Night: A Memoir by Elie Wiesel (4th post)

In this last sections, there are told striking stories about sons and fathers. Wiesel never sinks to the level of beating his father, or even mistreat him, but his resentment toward his father grows, even as it is suggested—for instance, when Wiesel's father prevents Eliezer from killing himself by falling asleep in the snow. The father is sacrificing himself for his son, not the other way around.
The ending of night left of a lot of unanswered questions in the book. The ending feels incomplete. It makes me as the reader want to know what happened afterward. Such as how Wiesel reunited with his family, what he did after the war, and so on. One quote that really stood out to me from this section is Wiesel’s final statement about the effect the Holocaust has had on him. “
“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 203)
In this quote, Wiesel implies that even though he has survived the war physically, he is essentially dead. It’s like his soul is killed by the suffering he witnessed and endured. Yet, when Wiesel says, “the look in his eyes, as he stared into mine,” he implies a separation between himself and the corpse. His language in this, too, shows a fundamental separation between his sense of self and his identity as a Holocaust victim, as if he has become two distinct beings. The corpse-imagery reminds me about how much he has suffered and how much of himself, his faith in God, his innocence, his faith in mankind, his father, his mother, his sister, who have both been killed in the camps. The image of the corpse will always stay with him, but he has found a sense of identity that will endure beyond the Holocaust. As dark as this passage is, this message can be partially hopeful.