Dawn

by

Elie Wiesel

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Dawn: Chapter 2 Summary & Analysis

Summary
Analysis
Elisha is 18 years old. Gad recruited him, brought him to Palestine, and “made [him] a terrorist.” They’d met in Paris, where Elisha had gone directly from the Buchenwald concentration camp. He could have gone home, but he knew his parents were dead and that his hometown was in Russian hands. Instead, a rescue committee sent him to a youth camp in Normandy and then set him up with an apartment and French lessons in Paris.
The novel now backtracks to show how Elisha finds himself in the position of killing a man. With this, the book implies that a terrorist has to be formed over time. For Elisha, this occurs following the devastation of the concentration camp and the loss of his parents and everything he loves.
Themes
Revenge, Terrorism, and War Theme Icon
Past, Present, and Future Theme Icon
Elisha’s goal was to study philosophy at the Sorbonne. He wanted to understand what he’d experienced at the hands of God and man in the concentration camp. After those experiences, he was driven to understand where God can be found—“in suffering or in rebellion?” And what makes a person most human—submission or refusal? Elisha hoped that the study of philosophy would answer his questions and set him free from his memories.
The Holocaust challenges Elisha’s once-fervent belief in God. Afterward, he hopes to find answers to his beliefs about God and humanity by studying philosophy—an abstract pursuit. However, he will soon be forced to contend with these questions in a far more immediate, tangible way.
Themes
Past, Present, and Future Theme Icon
God and Religion Theme Icon
Quotes
However, Elisha’s plans are never realized. One evening there’s an unexpected knock on his door, and he opens it to find a tall, tanned young man in a raincoat. He has unruly hair, a firm mouth, and warm eyes. The man lets himself into the apartment and tells Elisha that he knows everything about him. He asks Elisha if he is “attached” to his future. Elisha is unsettled and asks the man to identify himself. The man says he is Gad. His utterance sounds “cabalistic,” like the voice of God.
Elisha’s abstract, academic plans for his future are interrupted in an urgent, palpable way. Gad enters Elisha’s life as mysteriously as the beggar once did. Cabala (or Kabbalah) interprets Jewish sacred texts mystically in order to explore the relationship between God and humanity. Gad’s unsettling, Godlike voice interrupts Elisha’s plans, reorienting his search for answers.
Themes
Past, Present, and Future Theme Icon
God and Religion Theme Icon
Gad tells Elisha that he would like him to “give me your future.” Having grown up Hasidic, Elisha heard stories about a mysterious divine messenger called Meshulah. Frightened, Elisha asks Gad who he is, and Gad confirms Elisha’s suspicions by saying, “I am a messenger.” Elisha believes he must sacrifice whatever Gad asks of him. When he asks Gad what he will do with Elisha’s future, Gad replies that he will make it “an outcry […] of despair and then of hope.”
Elisha’s Hasidic background continues to shape the way he interprets his present, no matter his religious doubts. Here, his feeling that Gad is a divine messenger compels him to dedicate his future to the stranger who claims to know his past.
Themes
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Quotes
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Gad declines a seat and, smoking nonstop, talks throughout the night while staring intently at Elisha with fiery eyes. It reminds Elisha of being a child, listening to the grizzled master tell stories from the Cabala. But Gad talks about the effort to create an independent Jewish homeland in Palestine. A group he calls “the Movement” is struggling against the British colonial government—it’s only a hundred Jewish freedom fighters against 100,000 British. It’s the first time Elisha has heard a story about Jews being unafraid, even causing others to fear.
Gad reminds Elisha of his childhood religion instructor, except that Gad is inducting Elisha into a different sort of mystery—a less mystical, more palpable political effort. Gad’s invitation compels Elisha because it’s different from anything he has experienced before—in his lifetime, Jewish people have never possessed power and have always been afraid.
Themes
Revenge, Terrorism, and War Theme Icon
Past, Present, and Future Theme Icon
God and Religion Theme Icon
Gad asks Elisha to join this struggle for the freedom of Israel. Elisha’s family weren’t Zionists, so the concreteness of Gad’s stories fascinates him. Gad seems like a messenger summoning Jewish people into a promising future, where they won’t be persecuted or exiled. As a gray dawn breaks outside, Elisha accepts Gad’s offer.
Growing up, Elisha learned more spiritualized interpretations of his people’s future, so Gad’s offer to fight for a new nation is like a new religious awakening for Elisha. The breaking of dawn further symbolizes this, although the grayness makes it ambiguous—how hopeful is this new beginning, really?
Themes
Revenge, Terrorism, and War Theme Icon
God and Religion Theme Icon
Quotes
In the present, the Radio Jerusalem announcer talks about David ben Moshe’s impending execution. Though many around the world have protested and petitioned, the hanging is going forward. Gad paces in agitation, then searches the radio dial for the Voice of Freedom broadcast. Palestine’s Jews always stop what they are doing at a quarter past eight to listen to the young woman’s mysterious, riveting voice. Only Gad, Elisha, and a few others know that the voice belongs to Ilana, Gad’s girlfriend.
Months after Gad first recruited Elisha, Elisha has been plunged directly into the heart of the Palestinian Jews’ conflict with the British occupiers—the struggle is becoming ever more personal and less abstract.
Themes
Revenge, Terrorism, and War Theme Icon
Ilana speaks of David ben Moshe’s and John Dawson’s executions tomorrow at dawn. Though the two men will die at the same moment, there will be a wide gap between their experiences—David will die as a hero and John as a victim. When Ilana speaks of John Dawson, Elisha feels she is speaking of him, too. He had wanted to understand human nature, he reflects, and instead he is taking part in causing another’s death. When Elisha glances in the mirror, he is frightened by the sight of his own eyes. When he was a child, his grizzled master had told him that the creature Death “is all eyes.”
Listening to the radio broadcast, and then catching an unsettling glimpse of himself as an agent of death, Elisha realizes that his search for answers about human nature has been unexpectedly detoured. It’s possible, though, that his questions—about where God is to be found and when a person is most human—will be found through his actions and not in spite of them.
Themes
Revenge, Terrorism, and War Theme Icon
God and Religion Theme Icon
Hatred, Killing, and Humanity Theme Icon