Meir! Don’t you recognize me… You’re killing your own father… I have bread for you too…”(Wiesel 101) as he collapsed on the ground. Because the son was starved and forced into a boxcar, he acted in a way that can’t be comprehended. People can sometimes act this way because when treated so poorly, one may believe to have no other option. In this case from the sons point of view it’s either him or his dad getting the bread and surviving, therefore leading him into making the horrible…show more content…
Cruel in the sense of the dominant figure repressing the weaker figure, and cruel in some of the potential actions that the weaker figure could make because of it. In Night and Maus, the Nazis and Kapos who ran the camps as well as the prisoners who acted in unforgiving ways because of these actions were both cruel. This is relevant to today because whenever a tragedy happens in society, the background of the person who caused it is often examined, and it is sometimes seen that the person had a rough past filled with hatred and abuse. Treatment of people in poor ways can result in bad decisions, seen in Night and
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