Dawn

"This was a good book. I liked Night better though. Some parts were confusing which caused me to reread parts of the book multiple times to make sense of things. "

"Ok...so I thought this was going to be a continuing of His memoir Night. Night was EXCELLENT, but it ended rather suddenly and you have no idea what happened after his liberation, so I was looking forward to this next book. <br/><br/>Dawn is actually a fictional story that he wrote and I'm sorry to say I hated it....it was awful. Which is disappointing. I don't raye many books only 1 star.....but here it is."

"EDIT: I'll give it about a 3.5"

"Night, by Elie Wiesle, 120 pages. <br/><br/>Dawn, by Elie Wiesle, 81 pages.<br/><br/>I have wanted to read Night since I bought it, probably at least ten years ago, and every time one of my kids reads it in high school, I think about reading it again. I recently learned it was part of a trilogy, and my friend Shiloah and I decided to read the last two together (she had already read the first).<br/><br/>Night wasn't enjoyable. What book dealing with the atrocities of the Holocaust is? But it's an important read, and I'm very glad it is part of the standard high school curriculum in our area. And I am grateful the Elie Wiesle used his voice through his writing to make sure his experience was heard.<br/><br/>Neither Shiloah nor I realized that Dawn (the 2nd book) is fiction. Dawn examines the morality of a life for a life, with an execution in retribution for another execution. The main character Elisha is an 18 year old tasked with the role of executioner as part of the Jewish forces opposing British rule in Israel, following the end of WWII. The entire book is mostly introspective, as the main character agonizes over the role he must fill. He realizes that through this one act, he will be made a killer, a murderer, and that there is no going back.<br/><br/>To write such a novel, the author had to have insight into the minds of killers, such as through his experience with the concentration camps. I wonder if he knew of any who struggled with the morality of what they were doing. It may have come out in how he wrote John Dawson's side of the conversation with Elisha, if you look at Dawson as representing the imprisoned Jews, and Elisha the equivalent of the Nazis assigned to kill, you can see how some Jews may have pitied the loss of innocence of their captors and killers.<br/><br/>I didn't save quotes from Night, but here are quotes from Dawn:<br/><br/>"We are here to be present at the execution. We want to see you carry it out. We want to see you turn into a murderer. . . . You are the sum total of all that we have been. . . . In a way we are the ones to execute John Dawson. Because you can't do it without us." (the boy-ghost who looked like Elisha's former self)<br/><br/>I was beginning to understand. An act so absolute as that of killing involves not only the killer but, as well, those who have formed him. In murdering a man I was making them murderers. (p. 46-47)<br/><br/>***<br/><br/>"War is like night. . . . It covers everything." (Ilana, p. 54)<br/><br/>***<br/><br/>He who has killed one man alone is a killer for life. (p. 55)<br/><br/>***<br/><br/>Wiesle wrote of the ghosts that "They do not wait until an action has been achieved, a crime committed. They judge in advance." (p. 57) <br/><br/>Elisha entreats his father, "don't judge me. Judge God. He created the universe and made justice stem from injustices. He brought it about that a people should attain happiness through tears, that the freedom of a nation, like that of a man, should be a monument built upon a pile, the foundation of dead bodies. . . . Don't judge me, Father. . . . You must judge God. He is the first cause, the prime mover; He conceived men and things the way they are. You are dead, father, and only the dead my judge God." (p. 57, note that the last time he calls to his father the word is not capitalized—possible symbolism in that)<br/><br/>The boy ghost is the only one who responds after Elisha went to each ghost separately asking not to be judged, justifying the impeding execution he will carry out: "Why are we silent? Because silence is not only our dwelling-place but our very being as well. We Are silence. And your silence is us. You carry us with you. Occasionally you may see us, but most of the time we are invisible to you. When you see us you imagine that we are sitting in judgment upon you. You are wrong. Your silence is your judge." (p. 60)<br/><br/>***<br/><br/>We were the first—or the last—men of creation; certainly we were alone. And God? He was present, somewhere. Perhaps He was incarnate in the liking with which John Dawson inspired me. The lack of hate between executioner and victim, perhaps this was God. (p. 67)<br/><br/>***<br/><br/>"You hate me, don't you?" (John Dawson)<br/><br/>I didn't hate him at all, but I wanted to hate him. That would have made it all very easy. Hate—like faith or love or war—justifies everything. . . .<br/><br/>. . . "Why did you kill John Dawson?" <br/><br/>If I had alleged hate, all these questions would have spared me. Why did I kill John Dawson? Because I hated him, that's all. The absolute quality of hate explains any human action even if it throws something inhuman around it. <br/><br/>I certainly wanted to hate him. That was partly why I had come to engage him in conversation before I killed him. It was absurd reasoning on my part, but the fact is that while we were talking I hoped to find in him, or in myself, something that would give rise to hate.<br/><br/>A man hates his enemy because he hates his own hate. He says to himself: this fellow, my enemy, has made me capable of hate. I hate him not because he's my enemy, not because he hates me, but because he arouses me to hate. <br/><br/>John Dawson has made me a murderer, I said to myself. He has made me the murderer of John Dawson. He deserves my hate. Were it not for him, I might still be a murderer, but I wouldn't be the murderer of John Dawson. (p. 74-75)<br/><br/>. . . "Why must you try to hate me?" John Dawson asked again.<br/><br/>"In order to give my action a meaning which may somehow transcend it." (p. 77)"

"The first book Night was good but this book and the next are not that great "