The Chosen #2

The Chosen by Chaim Potok incorporates no literary symbols better than sickness and eyes. Nearly everyone, at some point, gets sick.  His father looks ill when he comes to check on Reuven in the hospital, "'I hate that Danny Saunders for this. He's making you sick,'" and David Malter takes on two more instances of illness, once when he hears about Roosevelt's death, "his face ashen, his cheeks hollow, looking as he did when he visited me in the hospital," and he later gets a heart attack, "two days later, he suffered a heart attack" (49, 187, 192). This heart attack is peculiar -- it comes not two weeks after the news of the death toll from the Holocaust. It's interesting, David Malter has a heart attack, and Reb Saunders "would suddenly begin to cry," which gets back at the contrast between sickness and the heart and the eyes (193). Danny Saunders gets the flu, "Danny caught the flu in the last week of March and was in bed for more than a week," and he later contracts bronchitis, "Danny returned to school in the first week of April, apparently too soon, for he was back in bed two days later with bronchitis" (185, 185). His mom has a "heart condition," but she seems sweet enough and unimportant enough that I have no conclusions to draw (193). Danny's brother is also an invalid, and they discuss his sickness briefly, as well, "I was really concerned about his health," and he is often portrayed playing with food instead of eating it (201). In fact, the characters that Reuven gets to know while he's in the hospital, Mr. Savo and Billy are also sick. In the beginning of the book, Reuven is in the hospital as he recovers from the injury to his eye, caused by the shattered glass of his glasses that got lodged up there. Dr. Syndman lectures him that "'An eye is not thing to stop a ball with, young man'" (36). All of the sickness, at least according to Foster, shows an emotional heartache, but since humans think of physical sickness as worse than emotional plight, it yields a stronger sense of sympathy from the reader. However, that example with Danny's eye segues nicely into the other portrayed symbol: eyes. Blindness, in particular, is almost omnipresent. Reuven's incident with the baseball almost leads to scar tissue covering his eye, "'the scar tissue can grow over the pupil," but it doesn't, "I was fine, it had healed perfectly" (48, 171). his neighbor in the hospital, Billy, is blind, "I heard the blind boy ask me, and I turned to look at him"  (43). There are references to blinking, eyes, tears, and blindness layered throughout the book: "blinked," "the eye's out," "I opened my eyes," "Both Danny's and Billy's eyes are blue. But one set of eyes is blind," "the eyes dark, with pinpoints of white light playing in them," "They all seemed to be staring at Danny," "'Crazy world. Cockeyed,'" "was almost in tears," "he blinked again," "'His eyes are just plain bad, that's all.' 'Your eyes look bloodshot'"  (48, 91, 152, 114, 125, 135, 173, 185, 191, 200). They say eyes are windows in the soul, so let's see if that fits. Reuven was almost blinded by his hatred after the accident, but he forgave Danny so he can see. Danny's little brother is an invalid, and so his eyes don't work, period. Mr. Savo, who seems to have extensive knowledge about the world, describes the world as cockeyed. As Danny learns more and more disturbing topics, Freud, his eyes become more bloodshot. Reb Saunders' eyes are black with a dot of white; he is an austere man, but he has a pure core. I think that this analogy works. Potok foreshadows a character's traits via their eyes, and this gives the reader quite a visceral understanding of the characters about whom he reads. In fact, I think this subconscious understanding is stronger than anything blatant Potok could have stated about the character. "Show, don't tell."