Night Loss Of Identity

Personal identity is a complicated subject, with varying definitions. For example, according to the Attachment Theory based on the work of Mary Ainsworth and John Bowlby, children who develop a secure, trusting relationship with their parents from infancy are shown to have a more confident, secure view of themselves than those who do not develop that relationship. Other theories argue that other factors are more important in children developing secure personal identity. Night by Elie Wiesel and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn are two novels in which a major theme is identity and how horrible circumstances and the state can affect or even destroy identity, regardless of an individual’s relationships. These themes

If it is believed that “the tension between the strict super-ego and the subordinate ego we call the sense of guilt ; it manifests itself as the need for punishment” [4], this sense of guilt continues on even in the oppressive and dehumanizing state of the concentration camps. The super-ego includes familial obligation, and throughout the novel the most important relationship Eliezer has is that with his father. He is divided between his growing lack of human feeling due to his environment (his id perhaps, using its base instincts to protect himself) and the sense of duty he maintains towards his father (a lingering sense of super-ego). Freud also states that “the existence of this tendency to aggression which we can detect in ourselves and rightly presume to be present in others” [5], which the Holocaust can be an example of and that tendency to aggression leads to society and the state developing a scapegoat. Jewish people are a common one. In the case of Night, the state was the Nazis and the state succeeded in destroying the identity of Eliezer in addition to the identities of millions of Jewish prisoners. Freud’s theories of identity apply to Eliezer in his conflict of family responsibility (super-ego) versus human self-preservation and instincts (id/ego), in addition to the Holocaust being caused (according

The novel tells a story about one day in a gulag (a forced labor camp in the Soviet Union) for a group of prisoners that includes a man named Ivan Denisovich. Even in the oppressive, sometimes brutal environment of the gulag, a sense of camaraderie developed between Ivan and his fellow prisoners and they take care of each other, working together and sharing food, dreams, and hope. Their former identities, that of the life before the gulag was mostly taken by the state, but they developed identities and a hierarchy for themselves within the camp: “Outwardly, the gang all looked the same, all wearing identical black jackets with identical number patches, but underneath there were big differences. You'd never get Buynovsky to sit watching a bowl, and there were jobs that Shukhov left to those beneath him” [6]. In addition, Ivan maintained his morals, even after so many years: “But, frankly, he didn’t want to turn [into a] carpet painter… he’d never either given or taken a bribe, nor had he learned to do so in camp. Easy money weighs light in the hand and doesn’t give you the feeling you’ve earned it” [6]. This contrasts quite a bit with Night in that Eliezer, in the horrific conditions of the concentration camps and throughout his brutal journey, believed he had lost many his morals and was stripped of much his