Reading Elie Wiesel’s work is the backbone to understanding the Jewish Holocaust. He has spoken at forums and on university campuses around the world (Kolbert 328). He is able to confront the horror with a nakedly self-exposed honesty rare even among writers who went through the same ordeal (Alter 526). He has approached the Holocaust mainly from a moral standpoint, leaving legalistic and political debates to others (Kahn 527). “Dawn” is one of Wiesel’s earlier works which focuses on Jews life after the Holocaust. It deals with the desire of a death-camp survivor to join the underground Jewish movement just prior to the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 (Kolbert 325). A death camp is a camp whose basic purpose was to kill Jews (Rogasky 7). Wiesel’s character, Elisha, faces a sititution where he must kill a man he is deeply trying to hate. He wants to hate so that the pain of the kill will not be as bad. He wants to hate so that he has a reason to tell others as to why he pulled the trigger. Having lived through the reign of terror in the camps, he now must gather enough courage to kill the enemies (Kolbert 325). The reader experiences the thoughts that go through Elisha’s head from nightfall until dawn the next morning when the kill must take place. Elie creates an image that shows how the Holocaust is forever a part of life. The constant memory of a torn childhood is always within Elisha’s brain. Elie Wiesel uses character development and theme to express these ideas.

Elisha is a perfect example of character development through Wiesel’s book. The torment of survival brings him to question seriously and reject the Jewish moral (Knopp 1). Elisha shows growth over a period of time. He is the sole survivor of the Holocaust in his family. About 8,301,000 Jews were alive in 1939. 5,978,000 of those Jews died at the concentration camps, meaning that 72% of the Jewish population had been killed (Meltzer 190). When he is let go from the camps of the Holocaust he is alone. “I had met Gad in Paris, where I went, straight from Buchenwald, immediately after the war. When the Americans liberated Buchenwald they offered to send me home, but I rejected the offer. I didn’t want to relive my childhood, to see our house in foreign hands. I knew that my parents were dead and my native town was occupied by the Russians. What was the use of going back? ‘No thanks,’ I said; ‘I don’t want to go home’.” (Wiesel, Dawn 131). Gad is seeking the Jews. His goal is to have them all come together so that they can protect themselves. Gad ends up turning Elisha into a terrorist. “If today, I am only a question mark, he [Gad] is responsible.” (Wiesel, Dawn 132). Gad did not ruin a good life that Elisha had because Elisha had no life. All that Gad did was take Elisha and make him part of a Jewish group. Elisha was not forced to do anything. He just never knew that by excepting Gad’s offer he would become a terrorist. Elie Wiesel’s novels, for all the vividness with which they render certain contemporary sititutions, are more theological parable than realistic fiction (Alter 1). Elisha’s innocence had now been left behind as his character developed.

Furthermore, Elisha developed when he talked about the experiences that he had with the girl at the Holocaust rescue committee. Elisha seems to have never had anyone that he loved or really cared about, but when he finally did he really regret it (Leviant 530). Her name was Catherine and she was the only other person at the camp who spoke German like Elisha. “She liked the opposite sex, and particularly she liked little boys who were thinking of death. She liked to speak of love to little boys, and since men going to their death are little boys she liked to speak to them of love.” (Wiesel, Dawn 160). Elisha always went on walks after all of the camp ate dinner. One evening when he was about to go on his walk Catherine asked if she too could go with him. They talked and it eventually got to the point where they were going on a walk together every night. They would hold hands and be very affectionate towards each other. The last night of camp Catherine wanted to make love to Elisha and Elisha all of the sudden became very nervous. “Catherine,’ I said, ‘first there is something I must tell you.’....... ‘No, no!’ she cried. ‘Don’t tell me anything.’........ ‘What I have to tell you is this,’ I insisted: ‘You’ve won the game. I love you, Catherine......I love you.’...... ‘Poor boy! You poor boy!’.......She liked making love with little boys who were going to die; she enjoyed the company of those who were obsessed with death.” (Wiesel, Dawn 164-165). Elisha’s heart had been broken and that night as he ran away from Catherine he cried. He was so upset because he thought that he had found someone that loved him back. It is said that Elie Wiesel had no real love in his life after his parents died at the concentration camps, he could never adjust to loving someone because he thought that they never would love him back (Stern 529). This changed Elisha as a character because from this point on getting close to a female was not easy at all.

Elisha developed by changing from a victim to an assassin. Elie Wiesel himself was someone that never would become a terrorist, it is said that he wrote Dawn to see what it would feel like to be on the other side (Alvarez 527). Elisha wanted badly to believe Gad that he had not become a terrorist. Deep down inside Elisha knew that Gad did not want to fight for the freedom of young Jewish children. The tables had turned on Elisha as he replaced his terror of the Germans with acting like them himself. The task that he know had ahead of him was to kill John Dawson. It all related back to when he told Gad “I accept.” (Wiesel, Dawn 137). He thought he had only accepted to be a fighter of freedom but what he really accepted was murdering someone he did not even hate. Elisha went from being the one murdered to the murderer all because of Gad. Elisha’s whole life had changed and developed when he accepted to do this duty.

Several themes are prevalent in Dawn. The night leading up to the dawn of day is Elisha’s hardest point in time. He knows that when dawn comes he must execute John Dawson who is a British soldier. Wiesel uses a writing technique that shows how Elisha tries to hate Dawson. Elie writes from the perspective of a witness- story teller who knows that the essence of his story--filled with unanswered political and theological questions-- is impossible to communicate (Fine 1). The reason that Elisha has to kill John Dawson is because the English are going to execute David ben Moche who is a Jewish leader. The Jews must show the British that they mean business also by murdering when they murder. Elisha struggles with his duty to kill the seemingly innocent man. Wiesel creates the theme of a war hating story. “Hate- like faith or love or war- justified everything.” (Wiesel, Dawn 197). This thought could not save Elisha from becoming a murderer (Fine 1). The Jews had been through so much and none of the agony of hate or war was ending. When Elisha did pull the trigger and kill he walked off a young man in confusion. He too had been killed inside. “The shot had left me deaf and dumb. That’s it, I said to myself. It’s done. I’ve killed. I’ve killed Elisha.” (Wiesel, Dawn 203). When Elisha said that he killed himself he ment that he killed the last thing in him. Wiesel’s theme was that Elisha took his own dignity which was all that he had left and killed it as he pulled the trigger. When Elisha shot that gun he gave into all that had happened to him. He lost all faith and thought he could not make it any further, that he way he killed John Dawson (Wiesel 2).

Wiesel creates a theme of Elisha not wanting to face the present. The present could have been the better times in Elisha’s life but by not realising this Elisha only thinks of the past. He remembers Buchenwald, where his family died. Buchenwald was a concentration camp that opened in 1937 on July 16 (Meltzer 190). For Elisha the world seems to contain only three classes of people, each with its own kind of guilt of complicity: executioners, victims, and spectators at the execution (Alter 1). This brought forth the future that was coming faster than Elisha wanted. For all of his life he had been the victim and it was something that he began to get used to. He was now going to be an executioner and it was a fate that he did not want to accept. The theme was that Elisha did not want to forget the past and look towards the future. Elisha was a ‘poor boy’. He accepted to become a murder and since then all he has done was look back at the past. Elisha has no one because of the Holocaust and Wiesel wants the reader to know that this is what life is like after the Holocaust. Elie also felt that because he had personally witnessed the most tragic moment in human history, he should somehow recapture his experiences in durable literary form (Kolbert 324).

Wiesel made this book have meaning throughout with strong character development and the presence of theme. In conclusion the book brought Elisha’s turmoil to an end. He finally took responsibility for his actions and began to forget his past. Every victim of the Holocaust must do something like this according to Wiesel. Although Elisha did kill a man he killed for the good of the Jews. Elisha had been killed so much inside of himself that he struggled to do the same to another human. Elisha did not want to like John Dawson and wanted to kill him for hate. Wiesel’s primary themes are madness as lucidity and silence as true communication (Kahn 527). Wiesel stated that revenge is not the answer to pain. This was proven by showing how Elisha’s actions after the Holocaust only made more confusion and hurt for himself. It is a strange truth we are made to feel almost everywhere in Wiesel’s fiction of ultimate confrontations (Alter 526). Elie Wiesel’s recollection of history in Dawn incorporated strong character development and theme in a hope to change and frighten the world.