Essay Sample on Dehumanization in Night

Dehumanization is a leading theme in Elie Wiesel’s novel, Night. Because of Adolf Hitler’s rise to power, Germans had the impression that they were superior to Jews. Nazis’ actions and treatment towards Jewish people exemplifies dehumanization. They abuse their power and authority to strip their prisoners of their identities and deprive them of their humanity. As the Nazis instill fear into the convicts, Jewish people struggle to survive.

In the novel Night, The Jewish people are made to seem like they are less than human as the Nazis oppress them. Elie illustrates the following: “At that moment in time, all that mattered to me was my daily bowl of soup, my stale crust of bread. The bread, the soup- those were my entire life. I was nothing but a body. Perhaps even less: a famished stomach. The stomach alone was measuring time.” (Wiesel 52). Eventually the body becomes so deprived of food that it is a top priority. All other needs and emotions fade away as a result of his starvation. Elie is being dehumanized as food becomes one of the only things that matters. Fear, being greater than hunger, is shown: “Two lambs with hundreds of wolves lying in wait for them. Two lambs without a shepherd, free for the taking. But who would dare” (Weasel 59). The two lambs represent the cauldrons of soup and the wolves are the starving Jews. Being compared to animals 

Examples of the Nazis’ dehumanization are demonstrated multiple times throughout the novel. Elie’s reaction to a man stealing is described as “the pounding of my heart. The thousands of people who died daily in Auschwitz and Birkenau, in the crematoria, no longer troubled me” (Wiesel 62). The Nazis have put him through so much torture that nothing came as a revelation to him anymore. Wiesel considers the benefits of dying as “ceasing to be, began to fascinate me. To no longer exist…….” (Wiesel 86). The pain Elie experiences is so extreme that perishing did not seem so upsetting to him. 

Because of Adolf Hitler, a gencoide was implemented upon those who were not the Aryan race. Throughout his novel, Elie Wiesel demonstrates the hell he and millions of other Jews went through by his constant use of imagery and symbolism. Between biengf ood depreived, buratlity treated, and having labor forced upon them, dehumanization was a result of Nazi Germany’s attempts to eliminate the nonsuperior. The Jewish people are obligated to deal with this torture as they are pushed past their limit of dealing with the pain.