Editor's Choice
How did the ending of Night make you feel? Would you have preferred a different ending?
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The ending of Night is seen as satisfying by some readers due to its realistic and somber tone. Elie Wiesel's reflection on his corpse-like appearance symbolizes the lasting trauma of the Holocaust, prompting readers to contemplate profound moral and theological questions. The unresolved nature of the ending reflects the deep and ongoing impact of human cruelty and the Holocaust on survivors' lives.
The novel ends with Elie Wiesel looking at himself in a hospital mirror after suffering from food poisoning for two consecutive weeks after being liberated from Buchenwald. When Elie finally looks at his reflection, he sees the image of a corpse staring back at him. The traumatic, horrific reflection of his corpse has never left Elie's memory. The memoir ends on a somber note, which appropriately corresponds to the horrific experience Elie endured during the Holocaust. As a survivor of the Holocaust, Elie has witnessed ultimate evil, which has transformed his perspective of humanity and theology for the rest of his life. The final image of Elie staring at his corpse-like reflection and its haunting memory leaves the reader with many moral and theological questions regarding God and man's responsibility and capacity for evil. The memory of the corpse also suggests the importance of remembering such a horrific event in...
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the hopes of preventing a similar situation in the future. While the ending of the novel is not conclusive, it influences the reader to ask difficult questions and reveals how the traumatic experience has personally affected the author, which is why I find the ending satisfying.
Wiesel's work ends on a realistic note. I suppose in reading any work that represents a "coming of age" idea, one hopes for some notion of validation or optimism. Yet, the subject matter of the Holocaust, and in a larger sense, the issue of human cruelty, the realistic ending makes a great deal of sense. The fact that Eliezer does not have a sense of closure in bidding farewell to his sister, mother, and in the end, his father is representative of so much within the Holocaust. The rupturing of bonds, the displacement of human connection, the forgoing of connections are all realistic and terrifying aspects of the Holocaust. All of them are captured quite well in the work. The ending was satisfying for me because it attempted to bring some sense of closure to the moment in time that did not trivialize it, and brought the appropriate sense of gravity to the situation. When he is staring back at the mirror and sees a corpse, it speaks volumes about the haunting nature of survival in a time when mere survival constituted victory.
Well, it's strictly an opinion question, as it is with all literature. In the case of Night, by Elie Wiesel, the ending, for me, is neither satisfying nor disappointing. His camp was liberated by the Allies and Elie survived, but not his father. While I was glad he survived, I coudn't help but be moved and depressed by the tragedy of losing a father, and by what "surviving" means to a boy who has been through and lost so much else. While his survival may seem like a victory, it didn't feel like one to me as I was reading it.
That's the way it should seem on a book with that subject, I suppose, as I'm not sure you can make the Holocaust into a hopeful story.