Night by Elie Wiesel, and The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka both discuss the theme of dehumanization one in a World War II setting and the other during the industrial revolution. Both books tell the reader what it is like to be controlled. Night discusses this theme while telling the story of a boy and his father in a Nazi concentration camp and being controlled by the Nazi's. The Metamorphosis discusses this theme by transforming the main character into a bug, which is a metaphor for a person being like a drone during the industrial revolution.

In Night, people were being controlled by the Nazi's in their own homes. We can see this in the beginning of the novel when the troops have just come into the author's town. "'All Jews outside! Hurry!' Some Jewish police went into the houses, saying in broken voices: 'The time's come now...you've got to leave all this...'," (page 13). Here we can see that even in their own homes, the Jews were unable to escape from th

Later on in Night we begin to see people do things and think things that do not seem very "human". We see this towards the end of the novel when the author had to march to his new concentration camp and he recalls what he saw someone do on that long march.

A terrible thought loomed up in my mind: he had wanted to get rid of his father! He had felt that his father was growing weak, he had believed that the end was near and had sought this separation in order to get rid of the burden, to free himself from an encumbrance which could lessen his own chances of survival. (page 87)

Now his father was still healthy, certainly, but he was an old man who had not worked for the past five years and who in any case could not be expected to undertake too much. And was his mother now supposed to go out and earn money, when she suffered from asthma, when a walk through the apartment was already an ordeal for her...? And was his sister supposed to work-who for all her seventeen years was still a child...? (p

Some common words found in the essay are:
Hurry' Jewish, Nazi's Metamorphosis, War II, Franz Kafka, industrial revolution, concentration camp, main character bug, character bug, discusses theme, controlled nazi's, main character, own homes, money family, earn money,
Approximate Word count = 683
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)