Dystopia In Elie Wiesel's Night

In most cases, the quest to forming a utopia often ends in the creation of a dystopia. This observation can be seen in effect during the Holocaust. Adolf Hitler, in his efforts to create a superior Aryan race, initiated a mass “cleansing” where anyone who did not meet his standards was sent to a concentration camp. Christians, gypsies, homosexuals, disabled, and Jewish people were sent to these camps where they worked until death or liberation. Stripped of identity, dignity, and all humanity, they were given small rations of food and were often beaten and experimented on. Those who survived until liberation were often left physically and emotionally scarred such as Elie Wiesel, whose first-hand account of the Holocaust was published in a novel, “Night”. The acts of cruelty performed during the Holocaust have no equal, but the dystopia that Adolf Hitler created has several similarities to our own modern-day society. Religious beliefs, for example, still struggle with some

Punishment describes the infliction of a penalty as retribution for an offense. Both the dystopia in the novel and our modern-day society are no strangers to punishment, but in the dystopia, punishments were harsher and more physical. There was a scene written in the book: “He took his time between lashes.” In this scene, the author, Elie Wiesel, was being flogged as punishment for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was used as an example to the other prisoners so that they will not act out of place. This is wildly different from today’s standards of punishment, especially because of the eighth amendment of the constitution. Today, punishments rarely include violence and include things like jail time, paying fines, restitution, and probation. In the book however, punishments included public lashings and beatings, which according to the novel seemed to be given to the prisoners frequently, regardless of their