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Chaim Potok : The Chosen
human nature, and a life devoted strictly to the Hasidic religious traditions as a tzaddik.
This book tells specifically of the struggles of one group of Americans. By reading The Chosen, one learns about Jewish immigrants and their families, faced with the issue of a new country, a new culture, and new opportunities. Chaim Potok takes the struggle of Danny Saunders (choosing between a life devoted to intellectual study of psychology and a life devoted strictly to the Hasidic religious tradition as a tzaddik), and develops them as contrasting ideas. He takes religion as symbolic of history, tradition, and the old world, while secularism symbolizes the more modern and progressive aspects of society, along with a changing and broadening mentality. This was the struggle for Chaim Potok’s characters. This was the struggle for many real Jews during the 1940’s. This was the struggle of many immigrants to America.
Danny and Reuven’s friendship also displays their becoming more “Americanized.” During the softball game where the boys first meet, not only do they hate each other, but also their schools hate each other. Both teams believe that they are better. Reuven Malter’s team laughs at Danny Saunder’s team because of their very Orthodox dress, ear locks, and only being allowed to speak Yiddish. They laugh at them for not looking American. This shows some people’s negative attitude towards those who are “different.” On the other hand, Danny Saunder’s team thinks they are better because they have not fallen into the trap of conformity. They are proud of themselves for sticking to their religion and tradition. Therefore, when Danny and Reuven become friends, and their groups see them together, there is much confusion and anger. Eventually, however, they learn to accept the friendship. This friendship points ahead to America’s more accepting attitude. They learn to look past the differences in beliefs and customs, in order to see the similarities in personality and feelings.
At one point in The Chosen, Chaim Potok describes a fly that gets caught in a spider’s web. The fly manages to get its wings free, but in the process of trying to free the rest of its body, gets its wings caught in the web once again. The spider starts inching its way towards the fly, but before it makes its destination, Reuven, who had been watching, freed the fly from the web. He blew on the web, making it disintegrate, and the spider hung onto one thread and crawled away. Danny is the fly, stuck in the web of tradition and unable to free himself. However, with the help of Reuven and his father, Danny is able to escape from his chosen destiny so he may make his own. His father, the spider, climbs away on the single thread of hope, Danny’s younger but sickly brother.
Through the illustration of the spider web and the fly, as well as the whole novel, I learned that sometimes things look hopeless. People expect things from others against their will, don’t listen to what they want, [next page]