Night Analysis of Dehumanization Essay Example

Night Analysis of Dehumanization Essay Example Night Analysis of Dehumanization Essay Night Analysis of Dehumanization Essay Essay Topic: Bad Boy a Memoir Demutualization in Night Night by Lie Wishes is a memoir that documents the story of a young Jewish boy named Likelier who was born in Sighed, Transylvania during World War II. The story begins in his hometown, where life is normal and calm before the storm. It quickly transitions into Nazi occupation, persecution, segregation in the form of ghettos, and eventually deportation to camps. As the Jewish people arrive at the camp known as Auschwitz, they are separated and many are immediately executed while the rest are sent off to work. The persecution does not simply end at hard work all day for the Jews, and as time goes on things become progressively worse for Likelier. The Nazis rip and tear at the humanity of Likelier throughout the book in an attempt to euthanize him. For most of the Jews in the camp the end is a physical death; however, what Likelier experiences at the end of the book is an internal death of himself. The AS soldiers achieve his internal death through segregation, mental abuse, and physical abuse that is so ingrained in the mind of the Likelier that it becomes a natural part of his existence, an everyday hell. As Haltering states, Night fines the nature and charts the consequences of a loss of faith in the protagonist, Likelier, as incident by incident, layer by layer, his trust in God and man is peeled away. It is this peeling down process which constitutes the essential structure of Night and enables us to see it as a whole (51). What Haltering means is that The Nazis goal is to euthanize Likelier. The Nazi soldiers successfully peel away at Lispers humanity through various forms and methods until Likelier dies on the inside. The first step towards dehumidifying Likelier is separating him from non-Jews. As he Jews are being placed inside the ghettos, Likelier observes, The barbed wire that encircled us like a wall did not fill us with real fear. In fact, we felt this was not a bad thing; we were entirely among ourselves (11). No fear can be seen in Lispers thoughts, although readers know there should be. Likelier is still unsuspecting of what was to come, and that is what allows him to be taken so easily. Had the Nazis taken the Jews all at once, The Jews would have struggled much more, especially if they knew what was coming. The Nazis took things slow so as to avoid an uprising, to maintain control. Later, to further pronounce the separation between the population into Jews and non-Jews, the Nazis force all of the Jews to wear yellow stars on their clothes. About the same time that the Jews are placed in ghettos, with a more nervous tone in his voice, Likelier ominously notes, Three days later, a new decree: every Jew had to wear the yellow star (11). The Nazis want to make it visibly known that the Jews are different. They force the yellow star on them so that anyone could know who was Jewish and who was not. Not only this, but also many decrees are set out that limit what people with the yellow star can do. By limiting Jews, the Nazis enforce a barrier between them and non-Jewish people. However, after all this segregation, and even someone within their community warning them of what to come, the Jews are still denying the inevitable. No one could really imagine, even in those rare cases where individuals came back and insisted that the deported were centers (Friedman 206). It is important to recognize the denial of what is about to happen, because much has yet to happen to the poor Jews of Sighed. For the coming weeks, the Jews would be abused and tortured not only physically, but mentally. To proceed in the demutualization of Likelier, the Nazis torment his mind with disturbing images, and crush his spirit. Fine notes, Once Likelier enters Auschwitz, he loses his sense of time and reality. Darkness envelops him and penetrates within: his spirit shrouded, his God eclipsed, the blackness eternal (49). A man who has no mind to think for himself, and no spirit to fight back is easier to control and abuse. In order for the Nazis to completely euthanize Likelier, they not only have to destroy his mind, they must also destroy his spirits. Just one of the disturbing images is when Likelier witnesses the burning of babies soon after his arrival in Auschwitz: Not far from us, flames, huge flames, were rising from a ditch. Something was being burned there. A truck drew close and unloaded its hold: small children. Babies! Yes, I did see this, with my own eyes Children thrown into the flames (32). Nothing imaginable could possibly be as horrifying as the immolation of infants. This image is such a blow to Lispers mind because it is not only the killing of the innocent; it is there to show Likelier how little life means in Auschwitz. Likelier is led to believe this so they o not value his own life, and therefore will not fight for it; in this way, the Nazis are crushing his spirit as well. While torturing of people he does not know still disturbs Likelier, the physical beating of his only friend in the camp, his father, does more than words or images ever could. Lispers father is beaten, and the fact that Likelier doesnt move to help his father scares him a little. Likelier eerily considers, l stood petrified. What had happened to me? My father had Just been struck, in front of me, and I had not even blinked. I had watched and kept silent (39). Lispers inability to eve demonstrates that the Nazis plan is working. They are successful so far as to even prevent him from standing up for his own father, the only person he knows in the camp. Had the Nazis beat his dad back in Sighed before they really started the torture, Likelier might have fought back, but now submission is the response he has. It scares him. One of the more indirect ways of crushing his spirit and mind was to take away his identity as a person, and give him a number for a name. Likelier depicts the scene with no emotion, and states it as if he does not care: The three veteran rissoles, needles in hand, tattooed numbers on our left arms. I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name (42). This is the first time Likelier has been given a different name. To assign a number was more damaging because it represents an ordered system of storing things like apples, boxes, or other insignificant items. It puts Likelier in the mindset of not having anything to make him different from any other Jew. He now finds his identity in only numbers and the Nazis definition of a Jew. The torture of mind and loss of identity contribute greatly to his demutualization. After the Nazis have successfully stripped Likelier of his mind, they can truly now attack the only thing left in the process of demutualization, his body. The Nazis see that in order to destroy a mans humanity, they need to destroy the mind, spirit, and then the body. One of the ways they do this is to constantly malnourished Likelier. Bread and Soup became more important than anything because the Nazis starved Likelier. Of soup, my crust of stale bread. The bread, the soup those were my entire life. I was nothing but a body (52). Likelier confirms in the last sentence that the Nazis had tripped him of his mind and spirit that this body is the only thing he has left. The Nazis do not let him keep his body either, they continue to keep him malnourished the rest of his time, and cause many other physical pains over the course of the coming weeks. Aside from starving Likelier, they beat him senselessly on multiple occasions. Likelier remembers, One day when Ides was venting his fury, I happened to cross his path. He threw himself on me like a wild beast, beating me in the chest, on my head, throwing me to the ground and picking me up again, crushing me with ever more violent blows, until I was covered in blood (53). The Nazis have no regard for the body or the pain of Likelier. The Nazis persecute relentlessly, and are able to do so consistently without revolt or opposition. This is the final step in dehumidifying Likelier; after his mind and spirit were depressed to such a point so he would never question or challenge the Nazis, the physical abuse could begin. The Nazis first weaken Lispers body with malnourishment, and then beat him senselessly. As Wishes notes in his preface, Instead of sacrificing my miserable life and rushing to my fathers] side, showing him that he was not abandoned, I remained flat on my back, asking God to make my father stop calling my name, to make him stop crying. So afraid was I to incur the wrath of the AS (Wishes, Preface x). At first it appears as if Likelier cares about his father and does not want him to feel so defeated; however, the last sentence shows that Likelier does so only to get him to stop yelling, to silence his father a little so that the Nazis would not hurt Likelier. A normal person might not care of his or her own safety when a parent is being ordered, and would be there Just for the sake of pure care for his or her father. Instead, Likelier is a person who has lost that sense of care for another human being, and whose only motivation for helping him is so he himself is not beat. It is the Nazis constant threat of physical torture that suppress Likelier. In this way, the Nazis have now controlled the motivations of Likelier with his body. The Nazis not only starve and beat broken bodies, but they work them to the bone. Likelier remarks both on the beatings and the work, There followed terrible days. We received more blows than food. The work was crushing (77). The work now is Just one more thing that the Nazis have at their dispersal. The Nazis are good at pushing many to the point to death, but they are even better at finding out how much a person can take before they die and going a step back from that point to torture them that much longer. A starving body is weak; a broken body is weaker, so pushing them to this point can only be agonizing. After all Likelier experiences, his mind is under control, his spirit is crushed, and now his body has been broken. This total control over his body is crucial to his demutualization, and destruction of his soul. After the destruction of his soul, he is broken on the inside. He has experienced these atrocities, and the only people that he has left to hold him together inside are God and his father. So as to isolate Likelier, the Nazis succeed in killing God and his father. Likelier remarks his distrust in God after seeing the young boy being hanged, My eyes had opened and I was alone, terribly alone in a world without God, without man. Without love or mercy. I was nothing but ashes now, In the midst of these those in prayer like strangers. He does not see them as equals or as believers. He has owe been isolated from God, and in that way, the Nazis have taken away Lispers God, or at least made him question God. They leave him without a higher power or an all present being to rely on. This is especially important to the Nazis goal of total destruction because God is the one being that Likelier can rely when all human presence is gone. This forces him to put all of his faith in the present, in what is happening. The only person that he has left to cling to is his father. The Nazis know that the only way to finally destroy his soul is to strip him of all he loves and knows. He will be an empty body walking if they succeed. Likelier remembers, No prayers were said over his tomb. No candle lit in his memory. His last word had been my name (112). Now his father has been killed, never to be seen again. Likelier is now truly alone in the world, with only his broken body and a number left to him. The Nazis have succeeded in killing him. There is proof that he has died after he has been liberated from the camp. He looks at himself in the mirror, and all he sees is a dead corpse: One day when I was able to get up, I decided to look at myself in the error on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me (115). His death cannot be seen, except by him when he looks into the mirror. He still walks and breathes, but the inside is now missing from him. The Nazis succeeded in their ultimate goal of killing his soul while preserving the body that used to hold it. Through segregating him from non-Jews, torturing his mind and spirit, and nearly destroying his body, the Nazis succeed in peeling away his immunity. To be human is to be able to live, laugh, love, think, and be happy. In Auschwitz, the Nazis took away all ability to feel. They desensitizing them to horrific, awful sights that would haunt anyone for years. Likelier experiences the worst of what Auschwitz has to offer the prisoners. Most of the population died a horrible death, and their names were forgotten. However, for Likelier, he experienced an internal death. Night can best be defined as a negative Bloodcurdling [coming of age story], in which the character does not end up, as expected, fit for life in society, but on the monetary, a living dead, unfit for life as defined by his community (Vain 129).