ipl-logo

Ivan Denisovich Dehumanization

692 Words3 Pages

“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”, an entrancing book written by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, tells the story of, as the title states, one day in the life of a man serving a ten year sentence in a Russian prison camp, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov. Solzhenitsyn emphasizes the theme of dehumanization in the book and uses this to describe life in a prison camp.
“You’ve only to show a whip to a beaten dog. The frost was severe, but not as severe as the squad leader.” Solzhenitsyn says, describing the moment Tiurin becomes angered at his men for sitting by the fire instead of doing work. He threatens the slackers, and drives them away from the fire. Tiurin is able to do this as squad leader, because the squad hear the threat and believe it. Living …show more content…

Volkovoi calls the prisoners “slobs” and has been known to hit them, for example, and Shukhov is also called a slob, and a pig on page 11 when he washes the floor. On the next page, a guard says that the zeks “are not worth the bread that we give them”. This shows the disrespect the prisoners are submitted to. This kind of mistreatment would have had a psychological effect on both the guards and the men; vocalizing such distaste would strengthen the guards’ low view of the prisoners, and at the same time wear down the zeks into accepting that as their place, after hearing it so many times. This bad treatment strengthens the theme of dehumanization by creating this given belief of the zeks as worthless.
The theme of dehumanization then in general, shows up in many ways throughout the book. Calling the prisoners “beaten dogs”, for example, and referring to them as animals and other subhuman words lowers their assumed status to something less than human. As well as this, the way they are treated by each other and the guards further enforces this idea. The theme of dehumanization in A Day in the Life then is clearly used to emphasize what life was like in a prison

Show More
Related

  • Dehumanization In The Book Night By Elie Wiesel

    58 Words  | 1 Pages

    Nakedness, beatings, dogs, tattooed numbers, fire, chimney, crematoria, loneliness, silence, death,... selection. These were all methods and statements made by the Germans in an effort to dehumanize the Jews. One of Elie Wiesel’s main focuses in the book Night is on dehumanization. Germans would put Jews in harsh situations to make them suffer, to the point of death.

    Read More

  • How To Dehumanize Animals In Night

    896 Words  | 4 Pages

    You see it at the zoo, you see it at shelters, you see wild animals in a cage, which thoroughly describes how the Jewish community was treated at the time of the treacherous period known as the Holocaust, which started in 1939. The Holocaust was a period when the Nazi party and Hitler put millions of Jewish people in concentration camps, where they would then die or work until death. However, they were treated with dehumanizing qualities, similar to how a wild animal would be treated. In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, the Schutzstaffel or the SS officers, treated Elie, the main character, and the Jewish prisoners in a dehumanizing way by taking their belongings away, giving them commands like wild dogs, and calling and tattooing them with

    Read More

  • Examples Of Dehumanization In Night

    845 Words  | 4 Pages

    Not only was dehumanization a way to gain authority over people, but it allowed the Nazi’s to view the prisoners as something other than humans. Hitler used dehumanization in an attempt to achieve his ends and was displayed throughout the novel Night in many ways including selections, being numbered, and shaving the prisoner’s heads. To begin, human selection was one of the first steps the reader saw of the dehumanization process. In the novel Night, specifically page twenty-nine, Wiesel wrote “An SS came toward us wielding a club. He commanded: ‘Men to the left!

    Read More

  • Life Is Beautiful Vs Night

    1116 Words  | 5 Pages

    Night and Day In the great history of man, there is no event committed as gut-wrenchingly ignoble as the Holocaust. Therefore, conveying the devastation and emotional trauma on a believable and personal level is a sign of fantastic writing, which can be seen in Elie Wiesel’s Night. Moreover, to take this awful situation and put an almost light-hearted twist on it is also increasable, which is seen in the film “Life is Beautiful.” Accordingly, both of these mediums portray main characters that are in concentration camps, but present them in varying ways that create stories that feel completely different.

    Read More

  • Dehumanization In Elie Wiesel's Night

    892 Words  | 4 Pages

    Throughout Night, dehumanization consistently took place as the tyrant Nazis oppressed the Jewish citizens. The Nazis targeted the Jews' humanity, and slowly dissolved their feeling of being human. The feeling of dehumanization was very common between the jews. They were constantly being treated as in they were animals. The author and narrator Elie Wiesel, personally experienced being treated like an animal

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Shukhov In One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich

    690 Words  | 3 Pages

    Shukhov reveals how he survives the day in and day out in the gulag. In One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Shukhov is in the gulags for being wrongfully convicted of treason. He must deal with the destruction of humanity, created a ritualization for eating, and most important, he treats time as a valuable possession. To begin with, Shukhov makes sure that he keeps his dignity despite the destruction of human solidarity that the forced labor camps. For example, This quote refers the lack of solidarity caused by the gulags, because for the lack of food, dignity, and the harsh weather. ”

    Read More

  • Dignity In Elie Wiesel's Night

    648 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the World War II extermination camp Chelmno there were 150,000 deaths, the camp Belzec had 435,000 deaths, and the notorious Auschwitz-Birkenau camp ruled with over 1,000,000 deaths. In the unbelievable novel Night by Elie Wiesel, the author gives the audience a first person look on his experiences throughout his time at several prisoner of war camps as a Jewish teenager. Through the use of motifs about the night and a person’s eyes, Wiesel writes about the deeper meaning of how he kept his dignity in the face of inhumane cruelty. By analyzing the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, one can interpret the central theme of the story into a deeper meaning from the descriptions of the night and eyes, which is important because it helps younger generations to understand clearly what Holocaust survivors endured.

    Read More

  • Night Dehumanization Essay

    380 Words  | 2 Pages

    One of Wiesel 's strengths in Night is to show the full face of dehumanization. It is something that the Nazis perpetrated against the people they imprisoned. The tattooing of numbers on the prisoners, something that Eleizer notes, is of extreme importance. A- 7713 is by definition an example of dehumanization because it robs the humanity of the individual. The abuses that the Nazis perpetrate on their prisoners is another example of dehumanization.

    Read More

  • Dehumanization In Eli Wiesel's Night

    473 Words  | 2 Pages

    Eli Wiesel, the author of Night, demonstrates dehumanization by illustrating how the Nazis tortured the Jews. The foreign Jews of Sighet were being deported out of their homes. Moshe the Beatle tells Elie of his time in Galicia with great emotion. Elie shares what the Nazis did to the Jews, “Without passion or haste, they shot their prisoners, who were forced to approach the trench one by one and offer their necks. Infants were tossed into the air and used as targets for machine guns” (Wiesel 6).

    Read More

  • How Does Elie Survive In The Book Night

    123 Words  | 1 Pages

    His trip to Auschwitz is inhumane and torturous, however, it is nothing in comparison to what he witnesses in the camp. In the novel Night, written by Elie Wiesel, an average life is transformed into a nightmare that never ends.

    Read More

  • Examples Of Dehumanization In Night Wiesel

    741 Words  | 3 Pages

    Wiesel is the author of the memoir Night, which mainly focuses on how Hitler’s power and hatred towards Jews make Eliezer and his family’s life miserable. Eliezer is only a teenager when he and his family are forced to leave their home, and they’re sent to various concentration camps where Eliezer has to fight hunger, diseases, and has to take care of his father. Going through various camps has a negative impact on Eliezer 's life, therefore at the end of the book, Eliezer’s father begins to experience Eliezer’s abnormal behavior towards him. In this memoir, Eliezer, his family, and millions of other Jews experience different types of dehumanization in the concentration camps during the World War II.

    Read More

  • Examples Of Dehumanization In The Book Night

    650 Words  | 3 Pages

    it's how how the holocaust was back thing and how the nazi took over the jews. In the book night, dehumanization is seen by public executions starving the prisoners, and separating the families. My first example is separation of family. In the book nights separation of family was like the little boy was getting separated from his family like his mother and sister. His mother and his sister Tzipora.

    Read More

  • Examples Of Inhumane In Night By Elie Wiesel

    868 Words  | 4 Pages

    Elie Wiesel, the author of Night, describes the horrors of focusing on your own survival. Certain acts provoke inhumane acts throughout the ordeal. A central theme in Night is, even though it’s difficult, people should value compassion over their own survival. For instance, the evil of a lack of compassion affects thousands of prisoner lives.

    Read More

  • Fear Of Death In Night By Elie Wiesel

    990 Words  | 4 Pages

    Due to the exhaustive labor tormenting the prisoners, a selection process is utilized in order to eliminate individuals considered to be inadequate for labor. Provided that passing the examination evades them from being sent to the crematoria, “it no longer mattered that the work was hard,” as “all that mattered was to be far from the block, far from the crucible of death” (Wiesel 74). Despite the grueling work tormenting the prisoners, it is considered to be substantially superior compared to being exterminated in the crematoria. In addition to the grueling selection process, severe competition ensues as “men were hurling themselves against each other, trampling, tearing at and mauling each other” due to the fact that “a worker took a piece of bread out of his bag and threw it into a wagon” (Wiesel 100-101). As the pieces of bread are considered to be an exceptionally valuable asset owing to the severe hunger afflicting the prisoners, the quest for survival is paramount.

    Read More

  • Theme Of Dehumanization In Night

    197 Words  | 1 Pages

    In the novel Night the protagonist, Elie Wiesel, narrates his experiences as a young Jewish boy surviving the Holocaust. Elie 's autobiographical memoir informs the reader about how the Nazis captured the Jews and enslaved them in concentration camps, where they experienced the absolute worst forms of torture, abuse and inhumane treatment. Dehumanization is shown in the story when the Jews were stripped of their identities and belongings, making them feel worthless as people. From the start of Elie Wiesel 's journey of the death camps, his beliefs of his own religion is fragile as he starts to lose his faith. Lastly, camaraderie is present as people in the camps are all surviving together to stay alive so as a result the people in the camp shine light on other people 's darkness.

    Read More

More about Ivan Denisovich Dehumanization

Open Document