The first quote which seemed to jump out of the page all three times that I read it in the novel Dawn by Elie Wiesel was: "A beggar taught me, a long time ago, how to distinguish night from day" (Wiesel 4). This was on the second page of the novel, which leads me to believe that I am going to stumble across many more quotes that seem to breathe and voice opinions. To me, this was a fabulous way to begin the book and introduce a character. It demonstrates the young man's (we learn the perspective is that of a twelve-year-old boy) ability to think critically well beyond what any other child in his age group should have the capacity to do so. This ability is forwarded to the section where he learns to distinguish night from day and associate a face with it; "I looked out the window where a shadowy face was taking shape out of the deep of the night. A sharp pain caught my throat. I could not take my eyes off the face. It was my own" (Wiesel 6). To me, these lines in the book appeared to show that the young boy is pure. For when the old beggar man describes to him that "Night is purer than day" (Wiesel 5) is when the young boy associates faces with the end to a dark day and the entrance into a pure night.
I wonder what the significance of the execution was. For over two pages, Elie Wiesel describes the hanging that is going to take place. The man whose destiny is a hanging seems to have had a great reputation. He was kidnapped, which to me seems harsh. Thought the author has not revealed which country he resides in, it appears to be Germany. The child and the old beggar man pray in the synagogue, which leads me to believe that it is Germany during World War I because the English and the Germans were rivals. Also, with the man John Dawson--who is told to have been an English Captain in the English military--being English, this adds to the reasons why this story takes place in Germany. With no real reason for his capture (or so it appears in the story as of now) the Germans wanted to make it blatantly clear to the English military that they would be willing to capture and arrest any man whom they find wandering around their streets as though it belonged to them. This was no place for friends, yet the little boy and the beggar seem to have found each other. John Dawson could be the start of a revolution. High power people think that the German's won't go through with the massacre of John Dawson, while others are spiteful. What this character whom we have no information into his personal life represents, could transfigure the world and alter who rules it because of the disagreement as to what should be done with him, and what actually will be done with him. Who is this little boy and how does his fate relate to that of the now infamous John Dawson?
Pogrom: Noun: An organized massacre of a particular ethnic group. This word is used in the mind of the boy as a hateful word. It is used to show that the English weren't capable of hurting anyone: "'World opinion wouldn't tolerate it'" (Wiesel 7). To me, this is an ugly word--ugly sounding and a terrible meaning. Pogrom is just another tool that Elie Wiesel uses to show how intelligent the boy is, and how he can figure out any aspect of life, and how he respects that life can be (and happens to be in the world that he lives in) a pogrom.
The first thing that I noticed when reading the preface of the book was the word draconian because of the Da Vinci Code when Sauniére had written “O, Draconian devil! Oh, lame saint!” (Brown 43) by his body before dying. When Elie Wiesel said, “The executioner is working full time. His justice is Draconian” (Wiesel VII) I could infer that draconian meant cruel or harsh and that helped me understand why Sauniére put that in front of devil.
ReplyDeleteWhen Elie Wiesel announced that this book was actually a novel, I was really surprised because I thought it would be more like Night since this is the sequel. I thought that Dawn would be another part to his own personal story rather than something that he wonders about. Although this book is not a personal account of a true story, Wiesel is writing about a similar situation in which Jews were being ruled by the British. This was called the British-Zionist conflict and happened from around 1917-1946. I think that Wiesel wrote this book to represent something that could have happened to himself.
When I read about the man who would tell Elisha how to distinguish night from day I was very interested because when I thought about it, I didn’t really know either. When I found out that it was simply done by looking out a window to see a face, I felt like, well duh of course. Elie Wiesel is writing about a young man who is in the resistance that will have to kill a man in the morning. I already know that this is going to be a story about the conflict within himself because Elisha wants to be in the resistance, but probably has moral issues about killing someone.