Essay

Marco Corona
Ms. Bosch
English Honors 10
5 January 2009
Dehumanization
In the autobiography Night, written by Elie Wiesel, there exists many gruesome and unjust events, this causes for the prisoners of the concentration camps change drastically on how they view the world. Here Wiesel looses his entire family and questions daily if there is a god. Wiesel when young thought if God was almighty and if he were so great why could not he liberates his people. It is not only Wiesel; Rabbis lost their faith with God too. At the start of the autobiography, Wiesel is enthusiastic about his father; it shows that he loves him dearly, yet later in the autobiography he grows angry at times with his father. At times he looses respect for him as well, yet loves him enough to not tell it to his face. Life was a strong theme in the autobiography it shows that life is a beautiful life and we should not take it for granted; we should appreciate our life and our lifestyle. At the beginning of the autobiography Wiesel stepped into the camp at Auschwitz, he saw the crematory and all the dead corpses and thought that death was horrendous, but after a while he takes death as normal and as if it were okay that it happens regularly. Wiesel deprived of his human abilities, innocence, and or qualities, was shaped into a person in which he would have looked down upon as a child growing up in Transylvania.
In the autobiography Night, starts off with Wiesel wanting to learn the cabala, this therefore proves that at one point in time Wiesel wanted learn the ways of life and to learn how to cherish one’s life. Wiesel states that when he was young he wanted to learn the cabala, he says, “ One evening I told him how unhappy I was because I could not fid a master in Sighet to instruct me in the Zohar, the cabalistic books, the secrets of Jewish mysticism” (Wiesel 3). Wiesel is dehumanized, for something that attracted him so much, being religion, suddenly fades away and is turned into doubt, confusion, and his faith grows weak towards God. Wiesel at times would feel as though life has no point throughout the book Jews question god as does Wiesel to the point where they constantly loose faith I can support this evidence with a quote, “This day I had ceased to plead. I was no longer capable of lamentation. On the contrary, I felt very strong. I was the accuser, God the accused. My eyes were open and I was alone-terribly alone in a world without God and without man”(65). Wiesel constantly lacks faith in the book among with his fellow Jews, in this quote it shows the drastic change that Wiesel made from wanting to learn God’s ways to lacking faith in him, he says, “My mind was so invaded that by this realization-there was no more reason to live no more reason to struggle”(93).
At first, Wiesel looks at his father as his mentor and as his guidance councilor, he has an admirance towards him, for he has wisdom, we can see this in a quote from the autobiography. “ His eyes gleamed with desire. I told him that I had to ask for my father’s advice”(52). Wiesel expresses that he has a great admirance for his father; from the previous quote, we can see that clearly Wiesel does admire his father. Wiesel shows that he is dehumanized once more, he starts changing the way he feels about his father. He starts losing respect and at times does not honor his father. We can see these actions take place in the middle of the written autobiography, he states, “What is more, any anger that I felt at that moment was not directed, not against the Kapo, but at my father. I was angry with him, for not knowing how to avoid Idek’s outbreak. That is what the concentration camp life had made of me”(52). Wiesel’s father was being brutally hurt, yet instead of feeling sympathy towards his father all he felt was anger.
The theme of life was stressed throughout the whole book it was definitely a major theme and probably one of the most important themes of all. At first Wiesel was a bit ignorant on the fact that he ignored how good he had life in Sighet compared to life in the concentration camps. It does not take long for Wiesel to think of suicide, however it does take Wiesel a long time to realize that life truly is beautiful. At first death was a big deal for Wiesel but after time Wiesel thought of death as normal He worried less of death but worried more of maintaining a good grip on life. In this coming quote, we can see that in the beginning Wiesel was afraid of being around death, this will help me explain and discuss how he was dehumanized by the concentration camps, Wiesel states, “Father,’ I said ‘if that is s, I do not want to wait here. I am going to run to the electric wire. That would be better than slow agony in flames”(31). The previous quote I will use as evidence to prove that Wiesel was deprived of his innocence and deprived of his natural rights, being that he is human he should have, among the rest of the Jews be entitled to those rights. This next quote shows how once Wiesel thought the decaying bodies were revolting rather than normal, a person was trampled right beside him yet he was at ease, he stated, “That is the last picture I have of him. I do not think it can have been the SS who finished him, because no one had noticed he must have been trampled to death beneath the feet of the thousands of men who followed us. I quickly forgot him”(82). The Jews became familiar with the dead corpses and at times rejoiced to the death of some Jews that way there can be more room and space for themselves in the wagons. This quote will show how far this dehumanization has caused them to result to extreme savagery, according to the autobiography, “Throw out all the dead! All corpses outside!’ The living rejoiced. There would be more room. Volunteers set to work. They felt those who were still crouching”(94).
The men that passed away in the concentration camps gave up their faith many times during their lives, yet in the end they all resulted believing in their god and believing that there a little piece of heaven is expecting them. The Germans could have dehumanized these poor men, but in the end, they die knowing that they will go to heaven. The men in Germany try to win but are unsuccessful in the end; in dehumanizing these human beings because no matter what, most of the men rather die than live one more day in the concentration camps because in death at least you are at piece.

Wiesel, Elie. Night. Bantam. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 1960.