Stripped Of Humanity

539 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Literature poverty essay

On this earth humans have the ability to make choices concerning their welfare and that of their neighbors. How humans act and respond to other humans greatly impacts and can have a lasting effect on humanity. In Cynthia Ozick’s novella “The Shawl” readers experience first hand how cruelty and sinister power strips humans of their humanity and robs them of their sanity. It also demonstrates the incredible injustice of poverty and prejudice. Using the new critical approach will help farther uncover evidence to support this idea. In examining the powerful and explicit imagery and the different points of view, one is able to better grasp the driving theme of injustice and poverty. The story seems to entertain three different points of view all from one family who are in a concentration camp. A mother, daughter, and toddler are all trapped in a world of cruelty and hatred. Although all of the characters experience extreme injustice and pain, none is equal to that of poor and helpless Magda. She is the youngest in the story and only a mere baby. A child of her age should be experien...

Show More
Related

  • Farewell To Manzanar By Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston

    810 Words  | 2 Pages

    It gives facts and real life story living on this camp. This is actually someone real life story. When Jeanne dad left the family, the family could not bear. Living on the camps it was dusty, cold and windy. Jeanne states at the end that, “Even though her dad was a drunk, the way he drives—like a madman—actually inspires Jeanne with confidence to get past her fears of what life might be like outside of camp”. Growing up with all the racism remarks and surroundings was not easy and it has not been easy learning to remember and talk about her experience at the camp, but she overcame her fear. Jeanne has finally let it be free and be known. She now feels more better than ever about this. Also, even though Americans did not like Japanese she still married a

    Read More

  • Flat Broke with Children: Women in the Age of Welfare Reform

    1129 Words  | 3 Pages

    The book deals with several sociological issues. It focuses on poverty, as well as s...

    Read More

  • Father and Son Relationship in Elie Wiesel´s Night

    798 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Holocaust will forever be known as one of the largest genocides ever recorded in history. 11 million perished, and 6 million of the departed were Jewish. The concentration camps where the prisoners were held were considered to be the closest one could get to a living hell. There is no surprise that the men, women, and children there were afraid. One was considered blessed to have a family member alongside oneself. Elie Wiesel was considered to be one of those men, for he had his father working side by side with him. In the memoir Night, by Elie Wiesel, a young boy and his father were condemned to a concentration camp located in Poland. In the concentration camps, having family members along can be a great blessing, but also a burden. Elie Wiesel shows that the relationship with his father was the strength that kept the young boy alive, but was also the major weakness.

    Read More

  • Oppression in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

    995 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the process of compiling the literary works I intended to include in this project, I began to notice a common thread that connected the works of fiction, non-fiction and poetry that I generally choose to read. That common tie that binds these books together is that they all seem to center, in one form or another, around the theme of oppression. Perhaps this is because I have some deep psychological need to diffuse the power struggles I experience within myself by gleaning insight from the pages of someone else’s experience. Or, perhaps it is merely because I have a predisposition to “root for the underdog”. Regardless of the reason, be it simple or complex, almost everything I read seems to engage a “David and Goliath” scenario.

    Read More

  • Inhumanity In Strange Fruit And We Wear The Mask By Paul Laurence Dunbar

    1255 Words  | 3 Pages

    Nothing can cause as much suffering and pain then man to man can. Racisms, violence, hatred, cruelty, and brutal behaviours are all traces of inhumanity. Both works of literature “Strange Fruit” by Lewis Allan and “We Wear the Mask” by Paul Laurence Dunbar portray inhumanity through the imagery of tortured souls, symbols of physical pain, and the symbolic imagery within their titles.

    Read More

  • Disposable People: Modern Day Slavery

    1247 Words  | 3 Pages

    I was in complete and utter shock when I began to read Disposable People. The heart-wrenching tale of Seba, a newly freed slave, shook my understanding of people in today’s society, as well as their interactions between each other. I sat in silence as I read Seba’s story. “There they [Seba’s French mistress and husband] stripped me naked, tied my hands behind my back, and began to whip me with a wire attached to a broomstick (Bales 2).” I tried to grasp the magnitude of the situation. I tried unsuccessfully to tell myself that this couldn’t happen in modern times, especially in a city such as Paris. How could this be happening? In the following pages of Kevin Bale’s shocking account of the rampant problem of modern day slavery, I learned of more gruesome details of this horrific crime against humanity, such as the different types of slavery, as well as his best estimate of the number of people still enslaved throughout the world, an appalling 27 million.

    Read More

  • Hidden Children of the Holocaust

    1308 Words  | 3 Pages

    The children during the holocaust had many struggles with their physical health. They were forced to stay in very small places and were unable to have contact with a doctor if they had gotten sick. Also they had a lack of food and some children in their host homes would get abused and mistreated. At least a little over one million children were murdered during the holocaust (“Children’s diaries”). Out of all the Jewish children who had suffered because of the Nazis and their axis partners, only a small number of surviving children actually had wrote diaries and journals (“Children’s diaries”). Miriam Wattenberg is one out of the hundreds of children who wrote about their life story during the time of the holocaust (“Children’s Diaries”). She was born October 10, 1924 (“Children’s Diaries”). Miriam started writing her diary in October 1939, after Poland surrendered to the German forces (“Children’s Diaries”). The Wattenberg family fled to Warsaw in November 1940 (“Children’s Diaries”). At that time she was with her parents and younger sister (“Children’s Diaries”). They all had to live in the Warsaw ghetto (“Children’s Diaries”). Halina, another child survivor, tells what happened to her while in hiding. Halina and her family went into hiding ...

    Read More

  • What Is Anthropological Approach To Shantytowns?

    1395 Words  | 3 Pages

    It discusses the “poverty, marginality, and oppression, [within a] regenerate culture of poverty shared by and reproduced intergenerationally among the poor” (Sanabria, 2007, p. 8). The theory suggests a sort of circle of life phenomenon where people living in shantytowns are isolated from the thriving communities nearby, and left to fend for themselves without outside resources. Because of this failure to integrate the poor within the greater society, these people fail to attain proper education, adequate employment opportunities, or stability for their families (pp. 8-9), ensuring great or probability of similar fates for future generations. Lewis characterizes the culture of poverty as crossing into and shaping physical, emotional, economic, and spiritual realms (9), which significantly influence the future of those living in

    Read More

  • Insider vs. Outsider in The Blue Hotel, The Displaced Person, Bernice Bobs her Hair, and Novel In Dubious Battle

    1387 Words  | 3 Pages

    As “The Blue Hotel,” “The Displaced Person,” “Bernice Bobs her Hair,” and In Dubious Battle demonstrate, the outsiders in each story, though instilling an initial fear in the eyes of society, experience a sudden and considerable downfall in the end. Each of these defeats, some more extreme than others, result from a clash of society’s fixed guidelines with an outsider’s challenge of these rules. Whether this rebellion against society constitutes a conscious or unconscious effort, and whether the punishment results in justifiable or unjustifiable consequences, one pattern emerges. The outsider instills fear in the mind of the community, and as a defense mechanism, society takes it upon itself to conquer the stranger, leading to his or her ultimate downfall.

    Read More

  • Effects Of Oppression In The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas

    1025 Words  | 3 Pages

    From the child in Omelas to a slaving factory worker, those who struggle from oppression have channeled their worth and refuse to remain pushed to the side and neglected.

    Read More

  • The Father-Son Relationship Between Holocaust And Maus

    593 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the years after the Holocaust the survivors from the concentration camps tried to cope with the horrors of the camps and what they went through and their children tried to understand not only what happened to their parents. In the story of Maus, these horrors are written down by the son of a Holocaust survivor, Vladek. Maus is not only a story of the horrors of the concentration camps, but of a son, Artie, working through his issues with his father, Vladek. These issues are shown from beginning to end and in many instances show the complexity of the father-son relationship that was affected from the Holocaust. Maus not only shows these matters of contentions, but that the Holocaust survivors constantly put their children’s experiences to unreasonable standards of the parent’s Holocaust experiences.

    Read More

  • Social Immobility Essay

    2660 Words  | 6 Pages

    Social immobility has been a problem for many people, whether they are citizens of United States of America or immigrants from another country, this is something people confront from time to time in their lives. Janie from Under the Feet of Jesus by Zora Neale Hurston, and Estrella from Their Eyes were Watching God by Helena Maria Viramontes are both examples of characters restricted by the intersectionalism of their gender or social and racial class. Through the two class texts mentioned above, social immobility will be further expounded in the context of characters such as Estella and Janie, and it will also be explored as a force that leads to the restriction and/or the loss of innocence for the characters.

    Read More

  • The Dangers of Fear

    948 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Poverty in America

    922 Words  | 2 Pages

    People in America often suffer from poverty and the treatment that comes with it, throughout their everyday lives. The question raised is why are poor individuals dehumanized by high structures of power? Some people with a higher income feel like they have a choice and a real recourse to justice rather than a lower class individual. They also believe that they are entitled to the world and their opinion matters because of their financial status versus someone who doesn’t have material things. Lessin’s and Deal’s film , Natasha Trethewey’s Memoir, and Bell Hooks’ excerpts, depicts that the poor are often dehumanized and neglected by structures of power, such as the government and media, because of their lack of money and education, however some of structures of power are ignorant to how the lives of poor people really are.

    Read More

  • Upside Down by Eduardo Galeano

    1700 Words  | 4 Pages

    ... Down, by Eduardo Galeano allows for the reader to open their eyes to the inequality and the injustices faced by those on the receiving end of the whip in today's cultural capitalist society.

    Read More

More about Stripped Of Humanity

Open Document