Critical Stance
Dehumanization is the gradual degrading of a person or group of person’s human value by the society in which they live in or the people they are surrounded by to the point where they are no longer considered a human in their eyes, through stripping various aspects of individuality from them.
Throughout the book, prisoners experience this dehumanization forcibly. For example, Eliezer and fellow prisoners are all given specific names that they are referred to by. Much like various dystopian novels that strip characters of their individuality like Anthem by Ayn Rand, prisoners were given lettered/numerical names. Their names were no longer the ones they previously had. As prisoners began to value life less and less through acts such as beating one another, losing faith in their religion, etc., prisoners had essentially accepted that this was their life, and that this was their end. Eliezer too, had grown more susceptible to the abuse and cruelty.
Eliezer was pessimistic from the start; and for good reason (however, the way the book is wrote, we don’t necessarily attain a “true” first person perspective). He hit a threshold rather quickly--he did indeed feel horrible and definitely dehumanized, but it reached a low and simply stayed there. When he learned of the crematorium and what was really going on in there, Eliezer was terrified by the cruel crimes against humanity that the camp was committing. But after taking some beatings along the way and experience the camp, Eliezer responds by growing more and more mute and having little regard for any positivity. For example, he stated that he didn’t necessarily feel much when he saw his father being beaten, or the time where he question his faith in his religion.
Dialectical Journal Entries
Throughout the book, prisoners experience this dehumanization forcibly. For example, Eliezer and fellow prisoners are all given specific names that they are referred to by. Much like various dystopian novels that strip characters of their individuality like Anthem by Ayn Rand, prisoners were given lettered/numerical names. Their names were no longer the ones they previously had. As prisoners began to value life less and less through acts such as beating one another, losing faith in their religion, etc., prisoners had essentially accepted that this was their life, and that this was their end. Eliezer too, had grown more susceptible to the abuse and cruelty.
Eliezer was pessimistic from the start; and for good reason (however, the way the book is wrote, we don’t necessarily attain a “true” first person perspective). He hit a threshold rather quickly--he did indeed feel horrible and definitely dehumanized, but it reached a low and simply stayed there. When he learned of the crematorium and what was really going on in there, Eliezer was terrified by the cruel crimes against humanity that the camp was committing. But after taking some beatings along the way and experience the camp, Eliezer responds by growing more and more mute and having little regard for any positivity. For example, he stated that he didn’t necessarily feel much when he saw his father being beaten, or the time where he question his faith in his religion.
Dialectical Journal Entries
- “The three ‘veterans’, with needles in their hands, engraved a number on our left arms. I became A-7713...I had no other name.” (pg. 39)
- This quote is among the later steps that prisoners experience; the one of the later steps towards the prisoners’ dehumanization process. Eliezer stating that he had no other name meant that he lost his individuality, and not by his own hand. Sure, they would remember they own names, but for the time being, they can’t be called that name--and it was essentially unknown, when they would be able to live with their various human aspects back.
- “We never thought for a moment of admiring him. Poor her, committing suicide for a ration of soup! In our thoughts we were murdering him.” (pg. 57)
- In this quote, Eliezer describes a man who, when clearly alerted to take cover when a bombing run was impending, that man chose to risk his life and go after the free soup pot left in the open. This degrading of humanity to the point where anything is better than nothing, even if the man risked death displays how poor their standards have been reduced to, as food mattered more over their life. The man eventually dies from the bombing.
- “For more than half an hour he stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony… I heard the [man] asking: ‘Where is God now?’...That night the soup tasted of corpses.” (pg. 62)
- Eliezer’s response to seeing a kid being hanged for committing a crime is one of sorrow and disappointment in his religion. Like the other prisoners, regard for life and justice degrades increasingly. Even the executioner showed disappointment in having to hang a child, and would be replaced by other SS officers.
