Religion And Physical Appearance In Night By Elie Wiesel

Genocide is absolutely horrifying, especially when the reasoning is religion and physical appearance. The book Night by Elie Wiesel tells about a young boy, Elie, and his father as they try their best to survive in a concentration camp during the holocaust. Luckily for them, they have a good enough physical appearance to pass the tests used to determine if you survive. These tests consist of stereotyping and judging people based off of body type instead of how hard they can work. Because these tests were bogus, many hard workers died. Elie Wiesel shows that making assumptions based off of appearance is immoral by describing the qualities needed to survive during the holocaust in the book Night. To begin, Elie survives partly because he is …show more content…
During selection, the jews must run, and if too slow, they are killed. Orders are yelled such as, “Don’t walk slowly, run! Run as if the devil were after you!”(pg.78). Plenty of people can do lots of physical labor but are not substantially fast runners, so the german’s test involving speed is irrelevant. Towards the end of the book, they leave camp and run to escape the warfront. Runnning as quickly as possible, the german soldiers follow behind. “They had orders to fire on any who couldn’t keep up.”(pg. 91). If a man can not keep up with everyone else, he is killed instantly. During this running period, they lose many hard workers because they do not have the speed and stamina to keep up with the healthy, in shape guards. How fast and how long one can run does not limit how hard a they work or how fit they …show more content…
Stereotyping based off of appearances is a type of bullying and can lead to some terrible things according to the article “What Stereotypes Are, Where They Come From and How They Can Hurt” on uhaweb.hartford.edu. Judging people because of how they dress or the way they look is something everyone does in their head, but when you express your thoughts, it is bullying. “We classify and relate people to a social class by the way they look and through this comes hostility, ignorance, and hatred.”(Uhaweb). Making fun of people because of the way they look can make the target of this bullying depressed and can lead to suicide. “Stereotyping can cause some seriously negative effects on young people. Statistics show that 1 in 7 students grades K-12 have fallen victim to bullying. Bullying also causes things like school shootings or even suicide.”(Uhaweb). One little remark on a peers shirt or shoes can be their breaking point, and their day would be ruined. Stereotyping may seem like an innocent thing, but it can be devastating for the victim and can lead to serious self-confidence