What Is Dehumanization?

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What is dehumanization? By: shakiyl Gonzales Prof. parry English 102 3/27/12 What is dehumanization? Dehumanization is to make somebody less human by taking away his or her individuality. Edgar allan poes “the tell tale heart” and Tim o’ briens “the man I killed” are two short stories that both focus on the term dehumanization. Although both stories show how the characters dehumanize their respective victims, each authors concept on dehumanization was found seemingly different. In “the man I killed” o brien uses imagination and fantasy to explain his guilt. Meanwhile poe uses a sense of fear to claim his own sanity in the killing of an old man. Therefore clearly showing how both short stories have different approaches on dehumanization. In Tim o’ briens “the man I killed” the authors concept on dehumanization was a sense of fantasy.as protagonist in the short story tim dehumanizes his victim by killing him with a grenade in the villages of my khe. As tim starts to describe the wounds that the dead soldier inflicted, he starts to build upso much guilt and confusion for the guy. Foretelling an entire life for his victim as if he knew the dead soldier beforehand. For example “He was not a fighter,his health was poor, his body small frail. He liked books. He wanted someday to be a teacher of mathematics” (66) in that quote notice how O’Brien describes his like for books, and his career of one day being a math teacher using a sense of fantasy. Imagining a detailed life of the victim, so he could dull the pain of his own actions. Meanwhile in
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