“One day, when I was able to get up, I decided to look at myself in the mirror on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. 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.”
Those are the last lines to the book, Night. Every author chooses the last words to their story wisely. Those lines are used to either sum up the book, or pass on an important message. Like the meaning of the story. Or perhaps, create a cliffhanger or a rhetorical question to keep one’s mind thinking. No story wants to be forgotten after it has been read. Each story has a message, no matter how long or short the story is. If a story didn’t have enough of an impact on the reader to remember the story or pass it on to someone else, then the author obviously has failed his duty.
For this story, Elie Wiesel is no different. He’s trying to show how much the concentration camps, the horror, and the brutality of the past two years has had upon him. He can no longer recognize himself He doesn’t even know what happiness or morality is anymore. Elie Wiesel was no longer the naive religious boy, who went along with everyone else. He is now alone in the world, scarred by loss and pain.
The whole purpose of the story is to inform people of the evils and torture that the Jewish people had been put through.This particular scene is very important because it reveals the complete transformation that Elie went, mind and body, that he became unrecognizable to himself. He wants to open the eyes and minds of citizens, so that they can prevent anything as terrible as the Holocaust from happening again. For a young boy to see his own father die, and have his mother and beloved sister burnt is more than anyone should go through. The only reason Elie Wiesel was able to remain alive was through sacrifice of his moral obligations and resort to bare instincts. Once Elie was finally free, he still couldn’t recognize himself, because of the choices he made that he never would have made before his containment. When Elie looked in the mirror, he realized that as well as looking like a corpse, his mind and soul was also dead.
“‘For God’s sake, where is God?’ And from within me, I heard a voice answer: ‘Where He is? This is where– hanging here from this gallows…'”
Everyone has an inner demon, but most people have tamed it. But whenever we are angered, or worn out, those demons usually come out. The Nazis, because of their hate for their Jews, released their demons, torturing the Jews, causing them to release the demons of senselessness and basic instinct. The Jews had lost their faith and hope and in replacement, had become primitive creatures. Without their faith, they didn’t know where to go, and many had lost hope. By the end of the story, the message changes from a story of survival, to holding on and not losing yourself and your entity. Because even when you are all alone in the world, you cannot just let go and give up hope, you have to hold on for a better future, no matter what.
-V.D.
weheartit.com/kyroar (google images–> don’t lose yourself)
lyric2life 