Dawn Summary
Elie Wiesel

Dawn Summary

The novel takes place in Palestine over the course of a night. It is right after World War II, and Palestine is under the British occupation. The central character, Elisha is an eighteen-year-old young man, going on nineteen. This is his story as he traces how he comes to kill a man.

Elisha is a member of the Movement, a Jewish terrorist group, whose purpose is to drive out the English forces from Palestine by any means necessary. Elisha was incarcerated in Auschwitz and then Buchenwald during the war and lost both of his parents in the process. When the Americans freed him, he went to France, which granted him asylum. He was preparing to enroll in Sorbonne to study philosophy when he meets Gad, a member of the Movement, in Paris. Gad came to visit him and talks fervently about realizing the age-old dream of an independent nation for... View more of the Dawn Summary