Stereotypes In Elie Wiesel's Of Mice And Men

“I ain’t a southern negro,” he said. “I was born right here in California." With these

In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, he tells his story of the Holocaust and how the Nazis tried to destroy the jewish race.. In the Holocaust, the Nazis thought the Jews were less than them. Elie tells the story of how the Nazis tried to eliminate the Jews. . The Naizs treated the Jewish people badly because they dehumanized them, they treated them as they were nothing, and the Nazis destroyed the Jews from the inside out.

Things took a turn for the worst for the Jews in Germany and surrounding countries on January 30, 1933. Anti-Semitism began to grow during the Middle Ages, slowly increasing the amount of hatred towards the Jewish population in Europe by the 20th century. On September 30, 1928, Elie Wiesel, writer of Night was born into the Jewish race. Around twelve years later, the Nazi population removed Elie and his family from their home and began to move them into concentration camps where he would experience nightmares and situations that no person should have to go through. The Nazi’s leader, Hitler, uses antisemitism to his advantage, along with his speaking skills, to downgrade the Jews as a way to gain power in Germany. Another piece of literature,

In the novel Night, written by Elie Wiesel, the Jewish people are treated unfair and harsh. For instance “we no longer had the rights to frequent restaurants or cafes .” (Wiesel) this quote means that the Jewish people that lived there were not able to go out to eat or visit a cafe if they wanted to without getting into trouble. Jewish people were also told they had to wear a yellow star even if they did not want to they had to it was the law. Page 11 “...every Jew had to wear the yellow star .” (Wiesel). Later on in time Jewish people were taken to concentrations camps outside of Sighet were they were originally residing. When they arrived at the camp , family’s were separated.

Stereotypes are socially constructed, over-generalized views regarding a particular group of persons with certain characteristics that are widely accepted, and usually expected, in a society. The dominant group of a certain society, which in this case is probably Caucasians and men, usually creates these social constructions. Claude M. Steele, a researcher from Stanford University, performed multiple research studies on the idea and psychological effects of stereotypes on its victims. In his studies, he coins the term “stereotype threat” as the “social-psychological predicament that can arise from widely-known negative stereotypes about one's group,” which implies that “the existence of such a stereotype means that anything one does or any of one's features that conform to it make the stereotype more plausible as a self-characterization in the eyes of others, and perhaps even in one's own eyes” (Steele 797).

Elie Wiesel faces many conflicts throughout this memoir. In the memoir, Night, by Elie wiesel, Hitler works hard to eradicate the Jewish people. Fallaciously, he forces Jews into thinking they aren’t going to be harmed. Adolf Hitler houses all Jewish people in death camps for he is indignant and he needs revenge after the World War. Also, Hitler is being hypocritical because he says the only worthy people are Aryan people, but he isn’t even Aryan. He often instructs the Nazi Soldiers to make all Jewish people despondent about life. The Germans are to have no decorum with the Jews. They are told to starve, beat, and punish the prisoners. Throughout the story, Wiesel struggles with staying alive and with helping his father stay alive in aspiration

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 his memoir Night, Elie Wiesel depicts the steady escalation of dehumanization to which the Nazis subjected the Jews during the Holocaust and how it helped the Nazis crush the Jews’ spirits and justify their persecution and eventual genocide. Before the arrival of German soldiers, Wiesel and the other Jews of Sighet live in relative harmony with their Christian neighbors. But once the Nazis arrive, they steadily remove the Jews’ human rights until their fellow citizens no longer view them as human anymore. Thus, there is little action taken by the non-Jewish residents of Sighet when the persecutions and deportations begin. Additionally, the gradual pace of the dehumanization managed to convince the Jews that nothing significant was happening and that this was just a temporary phase that would soon pass. This could not be further from the truth. Once the Nazis finally issue the order to deport the Jews of Sighet, Wiesel notices that his neighbors’ spirits have been completely crushed: “There they went, defeated, their bundles, their lives in tow, having left behind their homes, their childhood. They passed me by, like beaten dogs, with never a glance in my direction. They must have envied me” (Wiesel 17). Wiesel describes his fellow Jews as downtrodden and defeated since they are now completely subject to the Nazi officers. The Nazis have stripped their rights, driven them from their homes, and treated them like animals. Being called and treated like animals, specifically

Throughout time, Jewish communities have been treated with immense hate and exclusion from other cultures because no one accepted their religion. Coming to the time before WWII, events like Kristallnacht demonstrated the despise for Jews that dwelled inside the general population of Germany when the Germans went to Jewish houses and stores to burn and destroy them. In the course of WWII, they were harassed, abused, tortured and ruined, as all of their business stocks and assets were taken away. During the expanse of this horrific battle, Jews were forced to live in designated areas known as concentration camps where they had to overcome obstacles such as hunger, freezing temperatures, and the loss of precious family members. These camps were used to fulfill Hitler’s intent to annihilate the Jewish population from the face of the planet and this dangerous idea was called “purify the country”. In total, there were about 25 of these camps built where 6 million Jews died, including 1.5 million children. Auschwitz was a camp which was responsible for 1 million deaths alone, and this is the camp where Elie Wiesel was first sent to endure the hatred of the Nazis. This camp changed the way Elie Wiesel viewed the world because he saw and experienced things that will stayed with him forever. He was transformed into a new person who neglected his religion, failed to protect the one he held dear to him, and put his

Stereotyping is a normal part of every one’s life. Humans, by nature, classify things. We name animals and classify them by common characteristics but stereotyping can have negative repercussions, and everyone does it. In a recent study it was proven that everyone has an unconscious need to stereotype (Paul). In Junteenth and The Invisible man, Ralph Ellison argues that stereotyping can cause mayhem by making the people become something they are not.

“The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. In the book, Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck there is many examples of stereotyping and labeling. George and Lennie are the two main characters of the book and they both are stereotyped. George watches and takes care of lennie, so he is labeled as a parent figure. On the other hand, Lennie is dependant on George so he is labeled as immature. However, there's much more to the characters than what they are labeled as. Even though the other characters in the book will learn more about George and Lennie throughout the story, they will forever be known for their stereotypes. Steinbeck shows that with stereotyping people look at the world with more judgement.

In life, there is a common ground on which most every person can relate. At one time or another, we have all been promoters of or victims of the unremitting nature of stereotypes. According to the Webster’s dictionary, a stereotype is defined as “a simplified and standardized conception or image invested with special meaning and held in common by members of a group.” Most stereotypes take on a negative form and are based on characteristics such as age, gender, race, status, and personal beliefs. Generally speaking, the greatest problem that arises with stereotypes is that they judge group of people by the characteristics and actions of their ancestors, rather than on an individual basis. More often than not, these assumptions will

Staples illustrates how the nature of stereotypes can affect how we perceive others around us in either an excessively admirable light or, in his and many other cases, as barbaric or antagonistic. In his introductory

In many circles of the world, various groups of people distinguish themselves from one another through religion, language, culture, and sometimes gender. People also develop stereotypes about a particular group of people in order to identify them. However, most of the time, these stereotypes hold true for only some members of a group. Sometimes, these stereotypes are just plain misconceptions that do not even apply to the group it claims to. Stereotypes are placed on people because it is a way to easily identify what type of person or ethnicity an individual is. At one point in time, these stereotypes may have been true; however, in today’s modern society, most of these stereotypes are outdated and false, which leads them to turn into

Although the nature of stereotypes are not essentially negative it has been found that stereotypes of out-group members are more likely to be negative than those of in-group members (Castelli et al. 2005; Perdue, Dovidio, Gurtman & Tyler, 1990). Despite this fact, engaging in stereotyping still occurs. In order to adequately understand why we continue to use stereotypes, when we know of the negativity that can be attached to them, several areas need to be considered. Firstly, in the context of this essay stereotypes need to be defined. Lippman (1922) can be credited for having coined the term as being a set of socially shared representations and beliefs about the characteristics, features and behaviours of members of a group (Lyons &