Dehumanization and Alienation in Night and The Metamorphosis

Elie’s father loses his strength quickly, “his eyes [grew] dim” (46) almost immediately after arriving. The horrors which he had seen were easily enough to crush the spirit of a former community leader. His disbelief of the horrors he saw questioned the very basis of his soul, and he began to despair. His father’s eyes soon become, “veiled with despair” (81), as he loses hope for survival. The despair of camp life shrouds the human within, showing only another cowed prisoner. Elie’s father no longer can see hope, having his vision clouded by cruelty and hate. Elie’s father is eventually overwhelmed by despair; he, “would not get up. He knew that it was useless” (113). The Nazis crushed his soul, killed his family, stole his home, and eventually took his life; this treatment destroyed the person inside the body. He could no longer summon the strength to stay alive, so he gave up, and collapsed.

From the time where Elie had to decide to fight for his father’s life, to the time where he questioned his beliefs, Elie has had to make many life-changing decisions. As some of his decisions left negative consequences, some were left a positive outcome. In the end, all the decisions Elie had made in the camps has made his life miserable or at its best. For better or for worse, the events that Elie encountered makes his life unforgettable as realizes there was more to life than he had thought of

When Elie and his family are sent to a concentration camp, he is fortunate enough to not be separated from his father. At first, this is a relief, and is father is his will to survive. “The idea of dying, of ceasing to be, began to fascinate me. To no longer exist. To no longer feel the excruciating pain of my foot… My father’s presence was the only thing that stopped me. He was running next to me, out of breathe, out of strength, desperate. I had no right to let myself die. What would he do without me? I was his sole support.”(86)

Elie first recalls Dr. Mengele’s “eight short, simple words” (Wiesel 27) when he enters the camps: “Men to the left! Women to the right!” (Wiesel 27) In this part of the book, Elie and his father are separated by his mother and sisters. This metaphorically kills Elie because he is very attached to his family as are they to him. A piece of Elie has been taken away from him forever. Later in his memoir, he mentions the cruel hanging of the Pipel. Previous hangings that day did not phase Elie, but when the young, angelic Pipel was hanged, Elie said his once flavorful soup “tasted of corpses.” A man near Elie was saying “Where is God now?’ And I heard a voice within me answer him: “Where is He? Here He is- He is hanging here on this gallows…”(Wiesel 62) This is a powerful quote that shows how Elie has also began to question his faith. This brings about the mindset of the death of God in Elie. Elie begins to show distrust and rebellion in his God. This is a sharp contrast to Elie’s former beliefs. When Elie’s father dies, Elie emotionally shuts his mind off. He says “After my father’s death, nothing could touch me anymore.” He had finally given up. His father was his rock tied to the balloon, his reason to keep going. Without his father, Elie gave up and became zombified like the rest of the broken souls. Elie fully turned into the emotionless man that he was set to become as a result of surviving

“I woke from my apathy only when two men approached my father. I threw myself on his body. He was cold. I slapped him. I rubbed his hands, crying... At last, my father half opened his eyes” (99). Elie almost lost the one thing that kept him going, his father. He had gone all this way, enduring so many different trials and awful things. He was not going to let his father give up now like most of the other people around them. Elie would not let him be like the other ones that were thrown off. “In a snowy field in Poland, hundreds of naked orphans without a tomb” (99). Elie was not going to abandon his father like

In the midst of the worst time at the camp, Elie finds something that gives him a small, but strong amount of hope. Elie remembers, “I shall always remember that smile. From which world did it come?”(Wiesel 86). Elie’s thought process becomes that if she can smile so beautifully at a time like this, I should be able to have faith and hope at any point during my journey. When hard times fall on Elie, he explains his feelings. Elie reflects on an event, “But I had no more tears. And, in the depths of my being, in the recesses of my weakened conscience, could I have searched it, I might have found something like-free at last!”(Wiesel 106). Elie now feels as if now his father is gone, that he has a weight lifted. It shows that his faith is strong and that he can survive easily now while not having to care for his ailing father. As a result of the oppressive environment of the concentration camp, Elie discovers that he is so concerned about his own survival that he no longer cares for the plight of

Emphasizing the word ‘me,’ Elie shows himself gradually being consumed by the mindset of ‘every man for himself.’ He worries about his safety more than his father’s pain, and this continues after the officer leaves. His father called out to him again but Elie didn’t move, even when the officer disappeared, he only looked at his father, no aim to help his father and finally returns to his bunk to sleep. When he awoke the following day, his father was gone and Elie states, “deep inside me, if I could have searched the recesses of my feeble conscience, I might have found something like: Free at last! …,” (112). Here, Elie admits that somewhere deep down inside him, he felt released from the responsibility of looking after his father, although pained by his death, relieved of a burden. Deep down he harbored the feeling that his father was just another thing to add to the list of his trouble and

Elie remained in Auschwitz until April 5th, when the wheel of history was turned. America finally thought the lives of Jews was just as important as the ones living in their nation; but life did not get easy for Elie, "But now, I no longer pleaded for anything. I was no longer able to lament. On the contrary, I felt strong. I was the accuser, God the accused." Elie was placed in a hospital, very ill with death knocking on his door waiting for his arrival. "One day, I was able to get up, I decided to look at myself in the mirror on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me." Coming so far and then expecting death is a thought no one should ever have cross their mind. Even when free, the battle was still being fought. Those memories are forever in his mind. The corpse standing in front of him will haunt Elie throughout life. With freedom came confinement of all thoughts, sights of deaths and smells of burning flesh through those five years in a living hell for all

At the beginning of Night, Elie has a good and well-off life. He is not poor and lives comfortably with his family in Sighet, Transylvania. He may not have everything he wants, but he has what he needs. This changes overnight when Elie and the other Jews of Sighet are deported out of their ghetto and into concentration camps. The Nazis take everything from Elie, his family, name, hair, personal possessions, and confidence in his faith. Suddenly, Elie finds he is no longer the son of a well-respected Jewish community leader who has everything he needs, but rather a prisoner with no possessions or home to call his own. In minutes, he has lost everything and now finds himself in a camp where he owns just a bowl, shoes, and the clothes on his back. He doesn’t even have his own bed; that too he must share with others. “Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust” (Wiesel, 32). At this point, Elie has realized that the life he knew before was gone. He also probably wished he had appreciated something as simple as his name, as once he was in the camp, “I became A-7713. After that I had no other name” (Wiesel, 39). He even wished he had appreciated his sheets before the war, saying “They put me into a bed with white sheets. I had forgotten that people slept in sheets” (Wiesel, 74). All of Elie’s realizations of how good his life had been while in Sighet didn’t come until he had lost all the things he took for granted. Prior to his deportation, Elie was just like any other teenager. While he may know that he has a good life and has everything he needs, he usually doesn’t acknowledge or appreciate it. Most teenagers and adults alike take for granted their ability to provide for their needs. They don’t think about the event that

When Elie first arrives at Auschwitz, he is completely overwhelmed. He meets another inmate and the three are all very optimistic about their futures. This is not the case for all inmates, though. The very next person Elie meets has adopted an indifferent attitude about his situation, and has become so tauntrimized by the hardships of life in a concentration camp that he does not care if he lives or dies. When he approaches Elie and his father, his only advice is, “You should have hanged yourselves rather than come here” (30). Because of his traumatic experiences, the inmate has become so numb even death seems better than the life he is being forced to live.

Since Elie loves his father so much, it helps signify the meaning of this death. “I held onto my father’s hand—the old, familiar fear: not to lose him” (99). Since Elie had such a deep love and a need to stay with his father, he was rather startled and confused when he saw that son, murder his own father. Elie and his father’s love held the test of the concentration camps for much longer than this son and his father.

During his time in the concentration camps, Elie’s outlook on life shifted to a very pessimistic attitude, showing emotions and actions including rebellion, forgetfulness of humane treatment, and selfishness. Elie shows rebellion early in the Holocaust at the Solemn Service, a jewish ceremony, by thinking, “Blessed be God’s name? Why, but why would I bless Him? Every fiber in me rebelled” (Wiesel 67). Elie had already shifted his view on his religion and faith in God. After witnessing some of the traumas of the concentration camps, Elie questioned what he did to deserve such treatment. Therefore, he began to rebel against what he had grown up learning and believing. Not only had Elie’s beliefs changed, his lifestyle changed as well. When Elie’s foot swelled, he was sent to the doctor, where they put him “...in a bed with white sheets. I [he] had forgotten that people slept in sheets” (Wiesel 78). Many of the luxuries that Elie may have taken for granted have been stripped of their lives, leaving Elie and the other victims on a thin line between survival and death. By explaining that he forgot about many of these common luxuries, Elie emphasizes the inhumane treatment the victims of the Holocaust were put through on a daily basis.

Elie, his father, and the prisoners had to run in the snow more than 40 miles to another concentration camp, deeper in Germany. When they stopped a man, Rabbi Eliahou, asked if Elie and his father if they had seen his son. Elie had and he realized that the Rabbi’s son had “wanted to get rid of his father…to free himself from an encumbrance” (Wiesel 87). They then got on cattle trains that took them to the next concentration camp, Buchenwald. They passed by villages and when people threw bread in, the prisoners began to fight to the death for it. One son began to attack his own father for a piece and killed him, only to be killed the next moment himself. Soon after they arrived in Buchenwald, Eliezer’s father was very weak and sick. A part of Elie felt that if he could get rid of his father he “could use all [his] strength to struggle for [his] own survival” (Wiesel 101). He was very ashamed, even more so when his father died and he felt “free at last” (Wiesel 105).

The introduction of the story “The Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka starts off with Gregor Samsa awaking as a gigantic insect. Before this horrifying morning, Gregor was a person just like everyone else; he had feelings, thoughts, and emotions. Gregor lived his life until that day like anyone else would. He was a commercial traveler; his job required him to be traveling constantly. The way that Gregor describes his job suggests that he dislikes it and gets very irritated because of it.

The Metamorphosis by Kafka is a story about a young man, Gregor, has metamorphosed into an insect much to his dismay and that of his family. Not knowing exactly how to respond to the changes, Gregor’s family fails to relate with Gregor’s new state which makes it very difficult for them and also for Gregor. This is due to the fact that Gregor is the breadwinner of the family as the rest of the family members are not doing so well. Gregor bears all the financial responsibilities of the family including paying off his parents’ loan to the chief and taking care of his sister. He has plans of settling his parents down and taking his sister to school. He keeps working at his workplace only so that he can meet those financial obligations. Once Gregor metamorphosed into a giant insect, all this plans go down the drain (Kafka 27). The Metamorphosis brings out themes of duty to the family, alienation, and the impact of the economy on human relations which can be situated within the concepts of modernity.