Inhumanity is exemplified in both of the following novels: Tuesdays With Morrie and Night. Tuesdays With Morrie is a story told by Mitch Albom, who was a former student to Morrie Schwartz. While Mitch was out on business, he finds out that his old professor was diagnosed with ALS. In the novel Night, there are signs of inhumanity all throughout it. Night is about a young boy, Elie Wiesel, who survived the Holocaust and he shares his tragic journey of how he made it and how others did not. Both stories share similarities and differences between humanity and inhumanity.
In Tuesdays With Morrie, Morrie is diagnosed with ALS. The disease itself is inhumane. Morrie is literally deteriorating over time. In the novel, Mitch compares ALS to a candle. He described the process of the disease
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“melted his nerves like candlesticks, leaving his body a pile of wax,”(Albom 9). This disease works it’s way up the patient’s body. It starts by taking away the use of the legs, then it takes away the use of trunk muscles so that one cannot sit up straight, and if one is still alive by the end of it, the patient is just a man frozen in his own flesh, (Albom 10). However, Morrie does not take the news of his death like any other person would. He believes that this is his chance to get his goodbyes out of the way and do the things he has always wanted to do. Compared to Night, Morrie is not treated inhuman by others like the Jews do in Night. However, this process of the disease Morrie goes through is the inhumanity he faces. The novel Night shows inhumanity is several different ways. At one point in the novel, the Jews that are still alive are put on a wagon to be transported again. As the Jews were starving on this wagon, soldiers threw bread on the wagon to see the prisoners fight over it and basically kill each other for this one piece of bread, (Wiesel 101). There was even a son who killed his own father trying to get the bread. His father was screaming out to him: “Meir, my little Meir! Don’t you recognize me… You’re killing your father… I have bread… for you too… for you too…,” (Wiesel 101). Elie was just a young boy when he entered the camp. As soon as the Jews arrived, they were instantly treated like property instead of humans. They were barely fed, they never got to bathe unless they were being transferred to another camp, and they were beaten like animals. Compared to Tuesdays With Morrie, the circumstances are nothing in comparison. Morrie knew that he was going to die and he was able to say his goodbyes compared to Elie where he did not have that advantage to be able to say his goodbyes. Similarities and differences vary between the two novels.
One similar quality between the two stories is that Elie and Morrie both did not know if they were going to be able to wake up the next day. They both never knew when their last time would be. However, Morrie understood that and made the most of everyday whereas Elie did not have that luxury due to being in the camp. Elie struggled to survive compared to Morrie who knew that there was nothing he could to overcome his diagnosis of ALS. All Elie could do was fight to stay alive compared to Morrie who could not. The difference between the two novels when it comes to inhumanity is that Morrie’s inhumanity was caused by a disease whereas Elie’s was man inhumanity to man. Morrie was unable to take care of himself. He had to be showered, taken to the restroom by someone else, and he was not able to feed himself. The difference in Jews is that their inhumanity was caused by man. The Nazi’s are the one’s who decided the Jews fate to be treated this way, it was not a medical diagnosis like Morrie’s inhumanity. However, the two are similar as well. Both Morrie and Elie could not help the positions they were put in and they both
suffered. In conclusion, Tuesdays With Morrie and Night both include inhumanity. Both novels showed similarities and differences within them. Morrie and Elie were both put in a negative situation that neither one could have avoided. However, Morrie’s inhumanity was caused by an illness whereas Elie’s was caused by man’s inhumanity to man. Each novel has shown the differences in their stories when it comes humanity v. inhumanity.
In the book Night by Elie Wiesel there were countless acts that would be classified as inhuman. For example the hanging of an angelic pipel, or killing one’s father for a piece of bread. Although both acts are extremely inhuman, hanging a child is more inhuman than killing one’s father for a piece of bread. Yet, to kill someone’s father for a bread is more in keeping with human nature in the fact that it is done for survival.
Elie Wiesel writes about his personal experience of the Holocaust in his memoir, Night. He is a Jewish man who is sent to a concentration camp, controlled by an infamous dictator, Hitler. Elie is stripped away everything that belongs to him. All that he has worked for in his life is taken away from him instantly. He is even separated from his mother and sister. On the other side of this he is fortunate to survive and tell his story. He describes the immense cruel treatment that he receives from the Nazis. Even after all of the brutal treatment and atrocities he experiences he does not hate the world and everything in it, along with not becoming a brute.
In the novel Night, written by Eli Wiesel, shares traumatic events that occurred during the Holocaust. Night contains several significant events in which dehumanization is taking place. Dehumanization is the process by which the Nazis gradually reduced the Jews to feel they are worthless and meaningless to life. Jews were treated so poorly to the point they no were no longer looked at as humans.
How can inhumanity be used to make one suffer? The book Night by Elie Wiesel is about a young Jewish boy named Elie who struggles to survive in Auschwitz, a concentration camp during the Holocaust. Throughout the memoir, there are many instances where inhumanity is portrayed. The theme seen in this novel is inhumanity through discrimination, fear, and survival.
"Night" by Elie Wiesel is a terrifying account of the Holocaust during World War II. Throughout this book we see a young Jewish boy's life turned upside down from his peaceful ways. The author explores how dangerous times break all social ties, leaving everyone to fight for themselves. He also shows how one's survival may be linked to faith and family.
In the 1930s-1940s, the Nazis took millions of Jews into their death camps. They exterminated children, families, and even babies. Elie Wiesel was one of the few who managed to live through the war. However, his life was forever scarred by things he witnessed in these camps. The book Night explained many of the harsh feelings that Elie Wiesel experienced in his time in various German concentration camps.
According to the definition, inhumane is described as an individual without compassion for misery or sufferings. The novel Night by the author Elie Wiesel, illustrates some aspects of inhumanity throughout the book. It is evident in the novel that when full power is given to operate without restraint, the person in power becomes inhumane. There are many examples of inhumanity in this novel. For instance, "Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky." Through this quote Elie is explaining his first night at camp and what he saw will be in his head forever - unforgettable. In my opinion, the section in the novel when the Germans throw the babies into the chimney is very inhuman. An individual must feel no sympathy or feelings in order to take such a disturbing action. In addition to that "For more than half an hour stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony under our eyes. And we had to look him full in the face. He was still alive when I passed in front of him. His tongue was still red, his eyes were not yet glazed." This is also very inhumane example since the child's weight wasn’t enough to snap his neck when he was hung and so he is slowly dying painful death as all Jewish people walk by him, being forced to watch the cruelty.
Night by Elie Wiesel is a novelization of the struggles that were faced during the Holocaust. This novel is written to teach one that it is important to take action when injustice is seen. Wiesel uses first person point of view, imagery, and symbolism to display the ways one can be able to stand for what they believe in. He tells the reader how one impact the society they live in and that if no one takes action against injustice for the better then nothing will improve and society will not change. Wiesel says, “I 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. Only yesterday, I would have dug my nails into this criminal’s flesh. Had I changed that much? So fast? Remorse began to gnaw at me. All I could think was: I shall never forgive them for this” (Wiesel 39). He depicts that it should be difficult for humans to tolerate any injustice that they see. There are many current events going on around
Elie Wiesel has gone through more in life than any of us could ever imagine. One of my favorite quotes from him says, “To forget a holocaust is to kill twice.” In his novel “Night” we are given an in-depth look at the pure evil that was experienced during the rise and fall of Nazi Germany. We see Wiesel go from a faithful, kind Jewish boy to a survivor. As he experiences these events, they change him drastically.
In the novel Night, Elie Wiesel faces the horrors of the Holocaust, where he loses many friends and family, and almost his life. He starts as a kind young boy, however, his environment influences many of the decisions he makes. Throughout the novel, Elie Wiesel changes into a selfish boy, thinks of his father as a liability and loses his faith in God as an outcome his surroundings.
In the memoir Night, the narrator Wiesel recounts a moment when he witnesses the most horrific actions done by men,”I pinched myself : Was I still alive ? Was I awake ? How was it possible that men, women, and children were being burned and that the world kept silent “ (Wiesel 32). Wiesel was thinking and questioning about his existence. While also caring for his father because that's all he has left. It's even more important because, what Wiesel experiences in camps has been near death and fight for survival. Two significant themes related to inhumanity discussed in the book Night by Wiesel are, loss in religious faith and father and son bonding.
A simple act of kindness and support can possibly be the savior to someone else’s misery. In the novel, Night, written by Eliezer Wiesel, Elie portrays the daily lifestyle of the Jews during the Holocaust, and shares his personal experiences. He goes through hardships as he travels from the ghettos to the concentration camps with his one and only family member remaining, his father. The S.S. soldiers take the author’s mother and his two sisters away from him as they arrive at the ghetto because they separating women from men. Throughout the novel, Elie experiences personality adaptations and loses his faith in God all due to the loss of humanity in his world. With this in mind, he bases his survival on his determination and not his luck. Eliezer survives the Holocaust as a result to the hope he provides for his father and the support he receives from others throughout his journey.
Authors sometimes refer to their past experiences to help cope with the exposure to these traumatic events. In his novel Night, Elie Wiesel recalls the devastating and horrendous events of the Holocaust, one of the world’s highest points for man’s inhumanity towards man, brutality, and cruel treatment, specifically towards the Jewish Religion. His account takes place from 1944-1945 in Germany while beginning at the height of the Holocaust and ending with the last years of World War II. The reader will discover through this novel that cruelty is exemplified all throughout Wiesel's, along with the other nine million Jews’, experiences in the inhumane concentration camps that are sometimes referred to as “death factories.”
Elie Wiesel, winner of the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize, wrote Night with the notion for society to advance its understanding of the Holocaust. The underlying theme of Night is faith. Elie Wiesel, for the majority of this work, concerns the faith and survival of his father, Chlomo Wiesel. The concept of survival intertwines with faith, as survival is brought upon Elie’s faith in his father. Both Elie and Chlomo are affected in the same manner as their Jewish society. The self-proclaimed superman race of the German Nazis suppress and ultimately decimate the Jewish society of its time. Elie and Chlomo, alongside their Jewish community, were regarded as subhumans in a world supposedly fit for the Nazi conception. The oppression of Elie and Chlomo begins in 1944, when the Germans constrain the Jews of Sighet into two ghettos. During the time of Nazi supremacy, Elie and Chlomo are forced to travel to various concentration camps, including Birkenau, Auschwitz, and Buchenwald.
Irish Playwright, George Bernard Shaw, once said, “The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity.” Inhumanity is mankind’s worse attribute. Every so often, ordinary humans are driven to the point were they have no choice but to think of themselves. One of the most famous example used today is the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night demonstrates how fear is a debilitating force that causes people to lose sight of who they once were. After being forced into concentration camps, Elie was rudely awakened into reality. Traumatizing incidents such as Nazi persecution or even the mistreatment among fellow prisoners pushed Elie to realize the cruelty around him; Or even the wickedness Elie himself is capable of doing. This resulted in the loss of faith, innocence, and the close bonds with others.