chapter 7

While crowded into the train, Eliezer becomes indifferent to life or death, but he does not entirely lose his will to live: "Indifference deadened the spirit. Here or elsewhere‹what difference did it make? To die today or tomorrow, or later? The night was long and never ending." Eliezer does not want to die immediately because to him the distinction between life and death has become irrelevant. He is currently experiencing a living hell, and as he repeatedly remarks, the surviving prisoners are now no better than corpses. Everyone is dying, some more quickly than others, and the darkness of night has taken over the day. In this passage Wiesel once again expands on the symbolic meaning of the title Night. "Night" here refers to the living death of the concentration camps that Eliezer does not think will ever end.