CHAPTER FIVE
1. What does Elisha imagine that the room is filled with?
The dead.
2. What does the beggar tell Elisha about this night?
That it has a thousand eyes.
3. What does the little boy tell him?
He wants to see Elisha become a murderer because one he pulls the trigger, he makes everyone in the room murderers to.
4. Why is it significant that it is the boy who speaks?
It represents that he killed himself when he decided to take Captain John Dawson’s life.
5. How did John Dawson react when told he would die?
He said that his stomach told him. He acted calm.
6. Why does Elisha not want to see Dawson eat?
He wants to look back on him as a man who never ate.
7. What problem does Elisha think is worse than fear?
He doesn’t want the victim to be able to make him laugh, because when he was in the holocaust, he was saved by an assasins laughter.
8. In what way does Ilana say that war is like night.
It covers all.
9. What other observations of war does she make?
She realizes that not only can one kill with their hands, but also their voice.
10. After the war ends, what does Elisha think will remain?
His title of being an exectutioner.
11. What does he think the silent dead do?
Judge with not voices or actions, but with their presence.
12. What does he say the freedom nation is built upon?
A foundation of dead bodies.
13. Elisha says he is not a murderer but an idealist. How is this true?
He isn’t choosing death (although he is supporting it), he chooses life.
14. In what way did he, as a youth, try to follow any idealist dream?
He and his friend fasted for days and bathed, trying to purify themselves so they could call the Messiah to earth.
15 What do the presences symbolize as far as what makes a man?
Everyone who made you who you are today are more apart of you than anything else.
16. What does the revolver symbolize for Elisha?
The death of himself.
17. Why does he say that in an hour everything will be different?
In one hour, he will no longer be just Elisha, but Elisha the man who killed John Dawson.
CHAPTER SIX
1. What is ironic about the meaning of Elisha's name?
Elisha was a prophet who supported life, and now he is killing a man he doesn’t even know.
2. What does Elisha think the next day will bring him?
Guilt.
3. Why does John Dawson understand Elisha better than any human being?
Because of the bond formed between victim and executioner is stronger than any other.
4. What two burning sensations does Elisha feel?
The revolver burning in his pocket and John Dawson’s words.
5. Whom does Elisha picture when he tries to picture David Ben Moshe?
John Dawson since he is the only man who he has ever physically seen that is condemned to death just like David is.
6. What experiences did Dawson's artistic hands make Elisha think of?
When a man with angelic hands cut off his sculptor friends fingers while trying to get information.
7. Is he right in saying, "Now our only chance lies in hating you, in learning the necessity and art of hate"?
Yes, without hate as a reason, there is no motive to kill John Dawson.
8. What is the meaning of, "I've killed Elisha"?
When he pulls the trigger, he is killing the man who he once was.
9. What does he hear his mother say to him?
“Poor boy, poor poor boy.”
10. Explain the last line of the novel.
He has killed the man/boy he once was because he no longer resembles the bible-thumping goody-two shoes he used to be.
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