Dawn

The final chapters of Dawn culminate in an exceptionally bleak ending. Throughout the book, Elisha’s life and experiences are defined by death, violence, war, and extreme oppression; the end of the book validates and reinforces this.

As a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, Elisha lost all of his family and friends, and he experienced beatings, torture, illness, and starvation, which speaks to the theme Victimhood. He came of age under a regime that categorized Jews as less than human. When World War II ended, Elisha was orphaned, alone, and traumatized. As a volunteer fighter for the Movement in British Mandatory Palestine, Elisha remains socially isolated and surrounded by violence. This time, however, he experiences the violence as a perpetrator as well as a victim.

Elisha’s life and experiences are haunted by stoicism and social isolation, which reinforce and perpetuate each other. Elisha notes that remaining anonymous to the Movement’s other members is a tactical matter, but Ilana, Gad, Joab, and Gideon all have important social connections within and outside of the Movement. Ilana and Gad are dating; Gad is a close personal friend of David ben Moshe; Joab can rely on his childhood friend, the asylum director; Gideon’s father is a rabbi who gave him his blessing when he joined the Movement. Even Dawson—an outsider who is physically isolated in the basement—has a connection like this in the form of a son. Elisha has similar connections in his past—Catherine, Yerachmiel, his parents, and the old master—but (with the exception of Catherine, whose affections were shallow and dehumanizing) they’re all dead, highlighting the theme Death and Suffering as a Result of Military Conflict.

Although his thoughts are a whirl of fear and grief, Elisha’s behavior is extremely aloof. He ignores his feelings and bodily functions. The most obvious example of this is his choice to execute Dawson despite his utter horror at the prospect. His rejection of humor is an extension of his compulsive stoicism. After being strangled and “saved” by a laugh at Buchenwald, Elisha associates humor and laughter with cruelty. The assistant barracks leader found Elisha’s dying expression comical because he didn’t regard Elisha as a human being. Initially, Elisha avoids laughing in Dawson’s presence because he fears becoming cruel and callous. Then, he implores Dawson to make him laugh in the hope of learning to hate him, but he can’t. Ten seconds before the execution, Elisha ignores Dawson’s promise of “funny stories” to avoid delay and get through the process without cruelty or mercy. Thus, Elisha carries out the execution with total emotional bluntness.

Additionally, Elisha rejects pity from others. Ilana, Catherine, and the ghosts of his mother and rabbi all repeatedly call him “poor boy,” which agitates him. Catherine was the first person to refer to him this way. In that moment, Elisha felt that she didn’t actually care for him; rather, she found a maudlin fascination in his suffering. Following this experience, Elisha was unable to accept sympathy from others. When Dawson repeatedly professes his pity for him, Elisha is therefore unmoved. His coldness in the face of these gestures—regardless of whether they’re sincere—further isolates him from others.

Elisha’s relationship to food and hunger is the most complex element of his reflexive stoicism. Not only does he deny himself food, but he denies it to Dawson as well. He repeatedly states that “a man condemned to die can’t be hungry” (44). When he learns that Dawson is, in fact, hungry, he amends this to “I want to think of him, later on, as a man who never ate” (60) while ignoring his own hunger. Hunger and eating are basic bodily functions necessary to human life and survival. In addition, eating a social activity, and sharing food is a common means of establishing social connection. By denying both himself and Dawson food, Elisha is ignoring their humanity. Conversely, when he learns that the dead return to earth at midnight “not to pray, but to eat” (62), it reinforces the humanity of the dead: They aren’t gone, and Elisha’s avoidance of food doesn’t negate his or Dawson’s personhood. Even in death, Elisha will remain hungry—and human.

Elisha uses self-denial to protect himself, punish himself, and de-person himself, which underscores the theme The Post-Holocaust Jewish Experience. Dehumanizing himself is an expression of the extreme antisemitism he internalized during the Holocaust. It allows him to remain passive in the face of adversity. Throughout Dawn, Elisha sees himself as an entity that is acted upon rather than a free agent. He blames Gad for making him a terrorist and Dawson for making him a killer, and he performs the execution only because the Old Man ordered him to do so. When he feels that his father’s ghost is judging him for planning to execute Dawson, he diverts blame to God for creating a world in which such violence is necessary.

Elisha doesn’t view himself as an active person; he views himself as a reactive person. In his mind, he doesn’t do things because he chooses to do them, he does them because he has no other choice. This attitude is likely a product of his time as a prisoner in the death camps. As a young man, he retains this defense mechanism; it helps him dissociate from the horrors around him and makes it easier to avoid dwelling on the immoral things he has done.