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The Old Man
The grizzled master is Elisha’s childhood Cabala (Jewish mysticism) teacher. Elisha looked up to the master as a mentor and guide; he was especially influenced by the Master’s teaching on the sixth commandment—that it’s wrong to take God’s prerogative into one’s own hands by killing another. He also told Elisha that Death is “all eyes” and taught him other Jewish legends, like the story of a little boy who was turned into a prayer in the night sky. The ghost of the grizzled master appears the night before Dawson’s execution, though he remains silent.
The Grizzled Master Quotes in Dawn
The Dawn quotes below are all either spoken by The Grizzled Master or refer to The Grizzled Master. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 3 Quotes
I remembered how the grizzled master had explained the sixth commandment to me. Why has a man no right to commit murder? Because in so doing he takes upon himself the function of God. And this must not be done too easily. Well, I said to myself, if in order to change the course of our history we have to become God, we shall become Him. How easy that is we shall see. No, it was not easy.
When Elisha trains to become a terrorist, he doesn’t just discover new ideas about what it means to live in Zion (the Holy Land). He also discovers new interpretations of the religious teachings on which he was raised. Here he explains how his childhood mentor, a rabbi known as the grizzled master, taught him to understand the sixth of the Ten Commandments, the one which prohibits killing. The grizzled master explains that life and death are in God’s hands, so killing someone means wrongly playing the role of God. As Elisha becomes indoctrinated into the Movement’s ideas, however, he looks at the sixth commandment in a new way—accepting that in order to secure a peaceful future, the Jewish people have a responsibility to “become God,” even if that includes killing. If they don’t do this, he reasons, they will continue to be at the mercy of history and may eventually cease to exist as a people. Dawn as a whole is the story of Elisha learning just how difficult it is to live out such an idea.
Related Characters:
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Get the entire Dawn LitChart as a printable PDF.
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The Grizzled Master Character Timeline in Dawn
The timeline below shows where the character The Grizzled Master appears in Dawn. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 2
...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...
(full context)
...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.”
(full context)
Chapter 3
Once, when Elisha was a young boy, the grizzled master had taught him the reason behind the sixth commandment: it’s wrong to kill because, in...
(full context)
Chapter 4
...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...
(full context)
Chapter 5
...or simply people whose paths he’s crossed at some point. His parents, the beggar, and the grizzled master are there; so are the English soldiers he helped ambush, and people he knew in...
(full context)
...“Poor little boy!” His father gazes at him but gives no answer; when Elisha asks the grizzled master , the same thing happens. Finally, the beggar says that it’s “a night of many...
(full context)
Next Elisha speaks to the grizzled master , arguing that he hasn’t betrayed him; he’s acting for the sake of the living....
(full context)
Chapter 6
...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.
(full context)
