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
As the Movement fighters sit around drinking tea and thinking about David ben Moshe, Elisha thinks instead about John Dawson. To pass the time, the group starts swapping memories related to death. Joab, nicknamed “the Madman,” a young, innocent-faced man with white hair, says that death saved his life. When reported to the police as a terrorist, he claimed insanity and took shelter in an asylum, pretending he believed he was dead. When the police tracked Joab down and interrogated him for two days, he just stayed unresponsive to their questions and abuse. Eventually, he was returned to the asylum. After that, his hair turned white, which Elisha calls “death’s little joke.”
All the Movement fighters have had opportunities to become acquainted with death. Though their stories of death differ, they share a mindset of being ready to surrender everything for the sake of the Movement’s ideals. Joab’s experience of pretending to be dead exemplifies this mindset—once a person embraces the reality of death, they are more dangerous because they don’t have anything left to lose.
Themes
Next, Gideon, called “the Saint,” claims that God saved him from death. Gideon, a rabbi’s son, wears a beard and side curls and prays constantly. He says that when he was arrested and tortured, he kept quiet because he could feel God’s eyes watching him, and he didn’t want to disappoint God by admitting guilt. God’s eyes, Gideon says, are always “drawn to human pain.”
Though not all of the Movement fighters share Gideon’s devout religious faith, they all share a sense of being accountable to something much bigger than their individual selves. Gideon believes that God watches everything he does, which emboldens him to resist torture for the Movement’s sake.
Themes
Next it’s Ilana’s turn. She says that a head cold saved her life. One day the British brought her in for questioning, along with a group of other women, and each woman’s voice was compared to a recording of the Voice of Freedom. But since Ilana’s cold distorted her voice, she was quickly eliminated from suspicion and released.
Sometimes the circumstances of someone’s brush with death are incredibly mundane—like a simple cold. In every case, whether it’s a cold or an encounter with God, escaping death strengthens a person’s resolve and their willingness to keep fighting.
Themes
Gad shares his memory next. He says that he owes his life to three English sergeants. They were hostages that the Old Man had ordered to be taken; he’d left it up to Gad to kill one of the three. Gad recoiled from playing the role of judge. Finally, he told the prisoners that the choice was up to them. They drew lots, and Gad shot the unlucky prisoner. He admits that if the sergeants had refused to choose, he would have killed himself instead, because he was “young and very weak.”
Like Elisha, Gad once had to face the situation of killing a hostage. The situation hardened him, which explains why he keeps encouraging Elisha not to torture himself about having to shoot Dawson. This suggests that Elisha, too, could wind up like Gad, a hardened killer.
Themes
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Finally it’s Elisha’s turn. He tells the group that he owes his life to a laugh. One cold winter morning in Buchenwald, Elisha felt so sick that he hid in his barracks when ordered to leave. When he was found and brought to a barracks leader, the leader coldly decided to choke Elisha to death. Elisha was so tired that he didn’t even resist. Yet when Elisha’s head swelled during the choking, the barracks leader burst out laughing at the ludicrous sight and forgot his original intention. Elisha owes his life to the man’s twisted sense of humor.
Elisha’s experiences in the Buchenwald concentration camp are seldom described in the story; they are simply assumed as the horrifying history that constantly looms over Elisha’s present actions. The story Elisha tells is especially horrifying because his survival relied on the laughter of someone who seems to have become hardened to suffering and death. One implication, again, is that the same could happen to Elisha.
Themes
After a long stretch of silence, Gideon suggests that they give John Dawson something to eat. Elisha says he can’t imagine that a condemned man would have an appetite. The others stare at him. Finally Gideon tells him that Dawson doesn’t know he’s about to die. He offers to go downstairs and tell him. Elisha is relieved—he finds it easier to be the one to kill Dawson than to have to break the news. Joab mentions that it’s midnight. Elisha knows that’s the hour when the dead rise from their graves to pray.
Ironically, as the friends sit around discussing death and anticipating the executions at dawn, the condemned prisoner sits beneath them unaware of what’s about to happen. Elisha’s reluctance to tell Dawson shows that he’s far from a hardened killer yet himself. It also seems fitting that Dawson would learn of his approaching death at the hour when Elisha believes the dead roam freely.
Themes
Ilana tearfully calls Elisha “poor boy,” which disturbs him. Slowly, Ilana disappears from before him, and Catherine appears. Catherine is a woman he once knew who liked to talk to young boys about love. Elisha thinks she appears because she transcends everything in the room—life and death, past and present. Elisha met Catherine in France in 1945, soon after Buchenwald was liberated. He was spending his summer in a camp sponsored by a rescue committee in Normandy, and Catherine was one of the only German-speakers he came across. She was a small, blonde woman in her late 20s and the first woman Elisha looked at up close.
Catherine is the first “ghost” who appears to Elisha in the hours leading up to Dawson’s death. He thinks it is because she stands apart from the rest of his history—she doesn’t really belong to his childhood, his time in the camps, or the present. Because Elisha grew up devoutly observant in his religion, he generally would not have had firsthand contact with women outside his immediate family. Therefore Catherine’s appearance in his life indicates the deep rupture in Elisha’s religious beliefs after the camps.
Themes
One evening, Catherine approached Elisha as he was walking in the woods near the camp. They walked together in silence for a while and studied the night sky. Shy at first, Elisha eventually told Catherine the grizzled master’s legend of the open sky. According to the legend, the night sky clears in order to make room for children’s prayers. Once, a little boy prayed for his sick father, and in exchange, the little boy was turned into a prayer and carried to heaven. Elisha always looks for the child on nights like this. But there’s nothing there. In response to this story, Catherine exclaims, “Poor boy!” Elisha thinks she’s referring to the child in the legend.
Even though Elisha claims to have lost his religious faith during the war, he still hangs onto a shred of the innocence of his religious childhood—he keeps looking for the legendary little boy in the sky, even though he’s repeatedly disappointed. In Elisha, Catherine seems to see the innocence of the little boy in the rabbi’s story. The exclamation of “Poor boy!” and the presence of a little boy will crop up again in the story, which is perhaps another reminder that the past deeply affects the present.
Themes
After that night, Catherine and Elisha often walk together. Catherine asks Elisha questions about his past. Eventually, she starts speaking about love. She tells him that a man is most alive when he’s in the presence of a woman he loves. One evening, she starts kissing him, and over the coming days, Elisha gets familiar with her body. The night before Elisha returns to Paris, Catherine tells him they’re going to make love and gets undressed. Elisha is so stunned by this first sexual encounter that Catherine has to undress him and encourage him. Before going any further, Elisha insists on telling Catherine that he loves her. She tries to stop him from saying this and bursts into tears, saying, “You poor boy!”
Catherine’s intentions are never completely clear, but it does appear that she takes advantage of Elisha’s innocence and vulnerability after his terrible experiences in the camps. Because this is Elisha’s first romantic experience, he readily believes he’s fallen in love, whether that’s really the case or not. Catherine appears to feel shamed by Elisha’s innocence and refrains from going through with the consummation of their relationships at the last moment.
Themes
Then Elisha grabs his clothes and runs away. He realizes that Catherine thinks of him as that poor little boy in the sky, and that she is drawn to sorrowful young boys who think about death. Brought back to the present, Elisha hears Ilana say again, “Poor boy!” She begins to cry as if she’ll never stop.
Elisha realizes that Catherine just sees him as a vulnerable little boy. This incident from Elisha’s past, and Ilana’s echoing of it, suggests that he always carries that innocent little boy with him, even the night before carrying out a terrorist execution.
Themes
