At the beginning of Elie Wiesel's Night, Wiesel presents himself as a sheltered young man, studying Jewish documentation with a wise mentor. He talks about how secluded his community is from the wrodl, and how real information about the concentration camps was never passed on to him until his mentor came back from a botched extermination. At that point, he realized that there was much more to the world and human capacity for cruelty than what he might find in his community.
At the end of the novel, Wiesel presents himself as a young man aged far beyong his actual years. He recalls, "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). Wiesel suggests that half of his life was lost to the concentration camps, and that nothing can be the same as it was.
Wow.
ReplyDeleteI had only been imagining the physical form that he was in when he looked in the mirror as the corpse. I now see that the statement can also be applied to his mental state, since the time he spent in the camp caused him to mature quicker than he should have had to.
I completely agree with you!
I really like your observation and I agree with you.
ReplyDeleteNow I can see that his word "corpse" means both physically and mentally he lost his life at the concentration camps, and his life was "killed" by the Holocaust. It is a very simple sentence but it has a very deep meaning...
I really like your observation and I agree with you.
ReplyDeleteNow I can see that his word "corpse" means both physically and mentally he lost his life at the concentration camps, and his life was "killed" by the Holocaust. It is a very simple sentence but it has a very deep meaning...