To what extent have the characters in If This is a Man and The Sorrow of War been dehumanized?

In order to see what extent the characters in If This Is A Man and The Sorrow of War have been dehumanized I will define the term human qualities. By human qualities I mean things that make us different from animals. Things mentioned in the texts which humans have but animals dont have are possessions relatives and lovers. These things however do not make the basis of what a human is. They are simply objective things we conceive all humans having. However there are qualities that make the basis of humans. Qualities which are and have been imprinted in our minds and souls. Our form of communication (language), our free will (the ability to make unconstrained free choices) and our ability to express ourselves through poetry, literature and art. I believe that in The Sorrow of War, qualities, which from the surface make us human are targeted by the Vietcong as these qualities are sufficient to achieve what dehumanization is aimed at achieving in war situations. The aim of this destruction is shown by the scene where Kien is about to kill the enemy. The enemy begs for his life by introducing his lover and a relative. The arising sympathy and pity makes it difficult for Kien to kill the enemy. Thus the aim is to make it easier to what it takes to win a war, kill. However, in If This is a Man I believe a different qualities is targeted. I believe that destructive Nazi concentration camp system does not care for objective things such as family or possessions. They dont aim at killing the body so there are less enemies. I believe the Nazi concentration system was aimed at killing fully eliminating the Jews by fully eliminating their humanity thus targeting mental qualities. Socrates said you bury my body, not me. They wanted to bury me. However I believe that these attempts were unsuccessful as Levis preoccupation of language and self expression through poetry continues throughout the book. I will explore to what extent the human qualities defined have remained and been destroyed throughout both texts. In the opening chapters of If This is a Man preliminary attempts at dehumanization by confiscating all possessions was a failure. In the chapter On the Bottom all possessions were taken away. An example Levi gives of his loss is, an old letter, the photo of a cherished person. Each of those objects symbolize things important to a human. An old letter could be a letter from a lover. The photo could be of Levis family. The loss of these makes a dent in Levis mind as that part of his life has been erased. He longer has any connections with others and has become completely independent. However these losses do not make Levi any less a human. Animals also have relatives and lovers can be re-attained. It simply erases aspects of his life before the concentration camp that many humans had but lacks any destruction of communication, free will or self expression, the basis of what makes a human. In 'On the Bottom' a Nazi attempt at dehumanizing by unifying the Jews was successful. Once in the concentration camps, the Jews were 'shaved and sheared' of not only their hair, but their dignity as well. This was not aimed at unifying their enemy for organization purposes. It was to rid them of everything that could be seen as an expression of the 'self'. They stripped the Jews of all which represented personality and uniqueness. This was not only done so by physically removing expressive elements on the body like hair. It was done by making everybody look the same. This way one could not express 'one' self through the body, as they would now be expressing, and seen as, the same thing as everybody else, thus making the 'self' in 'self expression' void. Without the ability to self express one no longer had free will or the ability to make unconstrained choices, an essential aspect which drives at the very essence of our humanity. Their choices of self expression were constrained by the uniforms, shaving and shearing and the unification of all the Jews thus essential human quality of self expression was constrained with the erasing of free will. In The Canto of Ulysses we see that Levi is still very much human by his pursuit of his preoccupations of communication and language. In this chapter he is attempting to teach Jean, the Pikolo (the messenger clerk) Italian. He is enthusiastic about teaching Italian. He says, I would be pleased to teach him Italian. We clearly see that to Levi, language is an integral part of life. Language is not only a unique human method of communication but a link to country and heritage, something unique to humans. He cherishes and has the desire to learn more. The fact that language could not be destroyed one way or another to dehumanize the Jews meant that a cornerstone of what makes up a human remained. Not only is Levi interested in learning languages he wants to spread language. He is opposing the destructive Nazi machine by sharing the language with others in effect doing the opposite of dehumanizing, humanizing.

In The Canto of Ulysses we also see Levi pursue his preoccupation of poetry. Poetry is a form of self expression through the use of language. In this chapter he expresses his grief and his attitudes towards the Germans through the use of poetry. He says, Think of your breed, for brutish ignorance. By breed Levi means Jews. The fact that he expresses what his breed is going through by this brutish ignorance shows that he did not pick the poem of Ulysses randomly but picked it to self express the situation he was in with words. This is a clear example of self expression and shows that Levi still has a self to express. Despite destroying self expression through the body it was a failure on the Nazis part to completely destroy self expression and the self of the Jews as expression through language and poetry remained. In the The Sorrow of War dehumanization makes it easier to fight the war. Unlike If This is a Man were the aim is not to strategically kill but to destroy humanity, in The Sorrow or War killing is something one must do to win. However in order to kill, one must remove two obstacles. The obstacle of pity for the enemy and the obstacle of not having the will power to kill. In The Sorrow of War there is a situation where the Vietcong captured 4 American soldiers who had just killed and raped Vietnamese women. At this point in time Kien wouldve killed them on the spot if he did not need information from them. He says, I cant stand these four assholes either, theyll be treated like dogs before they die. We see that Kien treats them like dogs because he sees them as dogs. This ruthless unmerciful ness is because of two things. The 4 Americans have dehumanized themselves as the atrocity they committed made them seem like animals. The other reason is that Kien and the other soldiers have been dehumanized themselves. An example being when Kien disciplines his own men scolding and threatening one of his men by; sticking his gun into Cus (one of his men) mouth. If you want to show your love for them go stand in line with them. Kien is not treating his men as humans but as animals. He himself was treated like one by his commanding officer. This is to deny them free will or to dehumanize them so that they themselves do not have the free will to make decisions or commands. Their commanding officers make the decisions for them and thats final. They are trained to do what they are told, which in a way is dehumanization as they no longer have free will. As they have been dehumanized their ability to make choices from their judgments of things has been destroyed so the enemy is shot without second thought. In both texts no characters have been completely dehumanized yet no character has not been dehumanized at all. In the case of Kien and The Sorrow or War there is no need for the characters to be completely dehumanized as dehumanization was only needed to make killing each other easier. The Americans were dehumanized in the eyes of the Vietcong by their actions and by their own minds to the extent that they could be killed without feeling human affinity. The Vietcong were dehumanized by their superiors to the extent that they obey all orders including killing someone without second thought. Further dehumanization in the case of The Sorrow of War would have been a waste of time as dehumanization was not the point. Winning the war was and dehumanization was simply something that would help fight the war. In If This is a Man the destructive Nazi system was to dehumanize completely to ultimately extinguish the Jewish humanity and existence from this earth thus the Nazis tried to rid the Jews of all characteristics, even the foundation ones which form the base of all humans and essentially makes us different from animals. Dehumanization reached the extent where self expression was no longer expressed through any means from the body and denied them of free will however it never reached further than that. Other foundation characteristics prevailed and communication/language even flourished as there were many opportunities for exchange. Levi rights perfect happiness is unrealizable...perfect unhappiness is equally unattainable...they derive from our human condition which is opposed to everything infinite. In the same way complete dehumanization is unattainable as complete dehumanization is infinite and our human condition opposes everything infinite.