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Conflicts in The Chosen
fathers throughout the pages of The Chosen. Danny and Reuven become friends in an unlikely way. While playing an interschool baseball game, Reuven was pitching and Daniel hit the ball and shattered Reuven’s glasses. Reuven went to the hospital for immediate eye surgery. After the eye heals, Danny went to Reuven to beg his forgiveness and the two boys became fast friends. Reuven’s family has more flexible religious customs, while Danny’s relatives represent very strict Hasidic beliefs with limited views. “My father doesn’t like us to mix with outsiders” (Potok 169). The two boys embark upon adulthood in New York in the 1940’s and together try to negotiate issues typical for that era. Reuven's father becomes an outspoken proponent of Israel as a Jewish homeland while Danny's father is fanatical in his belief that only the Messiah could lead the Jews to Israel. It is at this point when Reb Saunders goes to the extreme of demanding that his son cease being friends with Reuven because of a speech on Zionism made by Reuven’s father. “Danny was not to see me talk to me, be found within four feet of me. My father and I had been excommunicated from the Saunders family” (Potok 331). During this ban, Danny and Reuven continue to communicate through eye contact and subtle gestures. "The look on Danny's face, though, when I saw him for the first time, helped a little. He passed me in the hallway, his face a suffering mask of pain and compassion. I thought for a moment he would speak to me, but he didn't. Instead, he brushed against me and managed to touch my hand for a second. His touch and his eyes spoke the words that his lips couldn't. I told myself it was bitter and ironic that my father needed to have a heart attack in order for some contact to be established once again between myself and Danny" (Potok 241). This, they learn, is a non verbal means of perpetuating a friendship. As the boys grow into young men, they discover in the other a lost spiritual brother and a link to an unexplored world that neither had ever considered before. In effect, they exchange places, and find a peace that neither would have gained without the other.
The last, and one of the most important conflicts in the book, is father against son. Fathers and sons cannot choose each other, but this lack of choice does not make their relationships any less meaningful. These conflicts may not be quite as obvious because they are typically more silently communicated. Danny and his father speak only to one another when Reb Saunders asks him questions about the Talmud on Shabbat. “They never talk, abba. Except when they study Talmud” (Potok 247). Primarily, this stems from the respect that is expected to be shown between parent and child in a Hasidic family. An example of father-son conflict takes place within Danny Saunders when he is torn between a life devoted to [next page]