Change of Society - Research Paper based on Night

This is one of my most meaningful papers from the fisrt semester. It is nothing wonderful and I have not made any changes to it since it is not yet graded and back to me with feedback, so I hope you will help.

Elie Wiesel’s novel Night, which is generally a story about a holocaust survivor during World War II, is not meant to be considered only as a historical account of a tragic event. The narrative contains much more than a relation of certain events – it reveals some truths about the changes that occur in the human nature when it is exposed to a different environment and a different society. One of the main characteristics that shape humanity as an opposite of mere existence in a state of chaos is the feeling of responsibility and awareness of the existence and importance of others. When this most important characteristic is lacking or oppressed, responsibility for others becomes of secondary importance and humanity starts disappearing. This is what Elie Wiesel is describing in his novel – the disappearance of humanity from a society that is put under constant strain and pressure. Is this degradation a normal feature of human nature or is this phenomenon characteristic of only certain people with certain mindsets – this question is a fundamental one – yet, it is still unanswered.

Of course, the issues presented in this novel are only a private case of this problem. Studying beyond the book, beyond the Jewish holocaust case, even beyond all holocausts in the world may still be insufficient to answer this question. (Moreover I am modest and do not claim to be able to give amazing insights to the issue, therefore I will limit the discussion of the changes in society to the case of the novel.) Nevertheless the most reasonable explanation of these phenomenon and the similarities among them lead to the logical conclusion that degradation of society in dire situations is a feature of human nature.

People that choose to abandon society as they know it and return to some form of a state of nature are the ones that are most interesting in this study. What kinds of circumstances are necessary to break people’s spirit down to such an extent? Is this true for all people or is there a trait that determines whether a person is resistant to such manipulation or not? And is such a trait inborn or is it taught, developed? Surely it takes dire measures to make people abandon their previous understandings of society and their awareness of other people and their opinions. The way in which the Jews were treated during the holocaust are an example of such dire measures, however, it becomes evident that there are people who cannot be broken down even by such acts. After all the aim of the concentration camps in not only to deprive Jews of their material properties – they also serve to reduce the Jewish population (a mass murder on an ethnical basis, which is a shock enough) and deprive it of any honor, pride, future prospective and even the supportiveness of the community. The value of the lives of the inmates is reduced to that of slaves, working for their food and for their permission to live. Inmates are stripped of their identity and are made to understand that their lives are cheap and easily-replaceable. This in itself breaks many of the people there down.

However, how do some people bear all this with almost no changes in their behavior and sense of community? On one hand it might depend on the person’s age. The most logical thing is that older people are generally more pessimistic about any theoretical way out of this. Moreover, while young people have the chance to start a new life and a new page in case they somehow survive that experience, older ones see themselves as too old or frail to start life all over again. Thus older people would generally act normally or hysterically, unlike younger people, who would either act normally, or would abandon their acquired sense of community ad would do anything and everything to survive (and that is when people start their trip back to the State of Nature – remember the son of the rabbi).

On another hand this may also be a product of people’s religious thought. The most religious people would somehow explain what is happening to them with religion. They would consider their experience to be some kind of a test or at least an occurrence that God had decided to be necessary. Such thinking would preserve a person’s mindset and behavioral patterns, unlike an atheistic attitude, which would only worsen the situation.

Moreover one’s personality and the way in which he had previously lived (aka one’s personal traits) are of huge importance toward how they would respond to such an environment. A person, whose lifestyle is such that he relies a lot on others for help with his life and work will likely not last in such a hostile environment where people stop looking after each other that much. Also, a person who is used to living with another person (or people – ex. spouse, children, or siblings) is very likely to break down much sooner if he is not with them. In contrast a person who had not had that many close people or a person who has those significant people beside them is more likely to last longer - especially in the second case, where responsibility toward other people is one of the most important elements that keep people together.
These examples show that both inborn features (like age) and acquired characteristics (like religion or a close community) can be factors that determine a person’s ability to withstand conditions that aim to break down society – and with it – humanity. This tendency must not be underestimated, since all Jews during their residence in the concentration camps were telling themselves “I wouldn’t do something this” or “I won’t break down like that” and most of them did. In the same way most ordinary people nowadays tell themselves “if this happened to me I wouldn’t do the same”. However in reality under dire circumstances (as those enforced by the Germans on Jews) society breaks down in the same way as a dam does – one crack is enough. One person to leave the society and start looking only for himself is enough to have other people following him, since in such an environment everyone can see the benefits of being alone (that means having nobody to care for and therefore no burden on that person’s survival) and few can see the benefits of a supportive society. The truth is that if the abilities to resist the society’s breakdown are dependant almost entirely on chance, then the probability that any society will survive such a holocaust is almost none (having in mind that Jewish society is one of the most supportive ones). The reason is that the characteristics are such that a sense of society will be preserved only within an individual or two in each community, which is absolutely insufficient to preserve humanity.

Therefore it can be said that humanity is very similar for everyone. Most people have the same understandings of society and the same values that hold it together as Jews do. It would be very wrong to say that how people act and behave in a hostile and almost deadly environment is very different among the different communities. The characteristics that make a person resistant or not make it impossible to distinguish between the Jewish and any other society in the sense that most probably there is no society that can survive this pressure of dehumanization and devaluing of the sense of responsibility.