Holocaust is a sad tragedy that left its terrible traces in the hearts and souls of millions of innocent people. Among them is also Elie Wiesel who shared his sad experience in his book “Night”. At the end of the book, the readers find a very special scene when Eliezer, the main protagonist, watches in the mirror and sees a corpse instead of his reflection. This scene has a deep symbolic meaning. A corps symbolizes Eliezer’s broken heart and pulverized spirit that became the consequences of what the main character of the book had to go through.
Elie Wiesel’s book “Night” is devoted to the suffering that innocent people had to experience because of the spread of Nazi ideas in the world. Through the whole book’s story, the readers may see how the main protagonist’s personality is fading under the pressure of terrible events that he has to survive. The final scene of the book shows the culmination of Eliezer’s tragedy. We read:
One day I was able to get up, after gathering all my strength. I wanted to see myself in the mirror hanging on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me (Wiesel 106).
The main point which is important in this scene is a corpse gazing back at the main character. This corps has deep symbolism. It shows that after all the troubles in his life, Eliezer’s personality became a “heap of junk” (Fienberg 169). He lost his childhood, and even his inner riches including faith, hope, goodness, and virtue. At the end of the road of the Holocaust, Eliezer turned into a corps that was cold, empty, and hopeless (Schwarz 224).
The final scene of “Night” suggests the idea that a part of Eliezer’s personality died. This part is of course his best part. Everything precious that he had inside his mind and heart, including religious zeal, his love to God, his faith in Him, his godly devotion, and his righteousness was lost forever. Something that Eliezer valued most of all, his faith in God, was lost: “My eyes had opened and I was alone, terribly alone in a world without God” (Wiesel 105).
However, where something good is lost, the bad things always come. In Eliezer’s situation, this rule also became applicable. The new qualities that became distinctive for Eliezer’s personality were distress, anguish, pain, disappointment, gloom, despair, infidelity, and virulence. The tragedy of this situation is in the fact that the main character of “Night” not only lost something good, but he also developed really bad traits. How sad it is that among these bad traits is even hatred to “men”, or hatred to the entire human race (Wiesel 105).
In conclusion, it should be stated that the final scene of “Night” book by Elie Wiesel shows the outcomes that Holocaust has had in his life. Eleizer, who represents the author himself, suffered a great moral breakdown. He lost his childhood, and he was also robbed of his inner riches including his hope, his faith, and his virtues. Instead, he got a bitter hatred to humanity and the lack of faith in everything in this world.
Works Cited
Fienberg, Nona. “Gazing Into The Mirror Of Wiesel’s Night, Together.” Pedagogy 9.1 (2009): 167-175. Print.
Schwarz, Daniel. “The Ethics Of Reading Elie Wiesel’s Night.” Style 32.2 (1998): 221-225. Print.
Wiesel, Elie. Night. United States: Bantam Books, 1982. Print.