Dawn: Summary, Prediction, what I would do

1.            Summary up to page forty-four

“Somewhere a child began to cry,” is how Dawn by Elie Wiesel begins. It’s about an 18 year-old holocaust survivor named Elisha who joins the Movement in Palestine. It covers the transformation he makes from being a freedom fighter to a murderer because he has to execute Captain John Dawson at dawn. When he finds out about the horrific task he has to perform, he recalls a time before the holocaust, when his family was alive and he was just a boy. He had been visited by an ethereal beggar claiming that night had a face, and you could tell the moment night turned to day by either looking out a window or into the eyes of a man and seeing it’s dark visage. After that, Elisha would always wait to see who would visit him, and the night in Palestine, when he finds out he has to kill a man, he sees his own. The reason he has to kill this stranger is because the English have captured David Ben Moshe, a fellow freedom fighter, and they have said he will be executed. John Dawson was merely payback, an eye for an eye, and man for man. He came to be in Palestine because Gad, a recruiter for the Movement, came to him asking for his future wearing nothing but black. After learning of what was going on, he accepted and was told that he would leave in three weeks.

In Palestine, he was taught by masked instructors about how to use a revolver, a machine gun, and a hand grenade, also how to strangle a man silently and skills to escape from almost any prison. It was drilled into his head from day one that the English were his enemy, and they must die at any cost. Soon he was sent on his first mission. His task?  To kill the men in three open army trucks. He and his comrades set up road side bombs, and got one of the vehicles as it was coming around a curve. The other two’s passengers were mowed down at the knee with Tommy guns and presumably bled to death while trying to escape.

On the air, a beautiful girl named Iliana, whose identity was known by less than five people, represented the Movement. She, Elisha, Gad, Joeb, and Gideon were upstairs guarding the single escape route that could be used by John Dawson the night before the execution. While waiting, they began to reminisce about what saved their lives. Illiana, a head cold that kept the English from recognizing her voice when they were trying to catch her. Joab, death, because when he was being searched for his friend admitted him in a mental hospital where he pretended to think he was dead during interrogation. Gideon, god, when he was being tortured the thought of god watching him kept him from talking. Gad, David Ben Moshe for the deed of helping him escape with stolen weapons at the expense of capture. And Elisha, an assassins sense of humor since, while in the process of choking him, he burst out laughing at the image of Elisha’s head swelling up to a comical size, and released his throat.

When they finish, one of them mentions Captain John Dawson’s hunger, and Elisha denies that a man condemned to death couldn’t possibly have an appetite. After his rant, Iliana looks at him with such pity, and says, “poor boy, poor boy.” This causes Elisha to have a flashback to life directly after the holocaust.

After he was liberated on April 14, 1945, he didn’t know where to go. He was offered two options: home, or a youth camp in Normandy. He didn’t want to return to Sighet because it was overrun by native Russians and the depression of knowing his family wasn’t there would be to much to bare. So, he went to the camp, and that’s where he met Catherine. She was about twenty-six and liked boys who were absorbed in death. She taught Elisha what it was to love, but when he tried to tell her he was in love with her, she yelled, “poor boy, poor boy!” Elisha grabbed his clothes from the ground and ran away in embarrassment. 

2.            A PREDICTION of what you think will happen next

            I think that Elisha will kill John Dawson simply because he has no other options. This action will kill two lives but save one also: it will murder the Old-Elisha as well as John Dawson, but it will save the life he has created for himself in Palestine. Maybe the execution can help him unburden himself if only for a moment before the guilt of his new title of being a killer can set in.

3.            What would you do?

             Elisha has killed before, even if it was only anonymously, and I have not. Taking into consideration that I am not Elisha and haven’t been through what he has, I don’t think I could bring myself to pull the trigger and expect to leave with my sanity. Taking another man’s life is a huge responsibility to put on yourself and everyone who has made you who you are.

            If we were saying that I am Elisha, then yes, I would kill John Dawson because the beginning of one thing always means the end of another. The beginning: my reputation as a killer. The end: the expiration of a life.