Chattahoochee River
Monday, February 2, 2015
Chapter 6
In this chapter, one thing that I noticed was that Elie and the other prisoners are pushed to the limits. They are forced to run for hours without food or a break. Although Elie is tired, he continues to run without really realizing it by "putting one foot in front of the other, like a machine." Elie and the prisoners ran automatically on command just like animals. At this point, the nazis have completely stripped away their humanity. They have overpowered the prisoners by treating them like animals, which has caused them to run on instinct without thought.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I would agree with this assessment. Other examples of people's humanity fading would be the Rabbi's son leaving him, the Jews stepping over all the corpses without a second look, and neglecting to say Kaddish before leaving the rest area where many died. It is striking difference from the beginning of the book.
ReplyDeleteAlas, a final example of the Jews self-corruption of humanity could be when they eagerly stripped all clothes off the dead and "tossed the corpse out like a bag of flour", completely disregarding any ceremonious send off for the dead.
ReplyDelete