night

Anna Rosete
May 5, 2008
Period 2


Essay Topic: 3. At the very end of the book, Elie writes, “From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me.” (115). What is the significance of this/What does Elie mean by this?

From the depths of the mirror

At the ending of Elie Wiesel's novel Night, Elie refers to himself as a corpse when he gazed into the depths of the mirror. This quote means that after the war he didn’t feel the same, he hadn’t seen himself since the day he had been taken to the Auschwitz concentration camp. When he finally looked at himself he felt half dead, half alive. As if he was the living dead. World War II had taken a part of Wiesel, a part that was gone and would never return.

On the other part of the quote, “The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me." That means that there was something still inside of him, the alive part, and the part that had kept him going, and told him not to quit. As if he meant his father even though he said, "After my father's death, nothing could touch me any more." (Pg 107)