Is Compassion Necessary to Human Survival? Compassion is necessary to allow humans to live and not just to survive. The human race allows the human race to feel sympathy and empathy. Without it, people will turn against one another, creating situations like genocide and the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel describes this in his backstory of Night, about growing up as a Jew during the Holocaust and the situations that he was put in. Compassion is necessary for human survival. Without compassion, humans turn into some type of monster that hurts and kills the innocent “Babies! Yes, I did see this with my own eyes…. children being thrown into the flames” (32). Babies, who were just innocent children, were being thrown alive into a pit of fire, and being
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While in the cars, the prisoners lost compassion towards each other, turning into greed and hate. Elie had lived through one of these situations of hate when he woke up to find somebody trying to strangle him, “… I woke up with a start as I felt two hands on my throat, trying to strangle me… I never did find out why this stranger had wanted to strangle me.” (102). this stranger had wanted to strangle Elie for no reason, he had no more compassion. He had been treated so long without any compassion that he lost all of his remaining compassion. The night before, Elie witness a son kill his own father for a piece of bread, compassion was replaced by greed and need at this point, “But the other threw himself on him. The old man mumbled something, groaned, and died… His son searched him, took the crust of bread, and began to devour it.” (101). Over a piece of bread, a son murdered his father, and soon the son died because of the same piece of bread. The people that were huddled into a train cart and knew each other before all of the killing started, killed two others over a small piece of bread. The people showed no compassion, due to the fact that they had lost it, but instead compassion was replaced by greed. The greed turned the people into some type of monster that everybody should fear. A type of monster that can’t be
While in the cars, the prisoners lost compassion towards each other, turning into greed and hate. Elie had lived through one of these situations of hate when he woke up to find somebody trying to strangle him, “… I woke up with a start as I felt two hands on my throat, trying to strangle me… I never did find out why this stranger had wanted to strangle me.” (102). this stranger had wanted to strangle Elie for no reason, he had no more compassion. He had been treated so long without any compassion that he lost all of his remaining compassion. The night before, Elie witness a son kill his own father for a piece of bread, compassion was replaced by greed and need at this point, “But the other threw himself on him. The old man mumbled something, groaned, and died… His son searched him, took the crust of bread, and began to devour it.” (101). Over a piece of bread, a son murdered his father, and soon the son died because of the same piece of bread. The people that were huddled into a train cart and knew each other before all of the killing started, killed two others over a small piece of bread. The people showed no compassion, due to the fact that they had lost it, but instead compassion was replaced by greed. The greed turned the people into some type of monster that everybody should fear. A type of monster that can’t be