Review: The Dawn by Elie Wiesel
Challenges:
Read the World, Europe (hosted over on habitica.com)
This is the second book in the trilogy that starts with Night (review here). The first book detailed the author’s experiences as a young boy in the German concentration camps during the war and this book takes place a few years after that. This seems to be a fictionalized continuation of the story. Elisha has come to Palestine and joined the Israeli resistance fighting for a free Israel. We follow him during one night when he is awaiting dawn when he must execute a man as part of the freedom struggle.
The book is quite short but it still packs a punch. We follow the musings of this young boy, who has literally been through hell, when he is about to be on the other side of the battle. He has some moral struggles, but doesn't really seem to question the fact that he will do it in the end. He seemed to acknowledge both that he had been brainwashed by his comrades and what this act would do to him, but he still seemed intent on doing it.
I gave this book 3 stars, because honestly I don’t really know how I feel about it. I thought it had some good ponderings, but because I would probably have come to some different conclusions than the author (I say probably because I have never lived through anything like he did) I didn’t really agree with the turn of events in the book. But I still found it quite fascinating.
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