Dawn (Unabriged)

I was very disappointed as I was expecting more real life story so was hard for me to read. Moving on to book three, hoping it will be better or I won't read. So m e of this story was not just unreal but not even enjoyable or couldn't make you want to read it. I am done with this review please.

Very well written but also very troubling to me. I was hoping for a peaceful resolution with neither man dying but that didnt happen. But that is me not the author. Elie is a great author with a compelling subject but also a subject which is horrifying. If only man could get beyond man's inhumanity to man.

Dawn: A Novel (Night Trilogy, Book 2) by Eli Wiesel
1961,2006

"Dawn is purely a work of fiction, but I wrote it to look at myself in a new way. Obviously I did not live this tale, but I was implicated in its ethical dilemma from the moment that I assumed my character's place."

"So I wrote this novel in order to explore distant memories and buried doubts: What would have become of me if I had spent not just one year in the camps, but two or four? If I had been appointed kapo? Could I have struck a friend? Humiliated an old man?"

"And yet, this tale about despair becomes a story against despair." -Elie Weisel

Elisha is a young 18 year old Jewish man, Holocaust survivor and Israeli Freedom Fighter who is ordered to execute John Dawson, a middle aged British soldier. As the day passes into night, Elisha is given the order that he must perform the execution of the British hostage. As he awaits dawn, the hour of execution, he ruminates over his life and what it means to kill someone. With memories of his family and religious beliefs, he struggles with the ethical dilemma of how death occurs. He is a soldier and obligated to carry out orders so does that exonerate him from being labeled a murderer?

I wanted to like this story more than I did. On some level, I'm unsettled with the anguish experienced by the young soldier. It has been many years since I have read, Night, but recall a similar eerie feeling. How does one justify his actions which seem to contradict his internal beliefs?

I was confused when I started reading Dawn, because it’s listed as being a sequel to Wiesel’s Night, which is more of a nonfiction memoir piece. While in theme, Dawn can certainly be seen as a sequel to Night given the subject matter, it is a fictional piece of work where Wiesel explores thoughts about killing and death, most notably, can killing a person ever be justifiable? This novel is a short but comprehensive into the life of Elisha, a young Jewish man who now fights for freedom for his own people in Palestine. He has been chosen to execute a captured English officer, in retaliation for the execution of another freedom fighter.

Like I said this is a short book, and I greatly enjoyed reading it. It’s a hard look at the circumstances that have led Elisha to his current position as an Israeli freedom fighter, and it deals with complex issues which are built on the foundation of Elisha’s and his friends’ experiences during the Holocaust. Because he has been chosen to kill another person, especially at the forefront of Elisha’s memories and reminiscences is the concept of death, what it means, and how randomly it chooses people to take away from us. However, it also explores relationships, what friendship and family is supposed to mean, what the point of war is, among other things. Elisha is conflicted, because atrocities were done to his people, and so he wants to be peace-loving and has a hard time with the violence required of him as a freedom fighter; at the same time, he believes that his people should have a place of their own to live. Elisha is a character that evokes empathy and his gentle personality made it so easy to feel sympathy for him and his friends. I loved Dawn for its stark honesty in exploring complex ideas and its refusal to turn away from dark truths — that people are somehow able to justify taking other lives because they are taught that it’s a way to prove their strength and a way to win. That wars are ugly and will always continue to be ugly until we can find a way to stop the violence.

It’s certainly not a happy book, but it is well worth a read, especially when considering it as a thematic sequel to Wiesel’s Night and taking a look at not just the statistics and numbers of executions during the Holocaust, but at the damage it did to many people who survived it, hurts that we continue to struggle to heal today.

Reading Elie Wiesel for the second time, in his English translation, is a pure delight. I can't tell about his original writing in French, but I can assure that the agony of his stories are totally beautiful. In this story, which follows his auto-biography on the Nazi extermination camps, Elie Wiesel builds the agony of a Jewish executor, who is fighting against his believes, principles and thoughts before executing a victim and enemy of the Jewish revolution for the freedom of Palestine. This emotional preparedness for a tragic final is developed in a very simple and human way and that makes it perfectly plausible.

Dawn is not a continuation of Night, but rather a glimpse of what Wiesel's life could have been like. This novella is a quick read that I found to be incredibly relevant and a bit philosophical. This is the kind of story that can shake you to your core.

"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." - Elie Wiesel, Dawn (less)

(ElieWiesel died last week.)
Short book: There are three books in the trilogy. Good read, about a young Jewish man, a holocaust survivor and an Israeli freedom fighter in British controlled Palestine. John Dawson is the captured English officer that the Jew will murder at down in retribution for the British execution of a fellow freedom fighter. The entire store is about the wait until the morning for the 19 year old soldier to consider the execution in which he will shoot the prisoner He contemplates about the life of one human being.

Elie Wiesel's Night is one of the most horrifying, moving accounts of the Holocaust experience that I have read. This book, Dawn, is sometimes referred to as a sequel to Night; however, I think that is misleading. Though readers of Night will see the influence of the author's concentration camp experience reflected in this book, Dawn is something very different.

The most obvious difference, of course, is that Night is nonfiction whereas Dawn is a novel. Dawn tells the story of Elisha, a Holocaust survivor, who is recruited to a terrorist group in Palestine that is trying to drive out the British in the years after World War II. After participating in a number of terrorist activities without remorse, Elisha is assigned to execute a prisoner in retaliation for the execution of one of his comrades. As he waits through the night for his task at dawn, Elisha struggle (literally) with his ghosts.

When faced with an author like Wiesel who has written a classic piece of nonfiction like Night, it is often difficult to judge his fiction fairly. The fiction doesn't seem to have the same impact. And though I, too, prefer Night, I found this book to be powerful in its own right. Dawn gives real insight into how people can be haunted and changed by an unfathomable trauma. In addition, it addresses real philosophical issues such as when does killing become murder and how does becoming a murderer change a person? Does suffering unto death justify a (some might say) disproportionate response?

In these post 9/11 days, I also found the insight into the terrorist mindset very interesting. The American revolutionaries and the Zionists were considered terrorists in their day much as the Palestinians and al Queda are today and, though there are obviously differences between all these groups, there are some attitudes that run through all who can find it in themselves to use terror tactics. It is fascinating to see words come from the mouths of these young Jewish partisans that would fit equally well in the mouths of Palestinians today.

All in all, Dawn is an excellent work: brief but powerful.

I had been excited to read this after reading Night. I didn't enjoy Night so much because it lack purpose, depth and needed more detail so I was hoping to find that in the later books of the series. However, this has little to do with Night except that it's a holocaust survivor. Regardless, I was willing to give it a try.

I had to force myself to read through this book. It is incredibly dull, boring and several scenes were pointless. Night, though I had my issues with it, was very written, this however did not have a good flow of words. Everything seemed stale and drawn out.

The length could have easily been cut in half and still retain all the information. As was with Night, when this book is finished you have taken nothing from it but a pointless sadness. I had bought The Accident to finish the series but now I don't know if I'll even try it.

This short novel was a bit difficult to take but, then, I believe that this was how the author meant it to be. It is the story of a Holocaust survivor who is now in Palestine involved in the underground efforts to wrest control of the area from the British. The man must execute a British officer and his struggles with this is the crux of the story. I was not ever quite sure how Wiesel intended us to view the "hero". At times I thought that the author wrote as though we would understand the actions of the Jewish militants. At other times, I felt he was trying to show us that violence only creates more victims. Certainly, the ending of "Dawn" was a powerful statement of the evil that can emerge from any man no matter how just the cause. I think that the author adds to his purpose by keeping us a bit off balance throughout the story. He reminds us that there are no easy answers nor easy perspectives.
Most of us are aqcuainted with the story of the creation of the Israeli nation including the non-diplomatic efforts by the militant groups. This book was copyrighted in 1961 at a time when the events could be viewed with a somewhat different perspective. I say this because I found myself drawn to wonder how Wiesel would view a Palastinian suicide bomber. I guess it was his analytical analysis of the conflicting sides that made me wonder about this. I realize that it was not the author's point to excuse or justify the violence. However, there was a certain antiseptic approach to the subject that caused me to wonder about the modern day terrorist.
This is a story that will challenge the reader to ask themselves a question or two. It only takes a short while to read but it has a message that should last quite a while.

Elie Wiesel is a master storyteller. He has taken his extraordinary experiences and used them time and again to narrate novels that cause readers to question along with him. "Dawn" is a novel in that same vein; Wiesel likes to ponder questions that may never be answered.

"Dawn" tells the story of Elisha, a survivor of the concentration camps, who finds himself drawn to Palestine and to terrorist activity in the name of saving the Jewish people. After everything that has happened to his people throughout history and after WWII, fighting is the only option for these passive people. Elisha has been chosen to serve as executioner to a British officer, kidnapped as retribution for the kidnapping and planned execution of a Jewish rebel. Elisha struggles with what lies ahead of him at dawn - he believes he could kill the British man if he hates him, but he cannot find any hate within himself. In fact, Elisha struggles with the whole purpose of his mission, and the cause for which he is fighting. He cannot imagine himself labeled as a murderer, and is fearful of making those who formed him into murderers as well. He is utterly torn as to what he must do.

Wiesel tells the story through flashbacks, allowing us to see Elisha's previous experiences before coming to Palestine. We learn that he was lucky to survivie the concentration camps, and that luck may have played a hand in the lives of almost all is friends in the terrorist network. Wiesel, as always, ponders serious questions concerning ethics, religion and morality. He makes a poignant case for the Jewish nation, but recognizes that answers may be a long time coming.

I really enjoyed this book. It was extremely informational, and Wiesel's writing was superb. Wiesel's attention to detail about emotions and experiences really drew me in. However, some parts of the book seemed quite dry. The pace was slow at certain parts, and I found myself speed reading through these parts because I was not as interested. Wiesel made up for it, though, with his use of themes, symbols, and added twists. There were few parts that did not surprise me, which kept me interested in reading. The tone of this book went very well with the plot. I was hoping for a "happy ending", which did not happen, but that makes sense because this related to real-life very well. In life, there will not always be happy endings, and Wiesel captured that in an interesting way. The complexity of the characters drew me in as well. I was very interested in all of the characters and their experiences. I would recommend this book to anybody interested in Holocaust survivors and their life afterwards.

“Dawn” is the sequel to Elie Wiesel’s Holocaust masterpiece “Night.” In Wiesel’s second book of the “Night” Trilogy, he writes of an eighteen-year-old boy named Elisha. Elisha is a young man living in Paris after being liberated from Buchenwald at the end of the World War II. When approached by a member of a movement to make Israel a free and independent state, he travels to Palestine to join the struggle.

In his work, Wiesel brings light to the struggle that many Holocaust survivors faced after being liberated from camps. His work brings about feelings of loss and desperation, giving the readers a chance to connect with the characters. Through his character he brings questions to religion, and shows the struggle that survivors face with God and within themselves.

Dawn is about death and violence. Each act of violence perpetrated by one person against another creates two new victims. This is a powerful story about ethics and duty. Elisha, the narrator is a holocaust survivor now fighting against the British for an Israeli state. He learns that he has been chosen to execute a British Army Captain in retaliation to the execution of a young Israeli fighter.

Elisha struggles with the decision and tries desperately to understand how and why and what he is supposed to do. What is his duty? Are his actions justified? Is he beyond morals?

Towards the end of this short work, Elisha decides he must speak with the man he is to kill. He struggles with the idea of extinguishing a life.

He is forced to consider how this may transform him into an empty shell of his former self leaving him guessing as to who he will become.

Elie Wiesel challenges us and our notions of humanity. In this fictionalized version of his life, the protagonist is to become executioner. It's a predictable existential crisis for himself, but in Weisel's vision, the protagonist is the sum of all who have made him, and they too must accept the same branding.

This is an amazing story. This book is billed as the second of a trilogy. Yet, this book is not tied to the first book at all except as the holocaust as the backdrop. this time it is a young Zionist that has been given the duty of executing a British soldier being held captive in retaliation against the British for sentencing one of their leaders to death. Dawn explains the other side of the story of the one holding the gun upon somebody instead of having it held upon them. Instead of surviving as in "Night", "Dawn" is about duty. The young man struggles with his conscience over his duty and his feeling of empathy for his hostage. This is an excellent read and stands apart and alone from the first book "Night".

"Dawn" is an extraordinary fiction novel. "Dawn" is not in any way connected to "Night" or "Day". Unlike "Night", "Dawn" is all about responsibility and duty. This novel is about a young boy that has given the responsibility of executing one of the British soldiers, named John Dawson. He holds the man hostage and brings him food because he does not want the hostage to have an empty stomach. Later he feels sorrow for the man. It is crazy how he used to be beaten for no specific reason but yet he is beating and starving Dawson for no good reason either. This is an amazing book to read. I definitely recommend it for others but I would read it for pleasure only. It is not the book you would read to find out information on the Holocaust or World War II.

The words of DAWN, by Elie Wiesel, affected me as much, or more, than its content. As in NIGHT, Wiesel writes with pointed prose much the way a poet does. No superfluous words. Only repetition with purpose. Taut but not tight sentences. His poetry invites me to participate in his narrator's disgust, struggle, fear, and forced numbness. And I sobbed for his victim's good humor through puzzlement. Why is he going to die? Who knows, really.

In "Dawn" Elie Wiesel extends the idea he began in "Night" that life and any positivity lost all meaning for him, and he tries to make up for it here by showing his tortured dilemma of having to execute an enemy soldier in Jerusalem. He ultimately sees the man's humanity but has to, or does, kill him anyway.

The book could have been cut in half, and as such becomes a definite skimmer, with a million-too-many pointless ponderings.

Overall it's an interesting story but not great, as it is not redemptive. It teaches the reader little about the real meaning of life, except to say that it does have a value but that Wiesel still can't find it.

And of course Elie Wiesel never criticizes his family of origin. Although my sense is that they are the ones who really messed him up in the first place, they remain his ideal, and he displaces all his rage and hurt at them onto the Nazis, just as he did in "Night." (And don't get me wrong, I find the Nazis atrocious.) But in "Dawn" his blaming the Nazis becomes more wooden and empty, and at some level even the book's narrator knows it.

Dawn is a story about Elisha, a young Israeli freedom fighter. The story tells a story about Elisha's Jewish values being put up against his call to duty; to kill an English Officer, John Dawson, at dawn. What Dawson is being killed for, it is not known. This aspect makes the story even more interesting for the reader because it puts an innocent man at the face of death.
I liked how Dawn put Elisha sort of against himself. On one side, he has his Jewish background and moral issues that come with his religion and on the other side, Elisha has the power of war and the pressure from his leader to kill this prisoner. Throughout the story, it goes throught the night before Elisha is suppose to murder John Dawson. Elisha can't stand the fact that tonite, he is known as Elisha, a young boy, but tomorrow he'll be known as a murderer. He has no family left, and horrible memories of his past in a Nazi death camp. In the end, Elisha grows up tremendously. John Dawsons' last word, "Elisha", shows the change that Elisha went through. People at that time were forced to leave their old selves behind. Young boys like Elisha had left their lives behind to become freedom fighters and to take care of the prisoners they caught.
Dawn was good in the way that it portrays Elisha's change from the beginning of the story to the end. In the beginning, Elisha was young, but was not new to death. He had lived and survived Nazi death camps and knew what death was. He always had that fear of a Nazi soldier choosing to shoot him one day in the camp. In the end, Elisha sees the other end of this two way fight. He is no longer just the victim of violence, but the initiater. He also sees how some of the soldiers at these death camps must have felt when they were ordered to kill prisoners for no apparent reason. Dawn was a good book that I enjoyed reading. Elie Wiesel keeps the reader wanting to know what will happen next and what John Dawson, the innocent English officer's fate will be.

This book is absolutely the best book one could come across.
The story is hauntingly beautiful and heart wrenching; the characters face the most difficult choices possible, yet in the end what is right must be done no matter how difficult.
This is a great author at his peak, a work of sheer art. The prose, poetry, and mystical beauty is quite simply unsurpassed.

Very well written...almost Dostoevskian, with a similar sort of religious existentialism. Wiesel makes the best argument I've ever heard for the so-called "cycle of violence"---but unfortunately, it's equivocal. The plot involves a distinction between cold-blooded acts of violence and those committed in the heat of the moment, but the theme depends on ignoring not only this distinction but any distinctions among any uses of force whatsoever (most significantly between an aggressor's initiation of force and the victim's retaliatory use of force in self-defense). Still, the story is very suspenseful and makes an excellent read. Three and a half stars.

Dawn, by Elie Wiesel, is an interesting character study, but not much else. The story revolves around a young Jewish man, a survivor of the Holocaust, which is only a year or so in his past, who is working as a Zionist terrorist in pre-Israel Palestine. He is new to the work, and as an initiation, of sorts, his job on the night the novel takes place is to execute a British officer being held in the basement of his building.

The entire novel takes place in one night (ending at dawn, the pivotal "moment of truth" in the novel), and in one room. The protagonist slips in and out of flashback, revealing his own dark past and the hold it has taken on him. He imagines all the people he has ever known sharing the room with him, waiting to see if he will murder the Englishman in the basement.

Wiesel's point is that we are the sum total of everything that has ever happened to us and everyone who has ever loved us or given us their time. An interesting point, to be sure. But the hallucinatory ghosts the narrator sees around him is a device that wears thin very quickly. The middle third of this very, very short novel seems like extra padding.

The book's brevity is probably its greatest asset. I read it in an afternoon, and I am a slow reader. Wiesel writes in a very spare style, with few unnecessary words, except for that middle part of the book, which was poorly paced and redundant.

Dawn is an interesting read, and a good book, but it is certainly not on par with Wiesel's other work. If you only read one of his books, read Night, which has the most meaningful things to say, and if you're still curious, you can pick up Dawn and decide for yourself.

Recommended.

This book would have been better served as short story in an anthology. I thought there was too much padding in order to make this a "short novel". Even as a short novel, "Dawn" barely exceeds 80 pages.

To address the content of the story, the main theme is the futility of the cycle of violence and reprisal. The narrator is assigned to execute a hostage in a nationalistic conflict. The story illustrates the narrator's internal moral stuggle in carrying out his task. There are some flashbacks to the narrator's youth, which I thought used some mixed metaphors and didn't contribute much to the story. But nevertheless, these are largely interpretive to the reader.

Certainly not as good as Night, and probably some of Wiesel's other works. But someone interested in reading more Wiesel might find some value in this book.

One of Elie Weisel's earliest works, this tells the story of a Holocaust survivor ordered to kill a British soldier on the eve of Israeli independence. Happening in one night it is the meditation in anguish as his dead friends and relatives show up to watch. . Taut and intense this book is a quickread but the images will stay with you long afterwards

After surviving the holocaust, the young man who is the narrator arrives in France to study. Everything reminds him of the pain and affliction he suffered. while studying in France there is a knock on the door. The knock on the door opens a new chapter in his life. Two weeks later he is fighting in Palestine against the oppression the English establish in the Holly Land to keep the peace among both Jewish and Palestinians. The narrator is challenge by the authority to kill an English official. The narrator describes the mind games that he played on him self, and in the end he needs to figure out if to kill this man or to let him live. It is an awesome book that describes the challenge of the brain, in situations that are not common among human beings. Dawn recreates the story of the officials in war, which need to kill people but cannot do it because of morals. The tricky part of Dawn is figuring out what the right choice is and why it is the correct choice.

Dawn, the sequel to Night, is a book that creates suspense and can put you on the edge of your seat. It starts out with Elie, a Holocaust survivor, and what he does after his stay at Auschwitz and Birkenau. As soon as he gets back from Birkenau, he is asked to join a Jewish terrorist group against the English. He participates in a few battles then a man called John Dawson is held hostage after killing David Ben Moshe, a member of the Jewish terrorist group. The group decides that they want to kill him at dawn and the executioner is 19-year-old Elie, but will his thoughts prevent him from following through?

If you read Night and enjoyed it, this book may be a good choice for you. It is a short book filled with dramatic moments. The story is a follow-up of what happened at Auschwitz but rarely relates to the Holocaust. If you read Night and would really like to find out more, Dawn is a decent book. It is a very detailed step-by-step book, so this book may not be a great choice for you if you like the summary of the more interesting and important parts. It expands a few hours into 83 pages. So for all of you Night lovers, Dawn may be the right book.

Personally, I did not enjoy Dawn. I thought that is was too detailed and as a Holocaust literature fan, did not like how it barely related to the Holocaust. It almost seemed as if it wasn't a sequel to Night. The beginning started out confusing but kept me interested near the end. I found it to be a little confusing at first but it explains itself a little at the end. It seemed to say every little thing that happened and I enjoy books that mostly just include the more explanitory parts.

This book keeps a fairly slow reading pace, but perhaps it is to allow the reader to soak in everything the author is trying to say. Dawn is an amazing look into the mind of a holocaust surviver, and the difficult questions that many were plauged with. Is it morally okay for the once tormented victim to become a killer in the name of justice? Where does God play a role in the life of a surviver? Eli Weisel empties his soul into the novel and makes the reader truely think. This book is well worth the 2 hours it takes to read it.

Elie Wiesel once again does a wonderful job of putting his heart and soul into words to share with the whole world. After reading "Night," I couldn't wait to read on into his fascinating experiences of being a Jew during World War II. I never gave much thought before to what goes through the mind of a murderer before he takes a life. Now I have a pretty good idea. Definietly read the book!

Elie Wiesel is a brilliant writer. Like all of his books, this one touched my heart and opened my eyes. I would recommend this book to all readers - even to younger readers. My children are 10 and 11 and they have read this book.

dawn is an illuminating document about the terrorist phychology during the emancipation of palistine. In a framework of tense melodrama, Wiesel describes the plight of traditional Jewish morality confronted with the modern world of power politics and a murder.