Dawn :: essays research papers

Chapter 1Takes place in Palestine. The narrator knows that he has to kill a man tomorrow. He doesn't know who it is but he knows what he has to do. The man that was going to die was an Englishman. The reason that he had to kill was because there is a war.Beggar. A man that taught the narrator the difference between night and day. Narrator met him while he was at the synagogue. The man wears black clothes. The narrator met the man when he was 12 years old. The narrator, as a child admitted to the beggar that he was definitely afraid of the beggar."Night is purer than day; it is better for thinking and loving and dreaming." (4)The man wants to teach the narrator to distinguish between night and day. The beggar taught the narrator to look into the dusk and there would be a face that would appear. Night has a face and day does not. The face that appears is of a dead person. The night before the narrator does what he has to do, he looks into the night and sees his own face. There is going to be an execution at dawn. All of the executions happened at dawn. The "Movement" always kept their word. A month earlier there was one of their fighters that had been on a terrorist operation. He was hauled in by the police and they found weapons on him. They hung the man. By law this is what they were supposed to do. This was the tenth death sentence by the mandatory power in Palestine. The "Old Man" decided that things had gone far enough and now he was not going to allow the English to rule any longer. The Old Man ordered that a military officer be kidnapped. They kidnapped Captain John Dawson who walked alone at night. (6)This made the country very tense. The English ordered a 24 hour curfew. They searched every house, and also arrested hundreds of suspects. Tanks were stationed at the crossroads, barbed wire barricades at street corners. They did not find the hostage. The High Commissioner of Palestine said that the whole country would be held responsible for the murder of the Captain, if he was in fact murdered. A few people got in touch with the Old Man and told him not to go too far.