The Empty Shell

1) After being liberated from Buchenwald, Eliezer looked in a mirror. ¡°From the depth of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at [him] (109). In what ways had Elie become a ¡°corpse¡±? Discuss and illustrate.

Towards the very end of Night, which is an autobiographical novel written by Elie Wiesel, Elie quietly uttered: ¡°From the depth of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me.¡± One of the ideas Elie meant to insert into the reader¡¯s mind is that he had become a corpse in both the physical and spiritual sense. During his one year in captivity, Elie was beaten, bruised, and starved constantly by his oppressive captors. The Kapos beat him so often that he soon ¡°ceased to feel any pain from their blows¡± (34). In addition to the beatings, they were fed scant amounts of food that were barely enough for survival. In fact, they were fed so little that men eventually put their lives on the line in order to obtain an extra bowl of soup. During one of the several bombings which...