Dawn
A Novel
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4.2 • 113 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Elie Wiesel's Dawn is an eloquent meditation on the compromises, justifications, and sacrifices that human beings make when they murder other human beings.
"The author . . . has built knowledge into artistic fiction." —The New York Times Book Review
Elisha is a young Jewish man, a Holocaust survivor, and an Israeli freedom fighter in British-controlled Palestine; John Dawson is the captured English officer he will murder at dawn in retribution for the British execution of a fellow freedom fighter. The night-long wait for morning and death provides Dawn, Elie Wiesel's ever more timely novel, with its harrowingly taut, hour-by-hour narrative. Caught between the manifold horrors of the past and the troubling dilemmas of the present, Elisha wrestles with guilt, ghosts, and ultimately God as he waits for the appointed hour and his act of assassination.
The basis for the 2014 film of the same name, now available on streaming and home video.
Customer Reviews
Who’s Implicated?
Dawn probes the executioner and condemned dynamic within a fictional playground inspired by the Jewish Insurgency in Mandatory Palestine. A nationalistic, Jewish terrorist named Elisha is chosen to execute British Captain John Dawson in reprisal for the condemnation of fellow terrorist David ben Moshe. It’s a metaphoric vehicle through which Elie Wiesel explores the psyche of his tormentors, the Nazis.
The verdict is quite clear, the ones losing themselves are not the condemned but the executioners. Extinguishing life results in a reciprocal extinguishment of life. It’s a self-condemnation that implicates the people responsible for shaping the executioner’s character - mothers, fathers, siblings, friends, and foes - in addition to the executioner themselves. Innocence is eradicated; the path to redemption is inaccessible.
The execution of a faceless man in service of a faceless cause is reprehensible and corrupting to the condemner’s moral being. This is an ancient darkness found in all hearts belonging to the brotherhood of man; the act is neither victorious nor honorable. It is not a show of strength but a terminal illness dating back to Cain. It’s easy to depict enemies as the embodiment of evil, but these are all acts committed by normal men - by brothers. To call them evil would be to ignore the same darkness dwelling within us; ignoring it could allow us to mindlessly breathe fire into the furnaces of hate.
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Dawn
I guess Mr. Wiesel wrote this story through the pain he believes others felt. The pain of a reluctant executioner ordered to to the deed. I found the story so, so sorrowful, so deeply empty of any kind of life. Empty of any joy, or even color.