Night And Fog Analysis

Submitted By terriehayes
Words: 540
Pages: 3
Open Document
REMNANTS OF HORROR
By Terrie Hayes

The post-Holocaust film, Night and Fog (1955), by director Alain Resnais is disturbing. Contemporary color footage of the long-abandoned Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp eerily contrasts the black and white stock footage of emaciated prisoners, living and dead, yet both present evidence of an atrocity so incomprehensible, it’s difficult to imagine how anyone survived. Borrowed from Hitler’s Night and Fog Decree (1941), which authorizes elimination of underground threats to German security, the film’s title speaks loudly of how millions of Jews were forcibly evicted from their homes and deceptively transported to an unknown destination where an active smokestack would soon hint of their demise. Bodies of the forsaken have long since returned to the earth, but remnants of their horrifying experience remind the world how grotesque racism can become.

Hitler wanted Jews removed from society, Heinrich Himmler set the course for killing, but “patriotic” German citizens and militia carried out the unquestionably immoral tasks toward dehumanization. Gross images, such as warehouses filled with worn shoes and mountains of human hair echo the tears, confusion, and humiliation of their former bearers in the face of dispassionate captors. Unsanitary hospital rooms with medieval medical equipment speak of crude human experiments carried out with sadistic curiosity by doctors and nurses that once swore upon the Hippocratic Oath to “do no harm.” Rows upon rows of narrow, wooden bunks, where three (and sometimes more), meagerly hygienic strangers slept together, would be entirely intolerable to anyone that still had free will. Any trace of modesty was surely lost in the long, rectangle latrine stalls where closely spaced holes offered neither privacy nor relief from the gut-heaving stench.

More than just a place of captivity, the concentration camp with its unrelenting opportunities for disease, discomfort, theft, starvation, and punishment was a deliberate dystopia designed to exhaust the essence of humanity until each unwarranted prisoner was but a vacant shell of their former selves—much like the now abandoned Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Perhaps the most horrific remnant in this film is the barbed-wire barrier from behind which the inmates had
Show More

Related Documents: Night And Fog Analysis

Trench Warfare In World War I

they once were. Many were blinded by the use of chlorine gas and were mutilated by pests gnawing on their bodies. However, all the physical impairments also served as traumas to their minds. In a few years of battle, the soldiers had seen enough horror to last a lifetime. They had numbed their minds to the point of no return, and they had turned their hearts to stone. The trenches had changed the soldiers forever; rendering them incapable of fitting into civilian life, and crushing their dreams…

Words 933 - Pages 4

Dark Humor Of Politics Essay

Democrats for the first time since the Civil War, and the unsuccessful use of the “bloody shirt” to garner Republican votes is mocked.2 In this cartoon, Joseph B. Foraker and John Sherman are seen attempting to get a hot air balloon made of shirt remnants and displaying the words “bloody shirt” and the initials J.G.B. off the ground. The shirt-balloon is attached to a pot with the words “sectional hatred” engraved on it, and John Sherman is using a bellows with the words “stump speeches” on it to…

Words 1050 - Pages 5

Essay on Death and Hamlet

“harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, thy knotted and combined locks to part and each particular hair to stand on end…” (I.v.16). The fact that his father cannot even speak about the horrors of purgatory has instilled fear in the bones of Hamlet. He realizes that if he were to commit suicide, he, too, would have to endure the wrath of purgatory. Throughout his soliloquy, Hamlet weighs out the pros and cons of suicide, which demonstrates…

Words 917 - Pages 4

Mysticism In Eliezer Wiesel's Night

necessity of self-contemplation, as he had been informed that one must look not to others for answers, but to themselves. Throughout the course of the novel, Eliezer applies this lesson to his own life, most notably upon his confrontation with the horrors of the concentration camps, which incites him to ponder the existence of God. Rather than accepting the notions of his spiritual leaders as answers to this inquiry, he concludes that God is but a human construct, reasoning that if such a being existed…

Words 1468 - Pages 6

The History of Zombies Essay

due to the different cultural needs and presenting horrors of a particular society. As it has grown to be one of the more omnipresent creatures in most modern popular culture, the zombie has since developed into a larger focus point in scholastic investigation, expanding out to symbolise and exemplify a wide range of occurrences. Despite this increasing cultural presence, zombies have brought with them an underlying sense of apprehension and horror that seems to possess a potent threat to the living…

Words 1849 - Pages 8

Effects Of Jim Crow Laws

Blake Edwards Honors United States History Cirone Jim Crow, Revised Starting after the civil war in the late 1860’s and continuing through the civil rights movement of the late 1960’s, there was a set of unwritten rules in America, known as the Jim Crow laws. Jim Crow laws were created and enforced by southern governments because they wanted to keep black people down after slavery was abolished. By keeping black and white people separate and giving the white people the nicer facilities, schools…

Words 1061 - Pages 5

Essay on Egyptian Pyramids

When most people mention Ancient Egypt the first thing that comes to mind is the Pyramids. To construct such monuments required a mastery of art, architecture and social organization that few cultures would ever rival. The pyramids are said to have built Egypt by being the force that knit together the kingdom's economy. Their creations were so substantial, that the sight of these vast pyramids would take your breath away. Today, the valley of the Nile has an open air museum so people can witness…

Words 1357 - Pages 6

Analysis Of Erich Maria Remarque´s All Quiet On The Western Front

All Quiet on the Western Front is the incredibly somber story of a group of six young German boys who volunteered to fight in World War I. The novel, written by Erich Maria Remarque, is narrated by one Paul Baümer who experiences the terrible emotional and physical afflictions of war. Through Paul, the reader is given what remains to this day one of the greatest depictions of what life was like on the frontlines and in the trenches. The novel begins behind the German lines of the Western Front in…

Words 1351 - Pages 6

Conrad and Mccarthy Essay

How do Conrad and McCarthy make what’s horrible, so interesting? Both Conrad and McCarthy have a way of enticing the reader to feel somewhat repulsed and horrified yet also intrigued. People have a natural tendency to be morbidly curious, for example we become captivated and cannot look away from horrible car crashes. Psychologists and scientists believe that we tend to look at car accidents because the accident provides the observer with a close encounter without being directly involved. Similarly…

Words 2453 - Pages 10

The Black Cat Essay

world, plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of mere household events. In their consequences, these events have terrified—have tortured—have destroyed me. Yet I will not attempt to expound them. To me, they have presented little but horror—to many they will seem less terrible than baroques. Hereafter, perhaps, some intellect may be found which will reduce my phantasm to the commonplace—some intellect more calm, more logical, and far less excitable than my own, which will perceive…

Words 4050 - Pages 17