Night Theme Essay

Night Theme essay

Prejudice was a main factor that led to dehumanization during the Holocaust. The Holocaust refers to the period from 1933, when Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany to 1945, when the war in Europe officially ended. Hitler helped conceive Nazi concentration camps all over Eastern Europe and Germany. Hitler, a very persuasive dictator, convinced and led the Nazis to purge all Jews in Europe. His goal was to eradicate all Jews of the world to make his version of a utopian world without them. During this time in Europe, 6,000,000 Jews were subjected and forced to harsh oppression before their murder. Eliezer Wiesel uses literary elements and devices in his non-fiction memoir Night, to prove that when one is given enough power, people often use it to dehumanize others.

Not long after young Eliezer Wiesel's arrival at a concentration camp, it is clear through his actions and thoughts, it is clearly demonstrated that he, as well as others prisoners, feel stripped of both their identities and values. One of the first things Eliezer noticed at the camp is “They [soldiers] checked the bars on the window to make sure they would not come loose. The cars were sealed… if someone managed to escape, that person would be shot.” (22) It seems that this forlorn tone is explaining Eliezer does not have hope for him or the other prisoners to ever escape. Eliezer has no hope to get out of the camp. After being separated from his family and marching with the other men, Eliezer sees that “Not far from them, [are] flames, huge flames, ... rising from a ditch. Something was being burned there” (32). Wiesel purposely included this mood because we know that typically, the only things that are thrown into crematories are dead humans and animals. Nazis threw living people into burning fire, to feel indescribably pain until their death. I would agree that not all death is painless, but the fact that prisoners were purposely thrown into such agony until they were ashes, is inhumane. After being stripped of clothes, Eliezer is quite glad because “For [them], it meant equality, nakedness. [They] trembled in the cold.”(35) This tone proves that all prisoners had lost their value in class when the prisoners are stripped of their clothing. It means that no matter what their previous position in life was, or their wealth or lack of wealth, each person was stripped down completely and is and equal to the next.

Without our full identity, we lose our ability to feel like our complete selves. In the middle of the book are more examples of dehumanization when Eliezer loses a large part of his identity, his name. Wiesel claims that three veterans with needles in their hands, tattooed a number on the prisoner's arms. Wiesel is crushed when the soldier grabs the large needle and tattoos a code of some sort which is when “[he] became A-7713. After that [he] had no other name.”(42). He is referred to just a number in a line rather than himself, Eliezer Wiesel. No one now will ever know him by name, but just a simple code with one letter and four numbers for as long as he is in the concentration camp. In the middle of the book, Eliezer contemplates whether or not it is worth it to give the soldier his golden crown in exchange for extra food and thinks that “...all that mattered to [him] was [his] daily bowl of soup, [his] crust of stale bread. The bread, the soup- those were [his] entire life. [He] was nothing but a body. Perhaps even less: a famished stomach. The stomach alone was measuring time.” (52) This mood makes readers realize how privileged they may be to be living like this. Nowadays, people who are within Eliezer’s age group have concerns that are practically nothing to his. Teenagers now are primarily concerned about who likes who and who gets the most likes on social media. All Eliezer cared about was surviving and getting out of Auschwitz. As Eliezer was marching from camp to camp, he changed human toa worthless animal when a soldier shouted, "Faster,