Question

Analyze elie's dehumanization

Answer 1

“There no longer was any distinction between rich and poor, notables and the others; we were all people condemned to the same fate-still unknown.” (pg. 21)
“Once again, the young men bound and gagged her. When they actually struck her, people shouted their approval.” (pg. 26)
“For us it meant true equality: nakedness. We trembled in the cold.” (pg. 35)
“We were incapable of thinking. Our senses numbed, everything was fading into a fog. We no longer clung to anything.” (pg. 36)
“The Kapos were beating us again, I no longer felt the pain.” (pg. 36)
“In a few seconds, we had ceased to be men. Had the situation not been so tragic, we might have laughed. We looked pretty strange!” (pg. 36)
“I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name.” (pg. 42)
“At that moment in time, all that mattered to me was my daily bowl of soup, my crust of stale bread. The bread, the soup- those were my entire life. I was nothing but a body. Perhaps even less: a famished stomach. The stomach alone was measuring time.” (pg. 52)“I had watched it all happening without moving. I kept silent. In fact, I thought of stealing away in order not to suffer the blows. What’s more, if I felt anger at that moment, it was not directed at the Kapo but at my father. Why couldn't he have avoided Idek’s wrath? That was what life in a concentration camp had made of me…” (pg. 54)“We didn't know what to do. Tired of huddling on the ground, in hope of finding something, a piece of bread, perhaps, that a civilian might have forgotten there.” (pg. 56)
“Now I understood why Idek refused to leave us in the camp. He moved one hundred prisoners so that he could copulate with this girl! It struck me as terribly funny and I burst out laughing.” (pg. 57)
“I no longer felt anything except the lashes of the whip… Only the first really hurt.” (pg. 57)
“Two cauldrons of soup! Smack in the middle of the road, two cauldrons of soup with no one to guard them! A royal feast going to waste! Supreme temptation! Hundreds of eyes were looking at them, shining with desire. Two lambs with hundreds of wolves lying in wait for them. Two lambs without a shepherd, free for the taking. But who would dare?” (pg. 59)
“Fear was greater than hunger.” (pg. 59)
“A man appeared, crawling snakelike in the direction of the cauldrons. Hundreds of eyes were watching his every move. Hundreds of men were crawling with him, scraping their bodies with his on the stones. All hearts trembled, but mostly with envy. He was the one who had dared.” (pg. 59)
“Jealousy devoured us, consumed us. We never thought to admire him. Poor hero committing suicide for a ration or two more of soup… In our minds, he was already dead.” (pg. 59)