Writing Task One In the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel uses metaphors to demonstrate that dehumanization ultimately causes emotional, mental and physical traumas. In chapter four, Elie uses metaphors to demonstrate emotional detachment from others by using connotative and figurative language. For example, when seeing someone being hanged the witnesses acted emotionally detached: “These withered bodies had long forgotten the bitter taste of tears” (Wiesel, 63). This quotation demonstrates, that the “withered bodies” represent what they are morally and physically. They make decisions that are selfish and only benefiting themselves; they are missing the necessities of sustaining life: shelter, food, and water; In addition, they have have lost their faith in a better future or for someone to save them. The “bitter taste” could be because of what they eat having no appealing qualities; “forgotten the bitter taste” could be referring to their emotional state being static, without good or bad …show more content…
For example, how the dehumanization has turned them into animals when they are starved: “Men were hurling themselves against each other, trampling, tearing at and mauling each other. Beast of prey unleashed, animal hate in their eyes. An extraordinary vitality possessed them, sharpening their teeth and nails”(Wiesel, 101). This quotation demonstrates, the lengths they will go to get food, which is often related to triviality in modern society. The way they have no care for others safety shows their lose of human interactions and their relationships with others. The use of phrases like “mauling” and “animal hate” is often used in relation to dehumanization of someone by associating them to animal like behaviors they become animal-like. In conclusion, the victims of dehumanization have lost their mental stability, relationships with others, and have become
Night is a motif in the novel because it appears very often and also used in differnent ways with different connotations. In the scene where Elies father is going to say something to him it is used as a time that Elie will not forget “I remember that night, the most horrendous of my life.” The same connotaion of night is used again when Elie is talking about his first time there at the camp I “speak of my first night over there.” “Day after day, night after night, he went from one Jewish house to the next, telling his story and that of Malka,” In this sentece Elie uses the word night as a way of saying that days and nights continue and so does this person that tells this story. The word night is also used as something positive and even something
In life, people go through different changes when put through difficult experiences. In the book Night, Elie Wiesel is a young Jewish boy whose family is sent to a concentration camp by Nazis. The story focuses on his experiences and trials through the camp. Elie physically becomes more dehumanized and skeletal, mentally changes his perspective on religion, and socially becomes more selfish and detached, causing him to lose many parts of his character and adding to the overall theme of loss in Night.
Although there are many different stories about the holocaust, Elie Wiesel's story is very vivid and full of the jarring reality of his experiences. He doesn’t hold back any of the cruelness and torment he was forced to endure as an adolescent. In Night, Elie Wiesel uses repetition, imagery, and symbolism to illustrate the deprivation of his former self during his traumatic experiences during his time in the Nazi work camp.
Therefore Elie shows how the prisoners of the Holocaust went through all different shapes and kinds of cruelty. They were forced to do things that did not want to do and go places they did not want to go because there was a threat of survival. The men and women who were imprisoned in the camp got barely enough food to survive and sometimes when days without any food or water. The cruelty shown by the SS men and women shaped how people thought and acted around
Language has the ability to impact the mood and tone of a piece in literature. In Night, Wiesel uses imagery, symbolism, diction and foreshadowing to illustrate dehumanization. The deeper true horror of the Holocaust is not what they Nazi’s did, but the behavior they legitimized as human beings being dehumanized by one another through silence and apathy.
The pain, the cold harsh wind biting at the ankles of hundreds of thousands of people. Human beings enduring torture so great it was not life, it was survival for beasts. Pain so great that no word in any dictionary can describe it. The emanation of a thousand rotting corpses lying in the snow. The wailing of millions so intense it was like it was from the depths of Tartarus watching as they trudged on. The cold snatching hundreds of lives and the only heat sources are from the eternal fires of death. The holocaust, the hand of hell descending on the world. Jews crammed into cattle cars and sent to concentration camps. Families were separated into different camps and many died in the rigorous selection process. Survivors were worked to near death by German SS officers as shown in Elie Wiesel’s Night, a memoir of the holocaust. Imagery, Symbolism, and Comparisons are all viable writing tools that provide a writer the best
In Night a memoir by Elie Wiesel, he uses imagery, simile, and connotation to demonstrate the effects of dehumanization and what affect it has on people.
In the novel “Night”, by Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor suggests that when humans are faced with protecting their own mortality, they abandon their morals and values. This can be seen in both the Jewish and German people. The German’s are inhumanely cruel to protect their own jobs and safely by obeying government commands. The Jewish captives lost their morals as they fight to survive the concentration camps. Elie Wiesel encountered many obstacles that made many of his ideals changed drastically for Wiesel which was his loss in humanity throughout the book he explains the many ways he does not see people as people anymore. He also explains how all of his natural human rights were no more during the time in the Holocaust. He had to find a sense of self because he could have easily fallen apart. He could not have done anything different, he knew it was going to end poorly. Silence is a very important and prominent theme in this book as silence represents many key symbols such as. God’s silence: Eliezar questions God’s faith many times throughout this book and wonders how he could just sit there and be silent while people are mass murdering people.
Literary Device Glossary: Night Metaphor Examples/evidence: "We were still trembling, and with every screech of the wheels, we felt the abyss opening beneath us.” (Page 25) Effect/purpose: An abyss didn’t literally open beneath them, this was said metaphorically to describe the hope lowering within the jews as time passed. ~ Personification Examples/evidence: " But it was all in vain.
When Elie arrives at the camps, the author begins to use the corpse as a symbol of a living person who is dead inside. This is how Elie begins to see himself and others as, the living dead. "From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me (Wiesel 109)." When Elie looks into the mirror he can not recognize what he has become. He thinks of himself as one of the others who died like his family or the millions of others slaughtered right before his eyes. He essentially becomes a useless body that works on the outside but is undoubtedly damaged on the inside. Wiesel also brings the story to life with imagery that stimulates all of the senses. He illustrates the horror of the crematories with vivid words that make the reader feel the sympathy he feels."Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky. Never shall I forget the flames that consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.
One of Adolf Hitler’s promises was to eliminate the Jewish race. In order for this to happen, you must first see people as less than human. Once you have accomplished this task, the mass murder of millions of people becomes easy. In his memoir Night, Elie Wiesel recalls the multitude of times he was seen as less than human, and how this affected his life while in concentration camps. The dehumanization of the prisoners not only crushes them, it causes them to become desensitized and often see each other as less than human.
Symbolism: the artistic and poetic use of a phrase, object, or relationship to express a deeper idea. Night, by Elie Wiesel, is a retelling of Wiesel’s sacrifices and experiences as a young Jewish boy who had spent many years in concentration camps. Throughout the book, Wiesel uses an overwhelming amount of symbolism to express the deeper thoughts and feelings of the Jewish people as they did all they could to survive. Wiesel’s relationship with his father, Juliek’s violin, and the rations of food the Jews are provided with all symbolize the remnants of humanity that still remain in the Jews, who have been stripped of basically everything.
A dystopian society can be accurately described as an abject habitation in which people live dissatisfied lives under total control of the government. As terrible as dystopias are, there have been many instances of such societies in the past, and a copious amount of them are found in our current time. Although it may seem that mankind would learn from past experiences and be able to prevent the formation of dystopias, all failed endeavors at utopia, in turn, lead to dystopia. A prime example of this is found in the novel Night, by Elie Wiesel. The story recounts the Holocaust, a mass genocide of Jews conducted by Adolf Hitler, who believed he could create a utopia by basically eradicating a religious group. This inhumane act created a dystopia which was extremely disparate from our modern day society. Yet, there are still apparent similarities that can be found in any community, which maintain order within. Elie’s dystopia and our present society share the large factors of government, media, and labor, but, the approach to each of these ideas is what sets our lives apart.
The Holocaust was a horrific time period when over six million Jewish people were systematically exterminated by the Nazi government. Throughout this period, the Jews were treated particularly inhumane because the Nazi viewed their ethnicities as a disease to humanity. Dehumanization is a featured theme in Elie Wiesel’s novel about the Holocaust since he demonstrated numerous examples of the severe conditions endured by the Jewish people. The nonfiction story Night by Elie Wiesel focuses on inhumanity and reveals human beings are capable of committing great atrocities and behaving cruelly, when such actions are condoned by society, peer pressure, and ethical beliefs. Elie Wiesel uses literary devices to produce a consistent theme of inhumanity.
In the memoir, Night, author Elie Wiesel portrays the dehumanization of individuals and its lasting result in a loss of faith in God. Throughout the Holocaust, Jews were doggedly treated with disrespect and inhumanity. As more cruelty was bestowed upon them, the lower their flame of hope and faith became as they began turning on each other and focused on self preservation over family and friends. The flame within them never completely died, but rather stayed kindling throughout the journey until finally it stood flickering and idle at the eventual halt of this seemingly never-ending nightmare. Elie depicts the perpetuation of violence that crops up with the Jews by teaching of the loss in belief of a higher power from devout to doubt they