The Consequences Of Dehumanization In A Lesson Before Dying

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Dehumanization has been seen throughout human history and has had pretty devastating effects. For example, people of Jewish decent were not considered human at all. They were given the title of “sub human” and were treated like animals and scum. This lead to the Holocaust where millions of Jewish people were murdered because of who they were. Dehumanization is the act of depriving humans of human qualities, spirit or personality. Not only do people dehumanize people of different races, but they also dehumanize people of different decent, gender or sexual orientation. In A Lesson Before Dying, Maus I and Maus II, dehumanization was a pretty bold theme that stuck out and was displayed in all three books. The authors used this theme to display the hate that humanity has for each other. Being dehumanized had many different and similar effects on each of the main characters. Some took it much more harshly than others but each character learned and ended up coming out as a better person in the end because of how strong they were. Although dehumanization is completely wrong, the authors used the theme of
The most important reason was to show and represent how different people were treated. By dehumanizing them, it made the situations stand out. Gaines, the author of A Lesson Before Dying is more verbally descriptive with the theme. Meaning, there are more verbally, written representations of people being dehumanized than in Maus. In Maus, it is more symbolic and descriptive in the way that Spieglman drew his characters. Both authors were very effective in using the theme of dehumanization within the stories. It really made the readers look at situations that they thought they knew about with a different view and from a different perspective. It was heart wrenching to hear about how terrible humans treated each other in both stories. It really makes the stories stand out more by including this

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