Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Dawn, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Revenge, Terrorism, and War
Past, Present, and Future
God and Religion
Hatred, Killing, and Humanity
Summary
Analysis
On a hot autumn evening in Palestine, a child is crying somewhere. Elisha stands by a window, overlooking the city. He thinks about the fact that tomorrow, he is going to kill a man. He doesn’t know the man or anything about him, except that he’s English, and that he’s Elisha’s enemy. Softly, Gad tells Elisha not to torture himself, because this is war. But Elisha can think of nothing but the impending execution.
Wiesel immediately plunges into the central conflict of the story: a wartime execution that the protagonist must reluctantly carry out. Though Elisha’s companion tries to comfort him with the reminder that they’re at war, this justification for killing clearly doesn’t satisfy Elisha. The sound of the crying child heightens the tension.
Themes
It’s just before nightfall. This time of the evening always makes Elisha think of a beggar he met in the synagogue long ago, when Elisha was 12. The war was just starting, and “God still dwelt in our town.” The shabby, gaunt beggar had an otherworldly look in his eyes. From Hassidic literature, Elisha had been taught that a beggar might be the prophet Elijah in disguise. If Elijah is treated well, he rewards people with eternal life. But a beggar might also be the disguise of the Angel of Death. If the Angel of Death is mistreated, he might take a person’s life or soul.
The past often haunts Elisha throughout Dawn. In particular, World War II seems to be a stark dividing line in his history: he implies that, after the war, God seems to have become absent. But when Elisha was younger, his whole world was filled with religious meaning. (Hasidic Judaism is a subset of Orthodox Judaism, more common in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust, which emphasizes God’s nearness in everyday life.) In the Bible, Elisha was the servant and successor of the Prophet Elijah, so the beggar’s appearance—and the possibility that such a figure could be a disguised Elijah—would be especially meaningful to him.
Themes
Frightened by the beggar, Elisha asked him if he was hungry or needed anything else, but the beggar said no. Elisha feared being stuck in the synagogue with the beggar at midnight, because that’s when the dead rise from their graves to pray. So he and the beggar walked toward Elisha’s house, and the beggar told Elisha that he shouldn’t fear the dark—night, he said, is purer than day. He added, “The tragedy of man is that he doesn’t know how to distinguish between day and night.” Because of this ignorance, things are said at night that should only be said by day.
Elisha seems to have had a lifelong wariness of getting too close to death, making his present conflict even more poignant. His boyhood encounter with the beggar is mysterious and difficult to understand, though the beggar’s words echo throughout Elijah’s life. The beggar suggests that night isn’t to be feared, and perhaps that truth can be spoken more openly at night. But most people never learn this.
Themes
As they stopped in front of Elisha’s house, the beggar told Elisha that he would teach him how to distinguish between day and night. He said that Elisha should look at a window or into a man’s eyes. If he sees a face, then he’ll know that night has succeeded day. Then the beggar disappeared.
The mysterious beggar teaches Elisha to look for the “face” of night by looking into a window or into someone’s eyes. Eyes become an important symbol in the story, associated with the dead’s watchfulness over the living.
Themes
Get the entire Dawn LitChart as a printable PDF.
Ever since then, Elisha always watches for the arrival of night. Every night, he sees a face outside the window. It’s not always the same face—sometimes it’s the beggar’s, and later, it’s his father’s. Sometimes Elisha sees strangers. All he knows is that these are all the faces of dead people. Tonight, as he thinks about the beggar and the man he’s going to kill, Elisha looks out the window and sees his own face taking shape in the darkness.
For Elisha, the faces of the dead herald the arrival of night. The dead are never far from Elisha, or indeed from anybody—it’s just a matter of learning to see them. But the night before he’s supposed to kill someone, Elisha sees his own face in the window—suggesting that part of him will die, too, or has already died.
Themes
One hour ago, Gad told Elisha what the Old Man has decided: the execution is going to take place at dawn. A month ago, a Jewish fighter named David ben Moshe was injured, captured, and sentenced to death by the British. At this, the Old Man decided that reprisals would begin: each time a Jewish fighter is hung, an Englishman will be killed in return. To show they meant it, the fighters took an English captain hostage. The captain’s name is John Dawson.
The Old Man is the mysterious figure who commands the Jewish revolutionary forces in post-World War II Palestine. He takes a hard line against the British forces occupying Palestine—British killings of Jewish soldiers will be met with swift revenge. Carrying out such tactics falls on ordinary fighters like Elisha and his enemy and victim, Dawson.
Themes
Ever since Dawson’s kidnapping, Palestine has been on edge. The British have been arresting suspects, setting up armed barricades, and even warning the populace that if terrorists kill Dawson, everyone will be held responsible. This brings the terrible word pogrom into everyone’s mind. Though some doubt that the world would tolerate such an action on the part of the British, others point out that Hitler’s actions were tolerated for years.
Pogroms were violent, destructive outbreaks against Jewish populations—an atrocity periodically carried out in Eastern European history, and more recently leading up to and during World War II. The occupying forces’ threats stir up this fear among Palestine’s Jewish population. The overall fear—that even the British might instigate a pogrom without censure from the wider world—suggests that, in wartime, people are capable of repeating even the worst acts of history.
Themes
When Zionist leaders appeal to the Old Man, the Old Man replies that if David ben Moshe is hanged, Dawson will die. The Movement can’t give in, he argues, because violence is the only thing that will get through to the British; surrender would be interpreted as weakness. Soon, the international press descends on Jerusalem, and John Dawson’s mother asks the colonial government to pardon David ben Moshe. The government assures her that the Jews won’t follow through on their threat to kill Dawson. But after Cabinet debate, the British government decides that a pardon might inflame rebels in other parts of the Empire. The hanging will proceed.
In light of the Jewish people’s recent history of being violently oppressed throughout the Holocaust, the Old Man argues that clemency isn’t an option. From his perspective, the Movement must demonstrate that they are merciless in revenge, or else the Jews will be victimized yet again. The execution of David ben Moshe also occurs against a broader backdrop of British colonialism, showing how individual lives can become political pawns in war and empire.
Themes
Jerusalem radio announces that David ben Moshe will be hanged in the prison at Acre the next morning. Though the broadcast doesn’t mention it, everyone knows that means Dawson will die, too. Gad informs Elisha that the Old Man has ordered Elisha to carry out the execution. Elisha feels sick. Gad reminds him, “This is war,” but Elisha can only repeat to himself, “Tomorrow I shall kill a man.”
Having filled in the historical circumstances leading up to the executions, Wiesel returns to Elisha’s personal torment. The contrast between Gad’s flat assertion that “This is war” and Elisha’s fixation—“Tomorrow I shall kill a man”—shows that bigger historical forces like war always have an intimate effect on human lives.
Themes
