Dawn Chapter 1/2 Study Questions

1) I believe the crying child represents innocence, which was lost when Elisha went through the holocaust.

2) When you can see a face at the window, which is when day becomes night. It is better for thinking, dreaming, and loving. At night, everything is more intense and true. The beggar says that words spoken in the day take on a new and deeper meaning.

3) Before all of the people he saw in the window were dead, so when he saw his own face it symbolized that he was also dead emotionally.

4) John Dawson, Because the English had captured and were going to execute David ben Moshe, Technically execution is a form of killing, but I don’t think that Elisha is a murder. He is being forced to kill Dawson whether he wants to or not, so I agree with the statement “we are not murders” from his point of view.

5) Maybe at the time the story takes place, but not every person who was English was violent. That would be an incorrect statement to represent the entire population. Certainly there were many English that felt that violence was right, but not everyone.

6) Because although he had probably already killed someone in battle, he was not comfortable being the only one partaking in the execution.

7) Because he doesn’t want to do what he has to, but he accepts that it is what he must to get Palestine a better place.

8) After the holocaust, Elisha did not want to return to his old home because there was nothing left for him there. When asked where he wanted to go, he stated that he didn’t care. He was sent to a youth camp in Normandy shortly after arriving in Paris from Buchenwald.

9) A detective or adventurer

10) Because he had asked for Elisha’s future, Elisha believes he is a messenger. Elisha asks him to sit and Gad does not, like In the Hassidic legends, where the messenger is always standing.

11) Before the Jews were the ones cowering in fear because of the Nazis, so when they were the ones causing others to tremble, it was surprising for Elisha, who thought that the Jewish people were the underdogs.

12) Death has a thousand eyes, and so does night. I think he believes that he is death because he says: “night has a thousand eyes, which are mine.” This statement probably means that Dawn will be centered on Elisha’s killing of people and his struggle with himself to chose weather being death is good or bad.