"War is like night," she said. "It covers everything."
What an interesting line in a book called Dawn.
Elisha says that he wants to hate John Dawson. He wants to have a reason to kill him that isn't just following orders. He wants to have a war with this man, a night that will cover his transgression. But he doesn't. He is given a dawn, a mixture of the night of knowing he must kill John Dawson and the day of understanding he will be held accountable for his actions. Elisha goes down to where John Dawson is being held hostage and speaks with him, hoping that anything and everything the hostage says will rile hate within him, but it doesn't. Elisha finds no meaning in killing John, and so when he shoots him, he says he's done it; he's killed Elisha.
Pause. Who did he kill?
He shot John Dawson, but the person he killed was himself. He killed the hopeful eighteen year old boy who had survived a concentration camp. As the sun peeked over the horizon, bringing a dawn, "Elisha" was left in the night; he saw himself in the window even as dawn came over the earth. I think he was realizing that his own sense of self was going to be covered now, shrouded in the "night" of blood. It shakes me to realize that fictional though this may be, it was a reality for many people - and that Elisha is my age. 18, almost 19, warring with the ideas that God is a terrorist and that he must play God by donning this uniform and shooting John Dawson. He also harped on the idea that the executioner has no face or arms or physical features besides eyes - dehumanizing himself in an extreme fashion. It's heartbreaking to picture what turmoil he went through. War is like night, and Elisha is caught in the dawn.
Josh + Annakate
What an interesting line in a book called Dawn.
Elisha says that he wants to hate John Dawson. He wants to have a reason to kill him that isn't just following orders. He wants to have a war with this man, a night that will cover his transgression. But he doesn't. He is given a dawn, a mixture of the night of knowing he must kill John Dawson and the day of understanding he will be held accountable for his actions. Elisha goes down to where John Dawson is being held hostage and speaks with him, hoping that anything and everything the hostage says will rile hate within him, but it doesn't. Elisha finds no meaning in killing John, and so when he shoots him, he says he's done it; he's killed Elisha.
Pause. Who did he kill?
He shot John Dawson, but the person he killed was himself. He killed the hopeful eighteen year old boy who had survived a concentration camp. As the sun peeked over the horizon, bringing a dawn, "Elisha" was left in the night; he saw himself in the window even as dawn came over the earth. I think he was realizing that his own sense of self was going to be covered now, shrouded in the "night" of blood. It shakes me to realize that fictional though this may be, it was a reality for many people - and that Elisha is my age. 18, almost 19, warring with the ideas that God is a terrorist and that he must play God by donning this uniform and shooting John Dawson. He also harped on the idea that the executioner has no face or arms or physical features besides eyes - dehumanizing himself in an extreme fashion. It's heartbreaking to picture what turmoil he went through. War is like night, and Elisha is caught in the dawn.
Josh + Annakate
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