In both books, Tuesdays with Morrie and Night, humanity and inhumanity is commonly heard about. In Tuesday’s with Morrie I think that one form of inhumanity is Mitch being selfish and not wanting to make decisions and do things that he needs to do. Mitch is all about what it is going to take to get him where he wants to be. “ … and I hope that he hadn't noticed my arrival so that I could drive around the block a few more times, finish my business, get mentally ready.” (Albom 27). Another example of inhumanity is the disease to Morrie. Morrie, even though he knows he is dying, puts in the effort to show Mitch humanity. Morrie does the humane thing and tells Mitch that he needs to do the things that are most important. Morrie is the person that tries to get everybody on the same page and to understand that there are more important things in life. Morrie knows that love is the only rational act and he also knows …show more content…
Some of the examples are that the Germans make the Jewish people live in conditions that no human being should ever live in. They also get treated as if they are animals, and the fact that humans are doing this to other humans is what makes it inhumane. “Anyone who still owns gold, silver, or watches must hand them over now. Anyone who will be found to have kept any of these will be shot on the spot.” (Wiesel 24). The Germans also take things from the Jews to show that they are in control and if they do not obey what the soldiers say they will be shot. The killing of the Jews by the Germans is the main form of humanity in the book. Multiple Jews were hung one by one as Elie had to watch (Wiesel 63). Humanity does occur in Night despite all of the awful things that happen. Elie is one example of humanity. Elie helps his father get through times that his father does not think that he will. Elie tries to keep his father up and take care of him while the Germans are trying to downgrade
Their loss of humanity, made the Jew feel like they are not human but things. Throughout the book “Night” by Elie Wiesel, the Jews are slowly losing their humanity as the story does on. The Nazis dehumanized the Jews through taking their religious purpose, starvation, and watching other people die, which Wiesel show through hyperbole.
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.
For example “I once saw one of thirteen beating his father because the latter had not made his bed properly.” (Pg 70) This shows how cruelty can affect people differently, just because all the prisoners were exposed to the same kinds of cruelty does not mean they will all react the same. The boy in this example killed his father because the hunger he felt changed how he acted. “The shadow threw itself upon him. Elled to the ground, stunned with blows...Meir. Meir, my boy!....I’m your father!....you’re killing your father!” (Pg 106) This is an example of self-preservation no matter what the cost is, this happened to people because survival instincts came into action.
Richard Ramirez is an infamous serial murderer who terrorized Los Angeles, California in 1985. The media gave him the name the “Night Stalker” when he was on his vicious rampage of forcing himself into the homes of his victims late at night and committing his heinous crimes. Though he was only convicted of thirteen murders, he had many more victims. His crimes were so random, disorganized, and impulsive that the law enforcement officials of Los Angeles had no luck finding Ramirez for months as he grew increasingly more violent. (Tripod.com, 2012) Finally, in August of 1985, the police had enough information from many of his victims to release a sketch of him to the media. The sketch had only been on the news for one
they had it. They have nobody but themselves which leads to nothing but evil. Isabelle-Marie
The first example of dehumanization is when Elie, his father, and seventy eight other Jews get put in the cattle car. The German in charge of the cattle car says, “ ‘If anyone goes missing, you will all be shot like dog’s’ ”(Wiesel 24). The Jews are humans and don't need to be treated like this because there scared and just got out of the ghettos.
These examples show the ignorance and lack of action by the people of Germany and surrounding countries, as well as the helplessness of the Jews during the Holocaust. While in the ghetto of Sighet, Elie witnesses the brutality the Hungarian police use to control the Jewish people. “The Hungarian police struck out with truncheons and rifle butts, to right and left, without reason… their blows falling upon old men and women….” (25) Later on, German people do nothing to help the concentration camp victims when they pass through towns between camps. Finally, when riding the cattle car from Gleiwitz to Buchanan, citizens throw bread in the cars in order to watch the Jews fight for amusement. The quotes “They stopped and stared after us, but otherwise showed no surprise” (105) and “Dozens of starving men fought each other to death for a few crumbs. The German workmen took a lively interest in this spectacle” (105) display that the common public were cruel because they ignored Jewish persecution and even mocked it in a sense. They were bystanders. This relates to the theme because it shows how inaction can be worse than beating; because Jews received no help from the people around them, they were forced to endure the Holocaust. This is truly
Another theme that elie shows in the book is in a terrible or even horrible situation you always need your humanity at side. Elie meets a french girl when he was at one of his terrible times she showed that the humanity was still in her no matter what happened. “I dragged myself to my corner. I ached all over. I felt a cool hand wiping my blood-stained forehead. It was the French girl. She gave me her mournful smile and slipped a bit of bread into my hand. She looked into my eyes. I felt that she wanted to say something but was choked by fear. For a long moment she stayed like that, then her face cleared and she said to me in almost perfect german: ‘Bite your lip, little brother. . . . Don't cry. Keep your anger and hatred for another day, for later on. The day will come, but not now. . . . Wait. grit your teeth and wait. . . .’ ” (Wiesel #51). The significance of this quote is how she had the humanity to help someone and make them feel better after all of it. She put him first before anyone. Her kindness and her words showed that she still had her humanity to be there for him. She even put her life on the line for him. She never spoke so they thought she was french but as said “...In almost perfect German...” she spoke kind words that even if a kapo heard her she would have died. For they would have punished her. Later in the book elie would have been punished or even killed for what he had done to be with his father. “The SS officers were doing the selection: the weak, to the left; those who walked well, to the right. My father was sent to the left. I ran after him. An SS officer shouted at my back: "Come back!" I inched my way through the crowd. Several SS men rushed to find me, creating such confusion that a number of people were able to switch over to the right—among them my father and I. Still, there were gunshots and some dead. The importance of
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
Within human nature there is a want to act against the corruption and evils of society. A human’s moral compass directs each person to fight against what is considered evil and to praise everything that is believed to be good. “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” (The Devil Came on Horseback). This means that in order for humans to rise above the evils of the world, good men have to take action against those who have committed a wrong. “Not a cry of distress, not a groan, nothing but a mass agony, in silence.”(pg.84). Due to Elie and the other Jews submission to the powerful Nazis, the dehumanization of the Jews remained
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.
The following is a summary on the short essay The Dark Night of the Soul by Richard E Miller. This short essay is an essay that has been written with a main point always in mind, that reading and writing has very powerful influences people and their imagination but, the act of reading and writing is not being utilized as much in the modern world. Richard has created an essay that proves his point by taking five very different short stories and giving each a twist that helps the reader see the power of reading. As the reader is chronologically going through the essay he or she is given many possible meanings of the essay. The meaning and the
The novel “Night” shows that there is great inhumanity and cruelty displayed from this personal journey of Elie Wiesel. The Nazi are the ringleaders behind it all gradually making the Jews feel like nothing and only pawns for work. The Germans strip the Jews to nothing and take away everything close to them, separation from loved ones, isolation, transportation and the ruthless, cold actions towards them in the camps such as starvation, selections of the fittest and the struggle of survival becomes essential for their own self. However there are humane acts within the book which help Elie overcome some struggles and survive the brutality of the camps and war.
To begin, Elie along with millions of Holocaust victims are dehumanized. The Nazi’s used various ways to make people feel like they were animals. The Nazi’s would degrade the Jews to a point that they lost the desire to live. They did this by destroying the
The Russian Revolution and the purges of Leninist and Stalinist Russia have spawned a literary output that is as diverse as it is voluminous. Darkness at Noon, a novel detailing the infamous Moscow Show Trials, conducted during the reign of Joseph Stalin is Arthur Koestler’s commentary upon the event that was yet another attempt by Stalin to silence his critics. In the novel, Koestler expounds upon Marxism, and the reason why a movement that had as its aim the “regeneration of mankind, should issue in its enslavement” and how, in spite of its drawbacks, it still held an appeal for intellectuals. It is for this reason that Koestler may have attempted “not to solve but to expose” the shortcomings of this political system and by doing so