Discuss what the last line of Night signifies, and how that indicates a change in Elie's attitude.

The last two lines of the text read, "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." There are two major things happening in these lines. On a physical level, Eliezer is looking into a mirror. As he had not seen himself in a mirror since he left the ghetto over a year earlier, one can imagine how...

The last two lines of the text read, "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." There are two major things happening in these lines. On a physical level, Eliezer is looking into a mirror. As he had not seen himself in a mirror since he left the ghetto over a year earlier, one can imagine how the physical image looking back at him would look so different to him. Likely, he is gaunt and sunken. If you have ever seen pictures of Elie Wiesel taken before the Holocaust and just after his time at Auschwitz, the difference is jarring. One can imagine his reaction to what he is physically seeing.

Yet it is more than merely his physical appearance that has changed. Since the time of the ghetto, Elie has know the deaths of most of his immediate family members, as well as other strangers and friends, and has witnessed horrific episodes like the hanging of the pipel, the shooting of the "soup stealer," and the like. He likely does not recognize himself as he is not (psychologically speaking) the innocent and naive boy he was when he left the ghetto. His reference to himself as a corpse drives this point home, as something within Elie has no doubt died as the result of his experiences. Likewise, the fact that he disassociates himself, referring to the man in the mirror as different from himself, likely echoes the disassociating he had to do in order to keep himself alive within the camp.