Passage #2

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.

Summary

Elie one day after he had became liberated from the concentration camps decides to look at himself in the mirror.  The last time he looked at himself in the mirror was before he was taken to the camps.  When he looks at himself in the morrow he sees something he will never forget.  He sees a corpse but this isn’t a regular corpse this is himself.  Looking into the mirror like that shows him how terrible the camps were and what the Nazis did to him.  That is what he will never forget.

Point of View

The author is telling this in a first person point of view.  He says that it was him who gathered the strength and him who decided to look into the mirror.  This was written in a first person point of view to add importance to the passage.  Since he is telling this in first person he describes how he was affected and how important to him it was, not just what happened?  When I read this passage he was almost talking about when you get a scar and you live with it for the rest of your life.  That’s how it was with his body except a broken arm isn’t a memory that will haunt you like the holocaust would.