Night by Elie Wiesel & a Victim by Bruno Bettelheim

"In a dark time, the eye begins to see."

In the worst times, you begin to realize everything you couldn't. The reader can agrees

green with this quote when related to Night by Elie Wiesel and "A Victim" by Bruno Bettelheim.

Though both stories have different perspectives, both show the narrator having an epiphany.

They had realized more and more as times got worse. They were no longer able to overlook

certain things that they once could.

In Night, they were warned and denied that the Germans could do such a thing. They

hadn't realized they should have ran and hid until they were in the cattle cars. Likewise, “A

Victim” explains how Bettelheim decides to just be straightforward, and stop playing the role of

a victim. He realizes that giving the S.S. Officers excuses and begging for treatment was what

the S.S. wanted. He had to put the work before himself.

Both stories show extreme cases of dehumanization. In Night, they are treated worse than

animals. It shows just how low humans can actually be to others. Bettelheim tells how the S.S.

didn’t really care what illness, or disease you had, they would leave you for dead. Both Night and

“A Victim” illustrate how despicable one human being can be to another. At this point and time,

Jews were treated as though they were disgusting animals instead of being treated as equal

Elie loses all faith in God after his experiences in the concentration camps. At one point

in the novella, Elie watches as a young pipel boy is hung and struggles for thirty minutes on the

rope. Someone in the crowd asks “where is God?” and a little voice in Elie’s mind says “Where

is he? This is where--hanging here from these gallows...” This was his symbol showing that God

was dead to him. Bettelheim also changes during his experience. He knows he can no longer

consider himself a victim after the Jews had gone to the concentration camps like sheep to the

slaughter.