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Conformity at night by elie wiesel
How does society play a role in forming your identity
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The worst disease that has ever contaminated humanity is conformity. People alter their true identify in order to be accepted into society and it’s a shame. Conformity has very strict guidelines that everyone must follow or else they will be considered an outsider.
No one ever wakes up one day and decides to get rid of their individuality. It’s just with the way society is set up humans are limited to how they can live their life. Conforming to standards is something that is forced and never done willingly. Elie Wiesel’s article, “A Sacred Magic Can Elevate the Secular Storyteller” and Franz Kafka’s short story, “A Report to an Academy” both present different experiences of complying to people’s standards. Within these experiences it’s evident
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that society forces one to alter themselves in order to be accepted. Wiesel mentioned how he was forced to attend secular school and read novels that did not even appeal to him.
Although in school it is expected to follow a certain curriculum it still counts as conforming. Students are forced to read what is presented in front of them and not even question it. Wiesel didn’t even remember the novels he read because had such a deep passion for the study of sacred literature. Luckily, Wiesel beat the odds and kept his individual taste of literature. Regardless, it was still unfair that Wiesel involuntarily had to read novels that he didn’t even enjoy. Rotpeter, the protagonist in Kafka’s short story also was forced to conform when he was captured from the Gold Coast and put in a crate. Rotpeter had to decide that the only way out of this crate was to force himself to act like a human. He had no other option but to conform and it proves how society basically forces one to …show more content…
change. Nobody can bury the past and it’s obvious in Wiesel’s situation. Wiesel unfortunately experienced being in a concentration camp and him being a survivor was the label that society gave to him. He stated, “I knew I had to testify about my past but did not know how to go about it.” His novel, Night was extremely successful and got great reviews but that’s all everyone expected him to write about. Wiesel’s past will never go away no matter how much he tried to move forward and adapt to society. In Kafka’s short story Rotpeter mentioned how, “Today it is only a gentle breeze which cools my heels” when thinking about his past. Even if that hole that allows the “breeze” of his past to come through is small it still exists. The audience will never 100% view him as a human being. Rotpeter had to live with the fact that no matter how much he had altered himself his past will forever remain. Situations like these are what forces people to keep conforming to society because people just strive for complete acceptance. When Wiesel wrote a book that did not have to do about his wartime experiences he received very poor reviews.
Wiesel stayed true to himself and he got really bad feedback. In a world where we must conform to societies standard it’s hard to stay true to yourself because everything you do will be judge harshly. This negatively impacted Wiesel so much that he wanted to buy every copy that contained the unkind evaluation of his novel. Ignoring the nastiness of society is one of the most challenging things a person can do. Rotpeter would always be surrounded by men who observed every action he did. He didn’t enjoy drinking alcohol but to please others he forced himself to get used to the taste. Rotpeter was so negatively impacted by societies pressure to conform him to a human that he completely lost his sense of identity. He doesn’t even like to look at the female chimpanzee during the day because she is still 100% an animal and he has totally
changed. Conformity is something that will never go away because there will always be a “norm”. Wiesel and Rotpeter both will always be outsiders and no matter how much they force themselves to conform, their past will always exist. Conformity can’t be fought with because it always wins in the end. In some aspect everyone conforms to societies expectations and that’s the truth.
An estimated 11 million people died in the Holocaust. 6 million were Jews. In the book Night by Elie Wiesel tells his story as a Holocaust survivor. Throughout his book he describes the tremendous obstacles he overcame, not only himself, but with his father as well. The starvation and cruel treatment did not help while he was there. Elie makes many choices that works to his advantage. Choice plays a greater factor in surviving Auschwitz.
Individualism and conformity—two very commonly used terms to describe anyone in today’s times. In comparison to the article “The Sociology of Leopard Man,” written by Logan Feys, one of the most notable quotes that relates to individualism and conformity is “to be a human is to be an individual human, with individual tastes [.][and]talents [.] that are distinct from those of others. Living in society, we are under constant pressure to surrender our individuality to the will of the majority, the school, the workplace, the family,.” (Feys Par. 6.)
to the dehumanization of the Jews. He uses descriptive adjectives to shed light on what is truly happening. He also uses irony to help the reader understand the cluelessness of himself and the Jews. Wiesel’s way of writing in the book demonstrates the theme of dehumanization through false
Many people have given speeches like his, but the significance of this lecture was the passion he showed and still felt for this Earth, and its people, after all the horrible events that had happened to him in his life. He tells anyone who will listen to his speech to stand up for those who cannot stand up for themselves. Wiesel vocalizes that being a bystander and allowing bad things to happen is just as bad, in his mind, as being the person who actually does those bad things. Elie Wiesel says, “In a way, to be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human being inhuman.” Through his speech he tries to get anyone that is willing to listen to stop just accepting that the world is evil. He tells them to try and change it. The audience in the room he was speaking to never stood up and applauded. Instead, the audience gave Wiesel their undivided attention, never saying a
Throughout the Nobel Peace Prize award winner Night, a common theme is established around dehumanization. Elie Wiesel, the author, writes of his self-account within the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz. Being notoriously famed for its unethical methods of punishment, and the concept of laboring Jews in order to follow a regime, was disgusting for the wide public due to the psychotic ideology behind the concept. In the Autobiography we are introduced to Wiesel who is a twelve year old child who formerly lived in the small village of Sighet, Romania. Wiesel and his family are taken by the Nazi aggressors to the Concentration camp Auschwitz were they are treated like dogs by the guards. Throughout the Autobiography the guards use their authoritative
”Lie down on it! On your belly! I obeyed. I no longer felt anything except the lashes of the whip. One! Two! He took time between the lashes. Ten eleven! Twenty-three. Twenty four, twenty five! It was over. I had not realized it, but I fainted” (Wiesel 58). It was hard to imagine that a human being just like Elie Wiesel would be treating others so cruelly. There are many acts that Elie has been through with his father and his fellow inmates. Experiencing inhumanity can affect others in a variety of ways. When faced with extreme inhumanity, The people responded by becoming incredulous, losing their faith, and becoming inhumane themselves.
Every man, woman, and child has his or her breaking point, no matter how hard they try to hold it back. In Night by Elie Wiesel the main theme of the entire book is the human living condition. The quality of human life is overwhelming because humans have the potential to make amazing discoveries that help all humans. Elie Wiesel endures some of the most cruel living conditions known to mankind. This essay describes the themes of faith, survival, and conformity in Night by Elie Wiesel.
Conformity has been a part of society for centuries. People conform for various reasons. The examples featured in "Night" by Elie Wiesel, "Asch Experiment" by Saul McLeod, and "Conformity" by CommonLit Staff portray this in different situations. These selections show why people conform. People conform because of fear, self-doubt ,and for acceptance by peers. The fear of being rejected by society is shown strongly in Elie Wiesel's "Night."
I think when Wiesel says that he does not feel human anymore he means that he is living like an animal. He is caged like an animal. He works like an animal. He also is stripped of all the things that make him human. He is not aloud to stand up for his rights. He can not speak with his own free will. If he does, he will be killed. This compares to someone who beats his or her dog. If you hit the dog long enough and he will flinch anytime, someone raises a hand to the dog.
In “The Perils of Indifference” Elie Wiesel uses several techniques to get his point across. Three of them in the speech are Ethos, Repetition, and Pathos. He uses a combination of the three elements throughout the paragraphs of his speech to attract the readers. The combination of these elements help draw the reader’s emotions and interest towards his subject. He focuses on word choice that would pertain to his audience’s level of vocabulary.
The world is divided up into numerous things: Countries, states, cities, communities, etc. However, when looking at the big scope of things, one can group the vast amount of people into a society. This society is where the majority lie in the scheme of things - in other words, the common people. Individuals do exist in this society, but they are scarce in a world of conformism. Society’s standards demands an individual to conform, and if the individual refuses they are pushed down by society.
“The Perils of Indifference” In April, 1945, Elie Wiesel was liberated from the Buchenwald concentration camp after struggling with hunger, beatings, losing his entire family, and narrowly escaping death himself. He at first remained silent about his experiences, because it was too hard to relive them. However, eventually he spoke up, knowing it was his duty not to let the world forget the tragedies resulting from their silence. He wrote Night, a memoir of his and his family’s experience, and began using his freedom to spread the word about what had happened and hopefully prevent it from happening again.
...ther, and nearly kills an innocent woman. In a broader perspective, conformity can leave people walking aimlessly down the beaten path with no real direction except conformity, doomed to live yet another meaningless life in a society based on archaic principles.
“Social conformity has been practiced in societies around the world since ancient times,” and the reason it is so effective is that humans have an inherent need to be accepted as part of a group (Sadat). Furthermore, Hossna Sadat reports that:
He uses the appeal to authority by showing that he lived through great suffering in World War Two as a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp where he suffered greatly and experienced the indifference shown by the world first-hand. He then used the appeal to facts by first defining the word “indifference,” and then stating the facts of several events that took place showing the lack of immediate concern that was shown by the United States towards the prisoners when the United States discovered what the Nazis were doing. Wiesel also uses the appeal to emotion while he laces his entire speech with many different emotionally charged words. He tries to elicit a strong emotional response from the audience so as to move them towards action against indifference. His goal can still be achieved today if each person who reads his speech was to actively see the suffering that others experience and work ease it to the best of their ability. This would result in a more unified community, nation, and world culture where those suffering would no longer feel alone and unimportant but instead they would be acknowledged and