Look, if I were alone in the world, I would have the right to choose despair, solitude and self-fulfillment. But I am not alone.

The speaker frames despair as a kind of private liberty—an option one might claim if one’s life affected no one else. The turn—“But I am not alone”—rejects that premise and asserts an ethic of responsibility: because we live among others, our inner choices (hope vs. despair, withdrawal vs. engagement) carry moral weight. In Wiesel’s worldview, shaped by witnessing atrocity and later insisting on remembrance, solitude and self-absorption can become forms of abandonment. The line thus argues that community and human interdependence impose obligations: to resist nihilism, to remain present to others’ suffering, and to seek meaning not only for oneself but in solidarity with fellow human beings.