Violence In Elie Wiesel's Dawn

Dating back to Biblical times, violence and hate is nothing outlandishly new for humans. Violence is the primitivity of our nature and it runs fiery through human’s veins but is suppressed by longings for a collective society. Violence is alive and well, but it stalks waiting to come rushing forth in bursting outcry. It practices dormancy until it is awakened, awakened by other violence. Violence can only go forward, pushing into motion other violence. Which in reactions, catalysts even more violence. The past pushes forward the present, just as past atrocities allow for current violence. Violence is cause and effect in its nature, and in fiction and in real life, this can be observed. In the fictional novel, Dawn by Elie Wiesel violence is used in the response to the past.

In the book Dawn by Elie Wiesel, it follows the protagonist Elisha as he contemplates the justification of murder in the middle of a revolutionary state of Palestine. Looking at the larger picture, the revolution was in response to unwanted control by the British in Palestine. But the real example of cause and effect is when the British took the David Ben Moshe, a Jewish activist, to be hanged at dawn. In an act of immediate response, the Jews took John Dawson a British officer to execute. This is a prime

example of violence’s cause and effect nature. Because the British took a Jew, the Jews took a Brit. There is a clear cause and effect relationship and it even goes into detail in the book:
“No, Ms.

Dawson, we are not murders. Your Cabinet ministers are murderers; they are responsible for the death of your son. We should have preferred to receive him as a brother, to offer him bread and milk and show him the beauties of our country. But your government made him our enemy and by the same token signed his death warrant. No, we are not murderers.” (Weisal, 19) As shown here, the Jews described their murder as a response to the to be murder of David Ben Moshe. This shows the extent past atrocities has on current violence. It has a direct correlation to it. Without action “A”, “B” would not have happened. Violence is linear, directly affecting the next

event.
The book Dawn by Elie Wiesel shows the extent the past has on the present. It represents the presence of revenge and the cause and effect relationship violence has. Violence is a forward motion that acts like a domino effect. Without a prior violence, a future cannot occur.