A review by jbmorgan86
Dawn by Elie Wiesel
3.0
Two prisoners. John Dawnson, a Brit, is to be executed by Zionist terrorists in Palestine. Simultaneously, David ben Moshe, a Zionist, is to be executed by the British. 18 year old Elisha, a fictionalized version of the author, is chosen to be Dawson's executioner. Will he go through with the plan? Can he muster enough hate to take a man's life? This novella is a philosophical book filled with magical realism that attempts to answer this question.
This is perhaps the strangest original story-sequel relationship I have ever seen in literature. In the classic Night, Elie Wiesel recounts his terrifying experiences in Buchenwald and Auschwitz. Dawn, however, is a fictional novella in which Elie Wiesel imagines if his life had taken a different turn: "What would have become of me if I had spent not just one year in camps, but two or four? If I had been appointed kapo? Could have struck a friend? Humiliated an old man?"
The book is filled with magical realism: Elijah, the Angel of Death, ghosts from the pasts, etc. Much of the novella has a dream-like quality (particularly near the end).
While I appreciate Wiesel's struggle with the problem of evil, I'm not sure that I can come to agree with him. He seems to justify the state of Israel's violence by stating that they are simply a monster created by monsters:
"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."
This is perhaps the strangest original story-sequel relationship I have ever seen in literature. In the classic Night, Elie Wiesel recounts his terrifying experiences in Buchenwald and Auschwitz. Dawn, however, is a fictional novella in which Elie Wiesel imagines if his life had taken a different turn: "What would have become of me if I had spent not just one year in camps, but two or four? If I had been appointed kapo? Could have struck a friend? Humiliated an old man?"
The book is filled with magical realism: Elijah, the Angel of Death, ghosts from the pasts, etc. Much of the novella has a dream-like quality (particularly near the end).
While I appreciate Wiesel's struggle with the problem of evil, I'm not sure that I can come to agree with him. He seems to justify the state of Israel's violence by stating that they are simply a monster created by monsters:
"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."