Hatred, Killing, and Humanity Theme Analysis

I did not know the man. To my eyes he had no face; he did not even exist, for I knew nothing about him. I did not know whether he scratched his nose when he ate, whether he talked or kept quiet when he was making love, whether he gloried in his hate, whether he betrayed his wife or his God or his own future. All I knew was that he was an Englishman and my enemy. The two terms were synonymous.

The situation was grave. The Zionist leaders recommended prudence; they got in touch with the Old Man and begged him, for the sake of the nation, not to go too far: there was talk of vengeance, of a pogrom, and this meant that innocent men and women would have to pay.

The Old Man answered: If David ben Moshe is hanged, John Dawson must die. If the Movement were to give in the English would score a triumph. They would take it for a sign of weakness and impotence on our part, as if we were saying to them: Go ahead and hang all the young Jews who are holding out against you. No, the Movement cannot give in. Violence is the only language the English can understand.

In the late 1940s, following the horrors of the Holocaust, the Jewish community in British-ruled Palestine is filled with conflict. Though Zionists agree on the importance of creating an independent Jewish homeland in Palestine, they disagree on methods for establishing that homeland. In Dawn, the “Old Man”—the anonymous leader of the radical “Movement”—resorts to terrorist tactics like reprisals. This means that if the British execute a Jewish fighter, then the Movement will respond by executing a British soldier in turn. From the Movement’s perspective, the Jewish people have submitted to violence at others’ hands for far too long; if there is any hope for establishing an independent nation, then they must now treat others as they have been treated throughout history. Though other Zionists argue that such actions will invite indiscriminate violence, the Old Man maintains that anything less will keep the Jewish people in the same persecuted position they’ve occupied for centuries. Elisha soon finds himself in the middle of this tension as the Old Man calls upon him to carry out the execution.

We don't like to be bearers of death; heretofore we've chosen to be victims rather than executioners. The commandment Thou shalt not kill was given from the summit of one of the mountains here in Palestine, and we were the only ones to obey it. But that's all over; we must be like everybody else. Murder will be not our profession but our duty. In the days and weeks and months to come you will have only one purpose: to kill those who have made us killers. We shall kill in order that once more we may be men[.]

I felt the blood gather in my head and my head swell to several times its normal size, so that I must have looked like a caricature, a miserable clown. I was sure from one minute to the next that it would burst into a thousand shreds like a child's toy balloon. At this moment the assistant leader took a good look at me and found the sight so comical that he released his grip and burst out laughing. He laughed so long that he forgot his intention to kill. And that's how I got out of it unharmed. It's funny, isn't it, that I should owe my life to an assassin's sense of humor?

The night before the execution of British captive John Dawson, the Movement members pass the time by exchanging stories of their brushes with death. Elisha’s story is the nearest encounter with death and easily the most horrifying: he shares a memory of being nearly choked to death by a barracks guard in the Buchenwald concentration camp during the Holocaust. Almost casually, the guard had begun to squeeze Elisha’s throat, but when he saw Elisha’s ludicrously swollen appearance, he callously laughed and let go. Elisha’s story shows that even a merciful action, like deciding not to kill someone, can be done with callousness, dismissing the other person’s humanity. Later, when Elisha talks with his soon-to-be victim Dawson, he keeps asking Dawson for a funny story. The implication is that if Elisha can laugh at his victim, then maybe he’ll find an excuse to let him go like his own tormentor did. Though it’s also possible that Elisha would laugh and kill him anyway. It turns out that Elisha enacts neither of these scenarios, but that by listening to his Dawson talk about his life, Elisha faces his victim’s humanity more honestly than his own captors did—the one hint of hope in the story.

"But it's all quite simple," he exclaimed. "We are here to be present at the execution. We want to see you carry it out. We want to see you turn into a murderer. That's natural enough, isn't it?" […]

I was beginning to understand. An act so absolute as that of killing involves not only the killer but, as well, those who have formed him. In murdering a man I was making them murderers.

"We say that ours is a holy war," she went on, "that we're struggling against something and for something, against the English and for an independent Palestine. That's what we say. But these are words; as such they serve only to give meaning to our actions. And our actions, seen in their true and primitive light, have the odor and color of blood.”

Though female characters play a relatively small role in the novel, their role is important in that these characters—especially Catherine and, here, Ilana—help Elisha talk through his struggles more than any male characters do. Often, these women raise and grapple with ethical questions more directly than the story’s central characters do. Perhaps because she isn’t directly involved in terrorist operations (she’s the voice of their radio broadcast), Ilana serves as an honest, approachable confidant for Elisha as he faces the reality of the execution he must carry out within hours.

Ilana acknowledges that the Movement has a specific aim which they believe to be “holy”—the establishment of a free Jewish nation. Ilana doesn’t speak for or against this idea directly. However, she draws a distinction between the actions that the Movement fighters carry out and the words with which they interpret those actions. She openly acknowledges what Elisha has been thinking—that, when the Movement’s actions are separated from their justifications, their violent, murderous nature becomes clear. Ilana’s articulation of the ethical dilemma stays with Elisha. Later, when Elisha faces John Dawson, he tells Dawson that he’s trying to hate him in order to give meaning to the act of shooting him.

There are not a thousand ways of being a killer; either a man is one or he isn't. He can't say I'll kill only ten or only twenty-six men; I'll kill for only five minutes or a single day. He who has killed one man alone is a killer for life. He may choose another occupation, hide himself under another identity but the executioner or at least the executioner's mask will be always with him. There lies the problem: in the influence of the backdrop of the play upon the actor. War had made me an executioner, and an executioner I would remain even after the backdrop had changed, when I was acting in another play upon a different stage.

John Dawson shook his head and said in an infinitely sad voice: "You hate me, don't you?"

[…]

I certainly wanted to hate him. That was partly why I had come to engage him in conversation before I killed him. It was absurd reasoning on my part, but the fact is that while we were talking I hoped to find in him, or in myself, something that would give rise to hate. 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.

Armies and governments the world over have a definite technique for provoking hate. By speeches and films and other kinds of propaganda they create an image of the enemy in which he is the incarnation of evil, the symbol of suffering, the fountainhead of the cruelty and injustice of all times.

[…] All enemies are equal, I said. Each one is responsible for the crimes committed by the others. They have different faces, but they all have the same hands, the hands that cut my friends' tongues and fingers. As I went down the stairs I was sure that I would meet the man who had condemned David ben Moshe to death, the man who had killed my parents, the man who had come between me and the man I had wanted to become, and who was now ready to kill the man in me. I felt quite certain that I would hate him.

Without hate, everything that my comrades and I were doing would be done in vain. Without hate we could not hope to obtain victory. Why do I try to hate you, John Dawson? Because my people have never known how to hate. Their tragedy, throughout the centuries, has stemmed from their inability to hate those who have humiliated and from time to time exterminated them. Now our only chance lies in hating you, in learning the necessity and the art of hate. Otherwise, John Dawson, our future will only be an extension of the past, and the Messiah will wait indefinitely for his deliverance.

I fired. When he pronounced my name he was already dead; the bullet had gone through his heart. A dead man, whose lips were still warm, had pronounced my name: Elisha.

[…] That's it, I said to myself. It's done. I've killed. I've killed Elisha. The ghosts began to leave the cell, taking John Dawson with them. The little boy walked at his side as if to guide him. I seemed to hear my mother say: "Poor boy! Poor boy!"

The night lifted, leaving behind it a grayish light the color of stagnant water. Soon there was only a tattered fragment of darkness, hanging in midair, the other side of the window. Fear caught my throat. The tattered fragment of darkness had a face. Looking at it, I understood the reason for my fear. The face was my own.