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
John Dawson is handsome and distinguished. He is in his 40s, seemingly a professional soldier. He has searching eyes and a firm chin. He sits up when Elisha enters the room and stares at him for a long time. Then he asks what time it is. Elisha tells him it will be dawn in about an hour. Yet to Elisha it feels as if this hour of waiting will last forever and will never be joined to the past. As Elisha stands before Dawson, it also feels as if he and Dawson are alone in creation. God is here somewhere, but it’s unclear where—perhaps in Elisha’s lack of hatred for Dawson.
The most striking thing about Dawson is that he is old enough to be 18-year-old Elisha’s father. This adds to the sense of unreality and even absurdity in the scene; Elisha, still new to terrorism, has been arbitrarily put in the position of executing a professional soldier who, under other circumstances, he’d be inclined to respect and defer to. Elisha feels as if they are suspended within time, adding to the sense that this is a major turning point in his life. That Elisha knows God is present in this moment also points back to his consuming question of where God can be found.
Themes
As the two men continue to stare at each other, Elisha feels that he simply likes Dawson. He feels no hatred or pity. Dawson asks Elisha’s name. Elisha doesn’t understand why Dawson would want to know this, but he tells him anyway. He explains that Elisha was a biblical prophet, known for restoring a boy to life by breathing into his mouth. With a trace of humor, Dawson observes that Elisha is doing the opposite.
Despite his best efforts, Elisha instinctively likes the man he is supposed to kill. Dawson, in turn, shows a fatherly warmth and even humor toward Elisha despite being just an hour away from death. He identifies an irony about Elisha’s name, suggesting a deeper incongruity in Elisha’s attitudes about killing and serving the Jewish people.
Themes
Dawson asks how old Elisha is and looks at the boy with pity when he hears the answer. Elisha then asks him for a story, preferably a funny one. Again Dawson tells Elisha he’s sorry for him. Elisha says that isn’t funny, but as they smile at each other as if they’re lifelong friends, he wonders if there is something funny about the moment and the unlikely situation that’s been imposed on them both.
Dawson finds Elisha’s situation sad, perceiving that the young Elisha is being put in this position in order to harden him. Their shared smile shows that it’s possible to discover common humanity even in such an extreme moment. Their position is arbitrary, and there’s no reason for animosity.
Themes
Dawson invites Elisha to sit down with him. He says he has a son Elisha’s age who’s studying at Cambridge; his son loves to go to the movies and date girls. He tells Elisha that his son “has none of your anxiety, your unhappiness.” Elisha tries not to listen to Dawson’s stories; he’s the enemy, after all, and the enemy doesn’t have a story. But Elisha can’t think of anything else, not even David ben Moshe, whom he only knows by name. So he tries to pretend that Dawson is David, and that the rabbi has come in to pray with him and hear his last confession before death.
Dawson makes a remarkable effort to humanize Elisha even though Elisha will soon kill him. He sees his own son in Elisha, except that where his son enjoys a hopeful future, Elisha appears to be trapped in a hopeless situation. Elisha, meanwhile, tries to keep objectifying Dawson, but finds that with Dawson right in front of him, this is impossible. Even David ben Moshe, with whom Elisha has more in common, is just in his imagination.
Themes
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Dawson says that he isn’t worried about his son; he’s worried about Elisha. He paces in the small cell and smokes. Elisha gives Dawson a notebook so that he can jot a last note to his son. Elisha watches Dawson’s slender, elegant fingers as he writes. The fingers remind him of a German sculptor he’d known in Buchenwald, Stefan. Stefan had been part of the German resistance movement and refused to give up the names of others, even under torture. Eventually, a mild-mannered Gestapo chief, a former surgeon, cut off the fingers on Stefan’s right hand, explaining that Stefan’s silence forced him to do this.
Elisha thinks of a friend in the concentration camp who was cruelly maimed for his resistance to tyranny. The memories of Stefan have the effect of blurring reality somewhat. As a career British soldier, Dawson fought against such Nazi cruelties himself, even within the last few years. Yet now Elisha is in the position of killing Dawson—showing the strange, arbitrary moments that history and ideology create.
Themes
After Dawson finishes writing his letter, he studies Elisha’s face sadly and asks, “You hate me, don’t you?” Elisha wants to hate John Dawson. He imagines explaining the execution someday—he would have to explain that Dawson was his enemy and that he was acting under orders. If he could claim to hate Dawson, though, it would make further questions unnecessary. Yet, so far, this conversation has given Elisha nothing to hate.
Elisha has been unsuccessful so far in hating Dawson, which he’d expected to be so easy to do. Hating Dawson would have made it easier for Elisha to justify his actions in the future. Yet he can no longer think of Dawson as an abstract, faceless enemy.
Themes
Elisha thinks that someone hates an enemy in order to hate one’s own hate—the other person is responsible for stirring up that hatred. So it’s John Dawson’s fault that he is a murderer; he deserves Elisha’s hate. In thinking this way, Elisha knows, he’s drawing on the propaganda technique of projecting all evil onto his enemy. That’s why he tries to see in John Dawson the same man who condemned David ben Moshe and the one who killed Elisha’s parents.
Perceptively, Elisha sees that part of hating an enemy is simply projecting one’s own hatred onto that person and blaming them for it. He’s well aware that he’s simply parroting the propaganda he’s been taught. He continues trying to objectify Dawson by viewing him as interchangeable with other enemies, but this has become much harder now that Dawson and Elisha are face to face.
Themes
Elisha tries again to think of David ben Moshe. He knows exactly what will happen: around five o’clock in the morning, the rabbi will guide David out of the cell. The other prisoners, seeing him pass by, will begin to sing the Hatikva louder and louder. Elisha imagines that John Dawson’s words are drowning out the sound of David’s footsteps and the Hatikva. But it isn’t working.
Elisha tries to stir up hatred for Dawson by imagining what’s happening in the moments leading up to David ben Moshe’s execution. (The Hatikva, “The Hope,” is the anthem of Israel.) But Dawson’s presence persists independently of what’s happening to David.
Themes
Dawson’s eyes are filled with tenderness, and he asks Elisha again if he hates him. Elisha says he’s trying. He’s trying because the Jewish people have never succeeded in hating those who’ve humiliated and killed them; now they must learn to hate in order to survive. He tells Dawson that he must try to hate him “in order to give my action a meaning which may somehow transcend it.” Dawson says he is sorry for Elisha.
Dawson continues to feel fatherly kindness toward Elisha. Elisha frankly admits that he’s trying to muster up hatred toward Dawson because his people have historically failed to do this and have been victimized as a result; he also does so in order to justify what he is about to do.
Themes
Elisha grips the revolver; there are less than 10 minutes to go until dawn. His mind clears, and there’s no more doubt, only the certainty of his duty. He thinks of the rabbi, right now assuring David ben Moshe that God is with him. Dawson asks Elisha if he’ll make sure the note is sent to his son, and Elisha promises to mail it today. Elisha pictures David entering the execution chamber and seeing the hangman, who is “all eyes.” He knows David would refuse to die with his eyes covered, wanting to look death in the face. Dawson, too, refuses a handkerchief.
In the final moments, Elisha summons focus and resolve. Notably, David ben Moshe will be assured of God’s presence in these final moments; Elisha will get no such assurance, denying him an answer to the question of where God is to be found. Dawson’s request that Elisha mail the letter creates an unlikely link between the young terrorist and the young Cambridge student. The hangman being “all eyes” refers back to the rabbi’s teaching that Death is a creature who’s made of eyes—perhaps Elisha, too, looks this way.
Themes
A minute before five, the cell door silently opens and the dead enter, filling the narrow space with their heat. The beggar tells Elisha, “day is at hand.” The little boy says uneasily that this is the first time he’s seen an execution. Elisha’s father and mother, the grizzled master, and Yerachmiel stare silently at him.
The ghosts arrive to witness the execution. Once again, it’s unclear if the beggar is the prophet Elijah or the Angel of Death—because the beggar prophesies Dawson’s approaching death, he could be seen either way. The little boy’s discomfort anticipates Elisha’s own loss of innocence as he becomes a killer.
Themes
John Dawson suddenly smiles. He tells Elisha it’s because he’s just realized that he doesn’t know why he’s dying. Elisha tells him not to smile. There are 10 seconds to go. Elisha raises his revolver. Still smiling, Dawson says, “Elisha.” By the time Dawson repeats his name, Elisha has fired. “Elisha” was on Dawson’s lips as he died.
In his last moments, Dawson thinks of the absurdity of his position—something brought about by the arbitrary nature of terrorist reprisals. Though Dawson spends his last moments humanizing Elisha by speaking his name, this doesn’t divert Elisha from his course.
Themes
Dawson sinks to the ground in a sitting position. Elisha stays beside him for a moment, deafened by the gunfire and feeling heavy. “It’s done […] I’ve killed Elisha,” he thinks. The ghosts begin to leave, and they take Dawson with them, the little boy at his side. His mother keeps crying, “Poor boy!”
In becoming a killer, Elisha feels as if he, too, has died—undergoing a kind of moral death. Dawson’s spirit joins the company of the ghosts, suggesting that, in death, everyone is on the same side. Elisha is therefore left alone. It’s again unclear whether he’s mother’s “poor boy!” refers to him or to his victim, but the fact that Dawson departs with the ghosts adds weight to the possibility that Elisha’s mother has been pitying Dawson all this time.
Themes
Elisha climbs the stairs. The ghosts aren’t there. Gideon is praying, Ilana looks at him sadly, and Gad smokes. Elisha walks to the window to watch the dawn break over the still-sleeping city. He hears a baby crying. As night fades, the light turns a grayish color. There’s a dark shape beyond the glass; it has a face. Fearfully, Elisha recognizes that the face is his own.
When Elisha rejoins his friends, everything looks and sounds the same as it did several hours ago, but everything has changed. Though dawn is breaking, darkness lingers, and Elisha sees his own “dead” face reflected in the window. By closing on this image, the novel leads readers to question whether daybreak bring new hope, or if Elisha’s dark night will continue indefinitely. It’s left ambiguous, but it’s clear that Elisha’s future path is up to him.
Themes
