Theme Of Cruelty In Night By Elie Wiesel

In the novel Night, Elie Wiesel gives an account about his life in a concentration camp. His focus is of course on his obstacles and challenges while in the camp, but his behavior is an example of how human beings respond to life in a concentration camp. The mood, personality, behavior, and obviously physical changes that occur are well documented in this novel. He also shows, as time wears on, how these changes become more profound and all the more appalling. As the reader follows Elie Wiesel’s story, from his home in the ghetto, to his internment at Auschwitz-Birkenau, to his transfer and eventual release at Buchenwald, one can see the impact of these changes first hand.

Within Wiesel’s reflection of his life during World War II, it is evident that Night reveals much that is wrong with human nature, particularly the cruelty represented by the Nazis. During the novel, Elie and every other Jew suffer extreme circumstances, such as, having to leave their loved ones behind or being threatened to do

The Holocaust is arguably one of the most horrific events in human history. As the last Jewish survivors are passing away from old age, the importance of Holocaust related documentation is going to be imperative in teaching the next generations about the monstrosities that went on during this time. In the 1960 novel, Night, Elie Wiesel utilizes several literary devices, including the symbology of nighttime, motif of religious practices, and theme of father-son relationships, in order to emphasize the atrocities of the Holocaust specifically for Jews. Wiesel’s first hand experience in concentration camps allows for a vivid retelling of what many people had to endure.

In the text Night, written by Elie Wiesel, it is a horrific story about how the Nazi’s invaded Wiesel’s hometown of Sighet, Hungry and where taken under German control and sent to many concentration camps. During his time at the concentration camps, Elie and fallow Jews were in harsh and unforgettable conditions and treated severe from the Germans that no one could imagine. There is plenty of evidence which supports that even through many people turned and began to do dreadful things to one another; there were the very few people who stayed calm and gentle within all of the commotion.

The 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln once stated “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power” (“Too Much Power Qoutes” AZ Quotes). Under the leadership of Adolph Hitler, the Nazi Party tore away the basic rights of human beings based upon the belief of anti-semitism. People of Jewish faith were persecuted to unimaginable limits, and their normal everyday lives were changed for forever. Article Five of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” (United Nations General Assembly). Throughout Elie Wiesel’s autobiography Night, Elie and his family are violated of this right as a Jewish family during the Holocaust.

There are many times one can see the Nazi’s brutalizing the Jews throughout the novel. From the moment the Nazi’s took the Jews as prisoners they were being mistreated. They were loaded into cattle cars, a vehicle made to transport animals, to the point where they were so full people could hardly breathe. They were sent to concentration camps where they were tortured and treated as slaves. As they entered the camps they were humiliated, SS officers yelled at them to “‘Strip! Hurry up! Raus! Hold on only to your belt and your shoes”(Wiesel 35). They were sent to cold showers and bathed in a sulfur-scented soap to be identifiable by their scent. They received only one small ration of food a day, these people were starved. Not only were they cared for like a group of worthless animals but some were never even given a chance.

On the cattle car back from Auschwitz, Wiesel describes the prisoners as being beasts of prey, almost like the Holocaust has destroyed their humanity and transformed them into animals: “Men were hurling themselves against each other, trampling, tearing at and mauling each other. Beasts of prey unleashed, animal hate in their eyes...the spectators observed these emacipated creatures ready to kill for a crust of bread” (Wiesel 101). This quote mainly serves as a device to express prisoners as being animals, but also describes the role of a bystander. The Holocaust was a period of time full of passive bystanders who didn’t do anything despite having full knowledge of what was occurring in the concentration camps. The unnamed spectators in this quote symbolize all of the people that turned a blind eye once they figured out what the Nazis were truly doing to jewish and other “lesser” populations. In addition, in the last line of the memoir, Wiesel sees himself in a mirror for the first time since he had left his ghetto. Wiesel describes himself in the third person as being a corpse, displaying the immense toll that the Holocaust has had on certain people: “From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he

When living through the holocaust the SS men were continuously cruelty to keep the prisoners in fear of them so they are easy to control. Elie Wiesel uses his personal experiences from living in the camps to write the memoir Night. The memoir shows how cruelty can change a person's personality, and how they react and treat other people. Cruelty is not always a physical thing, the SS men used emotional cruelty to bend the prisoners to there will. Several cruel things happened to the prisoners, but the Nazis were not the only ones who were cruel. The prisoners became rude and ruthless to each other.

The human race has always struggled with the simple task of being humane. This started with the people killing over land, all the way to terrible events, such as the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel does a great job in his book, Night, talking about some of the things the Nazis did. The Nazis treated the Jewish people in the most inhumane way history has ever seen. The book approaches this just by throwing it directly in one’s face. Elie has a lot to say about humanity and inhumanity, as does Morrie Schwartz. Morrie is a Professor at Brandeis University and does a great job explaining why humanity should overcome inhumanity. Both Elie and Morrie agree that humanity and inhumanity were both very big things in their lifetime and humanity can be achieved through love, and concern for others.

Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, Recounts his first-hand experiences of Nazi atrocities in his memoir, Night as Wiesel struggles to maintain faith. Inhumanity and cruelty are two key parts relating to dehumanization in the novel Night by Elie Wiesel. Inhumanity and cruelty dehumanization of Jews during the Holocaust. This cruelty is important to the theme in this book because this is what the Holocaust is about. This book focuses on the Jews of Sighet because that is where the author Elie is from, the book entails the horrendous story of one Jew and his father out of six million Jews. Cruelty is directly related to this book as a whole because it is basically what the Holocaust is about, Nazi’s and Germans mistreating Jewish people because

At first glance, Night, by Eliezer Wiesel does not seem to be an example of deep or emotionally complex literature. It is a tiny book, one hundred pages at the most with a lot of dialogue and short choppy sentences. But in this memoir, Wiesel strings along the events that took him through the Holocaust until they form one of the most riveting, shocking, and grimly realistic tales ever told of history’s most famous horror story. In Night, Wiesel reveals the intense impact that concentration camps had on his life, not through grisly details but in correlation with his lost faith in God and the human conscience.

Many themes exist in Night, Elie Wiesel’s nightmarish story of his Holocaust experience. From normal life in a small town to physical abuse in concentration camps, Night chronicles the journey of Wiesel’s teenage years. Neither Wiesel nor any of the Jews in Sighet could have imagined the horrors that would befall them as their lived changed under the Nazi regime. The Jews all lived peaceful, civilized lives before German occupation. Eliezer Wiesel was concerned with mysticism and his father was “more involved with the welfare of others than with that of his own kin” (4). This would change in the coming weeks, as Jews are segregated, sent to camps, and both physically and emotionally abused. These changes and abuse would dehumanize

Can you imagine having everything stripped away from you, your friends, family, and all basic rights, all of it seeming like one long never ending night. Barely anyone today could, however this was a reality for Elie Wiesel, author of the award winning book Night. The book is a wonderful insight to the events of the holocaust. It is filled with grueling instances of survival, family, and even the inhumanity of man, however another kind of torture that is slightly less obvious is constantly referenced throughout this autobiography, and that is the loss of faith. Although this theme may seem less prevalent, it is in my opinion the most important one in all areas including importance to Elie Wiesel, prominence in the

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.

Elie Wiesel’s novel Night shows how Genocide destroys all human identity. Night is a disturbing novel about the involvement of a young Jewish boy and his father living captive in a German concentration camp called Auschwitz. Elie, the main character, writes about all of the experiences and things he saw while being a prisoner of genocide. In the beginning of the novel he saw unspeakable things “Babies were thrown into the air and the machine gunners used them as targets”(Wiesel,16). This quote from the novel shows how the Nazis had no empathy, also they didn't know how inhumane they were. In the novel the Nazis gave each prisoner a “name,” “I became A-7713. After that I had no other name”(Wiesel,51). They were dehumanizing everyone