Dawn Post 8

The final section of the book... We were introduced to this character, whom Elisha doesn't want to be friends with, doesn't want to share any memories with, and doesn't want to think of him as alive.  This is a terrible thing:  for John Dawson is reminiscing about his son who is "nothing that you are" (Wiesel 69).  I think that this part hit Elie the hardest, knowing that the man he was destined to shoot in cold blood was comparing him to his own son.  This would be shocking and life-changing; to be compared to a loved one of the man you are to shoot.  Though Elie tries his hardest and absolute hardest to block out this memory, that fails.  His heart listens while his brain ignores.  He wants to like this man (and he does in a sense, handing him a notepad and allowing him to send a letter to his SON which he was comparing).

I thought it particularly interesting the following quote said by Elie Wiesel:  "John Dawson has made me a murderer, I said to myself.  He has made me the murderer of John Dawson.  he deserves my hate.  Were it not for him, I might still be a murderer, but I wouldn't be the murderer of John Dawson" (Wiesel 75).  This was so abstract, it caught my attention.  It was so simple, so redundant in its wording, yet the meaning was so plain and clear:  Elie doesn't know what to do nonetheless who he is and who he is becoming.

The end of the book was perfect:  the (the readers presume it is the same) child that was crying in the night was crying when Elisha fired the gun.  This is symbolic as I had mentioned before, reasoning that the child represents despair, hope, growth, and birth.  New life.  New despair.  And everything that John Dawson will never live to be.

I can't believe Elie actually shot John Dawson.  I was anticipating a great escape, something that would have turned the story around dramatically.  This, however, did not.  The man died, Elisha killed him.  The child remained crying in the dawn, and that was it.  End of story.  To me, that wasn't the best ending for the readers, however it was truly perfect for the story line.  What would have happened if John Dawson lived?  Just something to think about..

Dawn Post 7

This story could have just taken a dramatic turn when Gad comes back from speaking with John Dawson and confesses to Ilana that the British prisoner had told him many stories, which Gad considered to be no big deal.  The story also makes a hard right turn when Elie was shown the gun he was to kill John Dawson with.  "The revolver was black and nearly new.  I was afraid to even touch it, for it lay all the whole difference between what I was and what I was going to be" (Wiesel 62).

Not being super familiar with the Jewish religion, I was able to finally make the connection that "David" refers to the Star of David.  This is a really interesting aspect of human history.  The Star of David is also known in Hebrew as the Shield of David.  This is a symbol comprised of two equilateral triangles whose point faces upwards, and one rotated 120 degrees to the right:  a hexagram.  The first triangle represents the tribe of Judah which ruled, and the other triangle represented the former tribe of Benjamin.  This is a symbol of Judaism, as seen in many Synagogues.  When David is mentioned on page 63 of Dawn, it makes me think about how they are referring to their holy figure; their Jesus equivalent.

Adding on to my theory that the beggar man and everyone else in that room were really dead it this quote:  "'The beggar took my head in his hands and looked into my eyes.  His look was so powerful that for a moment I doubted my identity.  I am that look, I said to myself.  What else could I be?  The beggar has many looks, and I am one of them.  But his expression radiated kindness, and I knew that he could not regard kindly his own look'"  (Wiesel 64).

Dawn Post 6

This one character ceases to amaze me:  Ilana.  Ilana seems to always be there for Elie through thick and through thin, acting as his mother figure that the reader has now assumed is dead.  It just came to my attention that the room so full of people by which Elie encountered could have been people that were killed, and he had met.  But no, because Gad, Joab, and Ilana were present as well.  So maybe death isn't really a tangible, physical decline?  Maybe death is when one comes close to that tangible renaissance but decides not to cross over to the "light."  "My mother and father, the master and the beggar were all there" (Wiesel 56).  I am assuming since Elie's mother and father died in the Holocaust, that the beggar and the master are dead as well.  Or maybe, the beggar man was dead to begin with, that is why Elie questions why he never eats and he never sleeps.

The quote that I thought was insurmountable and could not have been worded better was:  "The sum of these silences filled me with fear.  Their silences were different from mine; they were hard, cold, immobile, lifeless, incapable of change" (Wiesel 56).  This quote represents peace, death, life, and birth all in two sentences.  This to me is amazing how Elie Wiesel was able to encapsulate all these four stages of life into that phrase. Because death is silent, and silence scares some people.  That phrase could sum up the book:  with fear as displayed in Elie when he is ordered to kill a British man, and yet the immobility and hardness and coldness and depth of life.  This was amazing how he could compress his eighty-page novel into two sentences:  much like how a Neutron Sstar is so dense, a mere cubic centimeter of Neutron Star has the same mass as Mt. Everest.

I can't wait to see what twists and turns this book takes, because so far it really has taken none.  Nothing climatic has happened; the beggar did not die a dramatic death, and there was nothing significant where we feel truly sorry and empathetic for Elie.

Dawn Post 5

This is the section of the book where Elie is preparing to assassinate the man.  In the beginning of this section, he notes something interesting:  "Ever since midnight the visitors had been pouring in.  Among them were people I had known, people I had hated, admired, forgotten.  As I let my eyes wander about the room I realized that all of those who had contributed to my formation, to the formation of my permanent identity, were there.... Yet I knew that at some point my life had crossed theirs" (Wiesel 44).  This novel takes another turn when Elie walks around to all the people, and he cannot get an answer for one simple question:  Why is everyone here?  The old beggar man, whom we were introduced to in the beginning of the novel, gives him a strange answer:  "'This is a night of many faces'" (Wiesel 46).

The whole point of the novel is now understood clearly to the reader:  Elie must kill John Dawson at Dawn the next day.  This is significant... The title of the book is Dawn!   Here, we as the reader have reached a major point in the book.  Elie now realizes that these people who are in the room too small to hold them, are counting on him to murder this man.  This man he seems to have no feelings towards or against, yet he is to be placed on the safe side of a gun.  If I were Elie, I would be shocked.  I wouldn't want people rooting for me in times where I am going to do something that is against the human code.  Killing another human as if you are forced into a televised, radio-broadcasting game; and the whole entire audience is rooting for you.  For you to kill the opponent.

Dawn Post 4

Death... Death is cold, death has no hair and only eyes.  Death saves people, and kills others.  Death changes people, morphs them into monsters that they wish not to become, or saves their souls from the devils.  God is not death, death is cold.  God has no eyes, therefore he is not death.

Though this book has taken many wild turns in the telling of its history, I still don't think that it compared to The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown.  I think that it was easy for Dan Brown to write all that he wrote because he probably had a great map of what he wanted to write, and the exact pages he wanted each section to be; whereas Elie Wiesel probably just took his life experiences and wrote in detail about them.  Dawn is filled with hate, disgust, and hopes of murder.  Hopes of murder because Joab wishes he were dead:  "'He imagines he's dead'" (Wiesel 32).  Hope in death?  "'Funny, isn't it?' he said.  'Death actually saved my life'" (Wiesel 32).

In reading, I the woman "Ilana" is often mentioned, and I wonder who she is.  Though the book has claimed she is a mysterious, dark, and insightful women; who can be trusted in these dark times?  Why hide ones identity from an entire society when one is worshiped over the radio?  '"The English have no description of me; they only know only my voice'" (Wiesel 33).   It is her story that stands out from the rest of the "death" stories:  when she had a head cold, she was taken in for questioning by the police in accord to if she was the woman's voice from her broadcast of the Voice of Freedom.  Death didn't save her life, but a head cold did.

Dawn Post 3

We now lean that Elie had a violent past.  "I had taken part in various tangles with the police, sabotage operations, in attacks on military convoys making their way across the green fields of Galilee, or the white desert" (Wiesel 21).  I wonder what police did to people whom underwent trauma from the Holocaust.  What do you do to a man who was forced to say goodbye to his family while naked and being yelled at because of his religion, a man who has seen death on a level that ordinary citizens could never fathom, a man who has seen and been involved with humanity at its worst... What would one say to him?  Would he be punished, thrown in jail?  What is fair to do with him?  After being one of the few survivors, what would happen to him?  How would the government ensure that these survivors received the treatment they deserved, and didn't end up corrupt?

Being part of this operation seems the most corrupt thing that Elie could possibly have done.  His indoctrination was based on the concept that one needed to be weary of where they stepped and killing was the only way out of anything.  "The goal was to simply get the English out; the method, intimidation, terror, and sudden death" (Wiesel 22).  Who in their right minds would teach this to children?  To young people who have a future?  What is the point of this--this sick minded training that is being preformed on people who are already mentally scared, and have seen it all; felt it all?

The thing that I find really interesting is the introduction to the Eleventh Commandment:  "Hate your enemy" (Wiesel 23).  Rather than hating the enemy, Wiesel steps inside the enemy's shoes.  He imagines himself as an SS officer treating Jewish men, women, and children as the Nazi's thought they "deserved" to be treated.  This is a turning point in the novel Dawn because rather than hating the enemy, Elie allows himself to give the enemy a face; a chance.  Also introduced was the word "comrade."  I have grown to dislike this word, especially when calling another man or woman a comrade.  This is because it was used in 1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell, and it seemed as though it was derogatory and degrading.  It was used in a hateful way, and a way that was supposed to eliminate any sense of self-worth of the people in the society.

I can't wait to see what happens to Elisha.

Dawn Post 2

We now learn that the young man's name is Elisha.  This is a weird name for a man; I have never heard of a man named Elisha prior to reading this book.  As of now, I am sure that Elie Wiesel is actually this Elisha.  Having read Night by Elie Wiesel and with Dawn being part of the Night trilogy, it makes sense that he is writing again about himself.  Although I am confused at the drastic jump from the twelve-year-old boy who looks at the sky and witnesses various faces to the eighteen-year-old man who is assigned to assassinate a man.

As I had assumed in the last section of Dawn, this is not taking place during the war.  "after the war..." (Wiesel 11).   I find it really interesting how the people of Normandy in France fully paid for Elie Wiesel's education and living.  I knew that could have been arranged if one was in trouble, and he seemed to be off fairly well with Gad.  However, he was an orphan, and I suppose that would get one what they needed.  And since Wiesel was living in a foreign country with a foreign tongue, he needed the education.  And his time for the "organization" who is funding his stay is running short--three weeks left until Elie has not one thing to hold on to.  Finally we are given some insight to the mysterious character who is mentioned a few times in the previous section of the book. Gad appears to be a man in his  This is why Gad could be either a light or road block at the end of the tunnel to Elie now.  He has proved to be a road block, because instead of Gad killing the man, he assigns Elie to do so.

Through reading this section, we learn that Elie Wiesel was in a concentration camp between the ages of twelve and eighteen (the young boy was twelve and not in the concentration camp, and the man he became is now eighteen and about to kill someone.)  I find it interesting that someone would appoint one who has been through the concentration camps and seen death and far worse--to kill a man of which could be a friend.  Why did Elie Wiesel write about his passion for philosophy?

Another quote that I found surprising was one spoken by Elie:  "'The future,' I answered 'is of little interest to me'" (Wiesel 13).  If I were set up to become someone whom I dreaded not to be, I would want as much insight into my future as this strange figure could offer me.  I suppose that one might be drained of all hope after being stuck in a concentration camp for one-third of ones life, yet one might still show interest in what lies ahead of them.  Obviously, Elie wanted to know about his future, because Gad has reoccured throughout the book many times.

The opening line of Dawn was "Somewhere a child began to cry" (Wiesel 3).  Then, Wiesel mentions it on page 18 when it is said that "Outside the child was still crying." This has to have some significance to the situation, for it is mentioned twice and I shall record when I read something related to a child crying again.  A child crying--to me--symbolizes hurt, treachery, pain, and struggle.  When a child cries, something is wrong, something that adults cannot always understand.  Maybe that is its meaning--when Elie cannot understand something, he refers to the child.  In this case, on page 18, he cannot understand why this man has come to him, why he is so keen on Elie's future, and seems to disregard his own.