Cody Sisco
Ms Alward
CP English II
October 5, 2017
Knight Essay dehumanization
Knight is written by a jewish author Ellie Weasel and his experiences in the holocaust. The novel begins with him living in the town in sighet. He had a very sheltered life , with no negatives in his life he was raised heavily on jewish beliefs. One day a man named moshe the beadle comes, and warns the people about the dangers of the nazis. The people did not believe this. Then sighet was invaded by the nazis and weasel and his family where separated from each other
Now it’s only his father and him still together and were tortured and mistreated by the kapos in the camp. And by the end of this he was the only one to survive through scars and bruises marked upon his soul. He had lost his family and soul at the camps. But all through the sorrows and losses he had wanted to share his accounts to show what the jews went through all of those terrible years. This is what caused him to write the knight where he points out inhumane things that he went through.
A major factor that contributes to the theme was actually the nazis. At first he did not see them as the monstrous people as they were. In the book the character named Elizer said ‘our first impressions of the germans were most reassuring”. Their attitudes toward their hosts was distant but polite but this was just one of the many aspects that was misunderstood during the holocaust. Even more unthinkable is the mass murdering of millions of innocent people and the memoir progresses you will see how weasel puts the spotlight of the actions of the nazis by seeing them as human beings but reveals the devil deeds that they have done to the innocent jews. They were also put in terrible sleeping conditions were in like 3 per a bunk as well.
Knight also how inhumanity can spread to others who been shown inhumane things. This is shown when the jews start to turn on each other instead of taking on the harsh treatment together as one. A kapo even said ‘Here every man fights for himself and not think of anyone else but yourself Here there are no fathers, No brothers , no friends everyone here lives and dies for himself alone’. Another huge factor was hungar people were starving to death and had pretty much liquid soup every day getting no nutrients at all and one night the soup tasted like flesh because a little boy was hung for stealing food and was to light to be killed so he was strangled to death by the rope.
