Alan Paton once said, “There is only one way in which one can endure man’s inhumanity to man and that is to try, in one’s own life, to exemplify man’s inhumanity to man.” By stating these words, Paton means that the only way one can stop the mistreatment of humans is to completely abolish inhumanity and strive for more humanity. Throughout the novels Tuesdays with Morrie and Night, both inhumanity and humanity are displayed. Inhumanity is the extremely cruel behavior bestowed upon humans and humanity is the exact opposite. The authors of the two novels, Mitch Albom and Elie Weisel, write about good and bad times in the main characters lives that are being told about in their books. Inhumanity and humanity play as major themes all throughout …show more content…
Wiesel interprets the things that he and his family, along with the rest of the Jews, had to endure under Hitler’s power. Hitler and his Nazi soldiers are accountable for the millions of Jews’ deaths due to the inhumanity that they illustrate. The Nazi soldiers did things such as beat, burn, and tortured the Jewish people just because they were Jewish. They forced them to travel like a herd of animals without food or water. They took away their hair, clothes, and family, without giving them a warning. Hitler wanted to exterminate the Jewish people. One example of how inhumane the Jews were treated is that they did not have names. When arriving to the concentration camps, they were given identification numbers. This took away the Jews pride. Another example of the terrible treatment Elie received is when he was beaten by a whip for a long period of time. “Twenty-four…twenty-five!” (Weisel 58). Elie was whipped twenty-five times and passed out because he had interfered in people’s affair according to a soldier. The Jews had to endure this mistreatment for several months and years and most of them did not survive due to the inhumanity of Hitler and his Nazi
The Holocaust was a very terrible time in history over six million Jews perished in concentration camps. Even though in every tragedy there are survivors. Elie Wiesel was a little boy when all of this happened. He experienced all of the terrible things that happened during this time frame. While suffering in the terrible condition of the camp Elie and his father’s relationship goes through a drastic change.
The Holocaust, a terrible time with a terrible person. Hitler was a horrible person, killing many Jewish people and families. Roughly 6 million people died in the years of Hitler’s rule. Although many people died ,many people survived the tragedy. Eliezer Wiesel was one of few that survived the Holocaust. If the Holocaust wouldn't had happened we wouldn’t be where we are today. We would see more segregations of everything.
In the beginning he was horrified of the things he saw. On his first day at a concentration camp Elie saw babies being thrown into large pits of fire, people being taken to the crematory and Jews being hit and beaten for no reason. As time past and Wiesel was moved from camp to camp he started to only care about his survival and the horrible things done by the Nazi’s became apart of his everyday life.He saw a boy whose face he said looked like the face of an angel being hung. The little boy struggled to breathe for over thirty minutes before the life in his eyes faded away. Wiesel's own father was beaten because he was sick and not given the proper medical care from the nazi’s. Days later his father was taken to the crematory. Instead of Wiesel being sad he was relieved that he no longer had to take care of his father. Elie lost friends family and saw many more being killed. Wiesel was almost numb to the things happening around him.
Elie Wiesel was a young boy strongly devoted to his faith, but it quickly dwindled as he experienced dehumanization. Throughout the novel Night, The Nazis conducted many acts of dehumanization upon the Jewish citizens. The Nazis harshly targeted the Jews’ humanity, and gradually softened their perception of being human. The inhumane treatment began in their very own town of Sighet and continued into various concentration camps they were forced into. Jews were brutalized in these camps and experienced many forms of mental and physical abuse. They were given tattoos in the camps, which was quite demeaning. They physically mistreated them, starved them and separated them from their loved ones.
In 1940 , Hungary annexed sighet and the wiesel’s were among the jewish families and forced to live in the ghettos.May 1944,Nazi Germany with the Hungary’s agreement, forced jews living in Sighet to be deported to Auschwitz concentration camp. At the age of Fifteen Wiesel’s family were sent to Auschwitz as part of the holocaust, which took the lives of more than 6 million jews. Wiesel’s family was affected during the holocaust, all jews were forced to have their heads shaved and a number tattooed on their heads after all the men left the barber they were all standing around naked finding acquaintances and old friends, they are joyful at finding each other still alive. Elie Wiesel’s Night highlights the overarching issues of discrimination toward the Jews as they are forced to abandon their lives and face a death that consumer their existence, relationships and faith.
The Holocaust was a time of great suffering and inhumanity. The novel Night, which took place during this time, was written by Elie Wiesel and talks about his teen self-experiencing the concentration camps of Auschwitz. This is related to the movie The Boy in the Striped Pajamas which is the story of a young German boy named Bruno who befriends a Jewish boy in a concentration camp. The many similarities and differences between the movie The Boy in the Striped Pajamas and the novel Night include their many themes of “inhumanity” and “guilt and inaction”, and the two also share and differ in the loss of innocence of the characters and how they develop in each medium.
Firstly, Wiesel is bothered by the fact that everyone in the world can remain silent while the Jews and the others in the concentration camps are being put through such terrible torture. Eliezer asks, “How was it possible that men, women, and children were being burned and that the world kept silent?”(32) There were numerous people that eventually found out what was happening at these concentration camps, but chose to turn a blind eye. Although they were not directly involved in the slaughtering of the Jews, they did remain silent during this time and by ignoring it they are encouraging the
“Night” by Elie Wiesel explains how dehumanization occurred during a weak point in human history.
While Elie Wiesel, a Jewish boy subjugated to the violence of the Holocaust in Night, embarks on his atrocious journey in struggling to survive the brutality perpetrated on him, he loses his innocence in the traumatic circumstances. Wiesel’s main aspiration of writing about his development from childhood to adulthood is to showcase how cruelty within society can darken innocents’ souls. As Elie grows throughout the story, he starts to understand that he has changed from a pure, little child to a young man filled with distress and thoughts of danger. He reflects over what kind of individual he has evolved into because of the all the killings and torture he has witnessed: “I too had become a different
In 1944-1945, Elie Wiesel was one of the few survivors to witness the lives during the Holocaust. He was only 15 years old to experience many brutal and harsh treatment between the Jews and the non-Jews. Growing up, Wiesel had faced many prejudice in the concentration camp as a prisoner by the Gestapos and other non-Jew workers. In 1960, Wiesel wanted to share his past experiences from the Holocaust by writing his memoir. In his memoir, Night, Elie Wiesel discusses the theme of Racism. Through his use of atmosphere, tone, and foreshadowing, Wiesel is saying to reader that when one group deems themselves superior to another, they take the humanity away from the lesser groups.
Human nature are the distinguishing characteristics of the way people feel, act, and think. All of these things are separate from any outside influences. Unfortunately one of the most popular human emotions evil, is shown many times throughout the memoir Night. Elie Wiesel 's Night examines human life in a variety of sick and evil circumstances.These extreme conditions show how, when pushed too far, humans are capable of cruelty.Woman began murdering their own parents to survive, people starved to death, and worked to the bone. The famous Auschwitz saying “Work sets you free” is a faithless promise made to the prisoners. After experiencing
Throughout Night, dehumanization consistently took place as the tyrant Nazis oppressed the Jewish citizens. The Nazis targeted the Jews' humanity, and slowly dissolved their feeling of being human. This loss of humanity led to a weakened will in the Holocaust victims, and essentially led to death in many. The Nazis had an abundance of practices to dehumanize the Jews including beatings, starvation, theft of possessions, separation of families, crude murders, forced labor, and much more. There is no greater loss than that of humanity, so one can never truly relate to the horrors of dehumanization the Jews faced. In the list below, I will compile various examples that correlate to this theme of dehumanization.
many times during the book it talks about Wiesel’s problems. Elie’s first problem would be when he was in Buna, a concentration camp. This was a problem for Wiesel because he didn't have food, water, and at sometimes air. In the book Elie says “ At ten o’clock we were given our daily ration of bread” (Wiesel 34 ). This quote shows how that they only got bread once a day from their SS Officers, and that they didn't have food. Another problem Wiesel had is the loss of family. Elie got taken away from his mom and sister when they were deported on the train but got to stay with his father. Elie says “ I certainly do. But on one condition: I want to stay with my father” (Wiesel 35). With Elie being taken away from his mom and sister, he wanted to stay with his father through the whole thing. Wiesel’s father was his strength to stay alive. Elie had tough adversities he had to go through in his life and he was strong and overcame them.
Something interesting that I found in this book is that they were forced to run 42 miles, and the guards were instructed to shoot the ones who fell behind. Many men were lost in this run because of their lack of strength and endurance. To the Jews, the run was like an endless road, which could also symbolize their lives because the torturing they were going through seem never ending such as the road they were on. Many of them considered stopping running because at the time, death symbolized freedom because they knew it was the only way to escape the pain. This imagery gives the reader a strong image of what Wiesel was trying to get the reader to feel. This event changed my perspective history, as it raised my respect for families of the lost because I can barely
In the book, our narrator, Elie, is constantly going through changes, and almost all of them are due to his time spent in Auschwitz. Prior to the horrors of Auschwitz, Elie was a very different boy, he had a more optimistic outlook on life. During the first few pages of the book, Elie tells us a bit about how he viewed the world before deportation, “ I was almost thirteen and deeply observant. By day I studied Talmud and by night I would run to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the temple.” ( 3). Elie was, as he says himself, deeply observant and devoted most of his time to his faith. He spent almost all of his time studying and worshiping. At this point, Elie’s faith is the center of his life. Elie is also shown to do a few other things and has a few more early character traits aside from being dedicated to what he believes in. Elie also sees the best of people, a few pages later he says, “The news is terrible,’ he said at last. And then one word: ‘transports’ The ghetto was to be liquidated entirely… ‘Where will they take us?” (Wiesel 14). This is one of the only time we hear about Elie being worried or scared because of the Germans before Auschwitz, and still, despite the warnings that were given and the rumors circulating, Elie doesn’t think that the Germans are actually going to do all of those terrible things. Around this time in the book, Wiesel starts to become more emotionally weighted, but none of what has happened takes full effect until much later. There are multiple instances in the book where Elie is given reason to distrust or even hate the Germans, he talks about how the Gestapo treated him and his family on page 19 “‘Faster! Faster! Move, you lazy good-for-nothings!’ the Hungarian police were screaming.”. Yet he then goes on to say, on that very same page, that “Still our first