Analysis of Dawn Essay

Dawn by Elie Wiesel

Bryan Reilly

Immediately upon reading the first page of the book the central conflict of the story becomes clear. A boy around the age of eighteen years old must kill an Englishman by the name of John Dawson. However, the conflict is not simply will he kill or not kill the man, it is why he his going to do it. Throughout the course of the novel, Elisha cant find a way to make his challenge any easier by justifying it. He finds that in the last hours before he ends Johns life he is surrounded by every person that had any effect on his life. Every person there has had some part in making him the murderer he is about to come.

In the beginning of the story you first meet Elisha who is ready to kill a man he does not know for the sake of the establishment of a Jewish homeland. However, the first half of the book is more dedicated to how he got to this position. After he was released from the German concentration camps of World War II, he is given amnesty by France where he goes to live and learn. From the war he lost not only all of his family but his innocence and his love of life. As he made out a plan to learn French and become a philosopher, a mysterious figure knocks on his door. As Elisha answers it he finds a man named Gad looking specifically for him. He has come to try and recruit him to a group of Jews that have been committing terrorist acts in order to force the British occupation force out of Palestine to then establish a Jewish homeland. Elisha was immediately hesitant to his presence but soon began to make a connection between Gad and a messenger of fate. Fear was strongly present in Elisha not at the words Gad was saying, but at his presence. Gad had come to ask him for his future, to make it an outcry for a new order in the world. In the end Elisha agreed and left three weeks later to go to British occupied Palestine. As he arrived he was trained in the arts of death and combat. Ways to kill a man with your bare hands as well the reason that such things were necessary. Upon Elisha and the other recruits first mission Gad does not come in order to show the confidence that he has in their abilities. After its success we learn of why Elisha must kill John Dawson. It is a way to make the English pay for their execution of one of the terrorist men, David ben Moshe, who had been captured during one of Gads missions. Soon the book moves to a more personal battle inside of Elisha over John Dawson. This battle is nowhere fought on between whether or not to kill the English officer, but exactly why he will and what gives him the right. Throughout the second half of the story, Elisha wishes to affirm his belief that he hates the man and that all Englishmen were equal, but struggles valiantly. Through all of this Elisha also faces the ghosts of the people who have created the murderer that he is about too become. As the book nears its end he goes to meet John in person. He finds that there is very little to hate about the man and that in some other circumstance they could actually be friends. After allowing him to write a note to his son, he without any other thought kills him at the strike of dawn.

Throughout the book my favorite character was without a doubt Gad. He was a mysterious figure who seemed to be more than a man. When Elisha first met Gad I was surprised at the somewhat more than human qualities that he displayed. He seemed to always have an answer and always know what he was doing. In a way the name Gad sounds like God, which in the story could easily apply to the kind of control that his character had over what Elisha did and became. I believe that Elie Wiesel did a tremendous job of making him more human by showing the failure of his mission and his part in the execution of Davis ben Moshe.

My favorite scene in the book was the appearance of the ghosts that shaped who Elisha was to become. It was amazing how the ghosts appeared at a life changing moment such as that and claimed that they were all responsible for the murderer he was to become. I found that incredibly deep and moving. This also made me think of my own life and all the people that shaped me into who I am. I think of what I would have become if I had grown up in a completely different environment. This however, also makes me wonder if Elisha had been surrounded by different people would he still have found his way to the position that he found himself in the book.