Boekverslag : Chaim Potok - The Chosen
De taal ervan is Engels en het aantal woorden bedraagt 1233 woorden.
De taal ervan is Engels en het aantal woorden bedraagt 1233 woorden.
Author
Chaim Potok was born in 1929 in the Bronx, New York. He was the oldest of four children in his family. Like Reuven Malter in The Chosen, Potok was raised in an Orthodox Jewish household and attended a yeshiva, a Jewish religious school. His parents were Polish immigrants who had strong ties to Hasidism. In an interview Potok said, "I prayed in a little shtiebel [prayer room], and my mother is a descendant of a great Hasidic dynasty and my father was a Hasid, so I come from that world."
After reading Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited when he was a teenager, Potok decided to become a writer. Riveted by the world of upper class British Catholics that Waugh brings to life in the novel, Potok realized for the first time that fiction had the power "to create worlds out of words on paper." His parents, his Talmud teachers, and his peers disapproved of his interest in writing fiction, however, because many fundamentalist Jews regarded the arts as a waste of time and a distraction from serious study. As Potok told an interviewer, his mother said, "You want to write stories? That's very nice. You be a brain surgeon, and on the side you write stories."
To learn how to write, Potok carefully studied the novels of such writers as Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Charles Dickens, and Mark Twain. Over a period of five years, he spent most of his free time reading the novels of great writers. At the same time, Potok began to pull away from Jewish fundamentalism. Convinced that the worlds of modern literature and Orthodox Judaism were incompatible, Potok embraced Conservative Judaism, a less restrictive form of the Jewish faith, while attending college.
Potok graduated from Yeshiva University in 1950 with a B.A. degree in English literature. In 1954 he earned an M.A. degree in Hebrew literature and received his rabbinical ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. An ordained Conservative rabbi, Potok served as combat chaplain with the United States Army in Korea from 1955 to 1957. After spending a year in Israel working on his doctoral dissertation, Potok earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania in 1965.
Potok's first published novel, The Chosen, and his subsequent novels reflect much of his own life, from the realistic portraits of New York's Jewish communities that he knew as a child to his deep commitments to scholarship and Judaism. Regarding the relationship between his life and his writing, Potok has commented: "The novel is, among other things, the record of a mirror held up to life-a mirror of a peculiar sort, one that contains the unique warps and the silver backing of a single lived life, the strange and risky life of the novelist. It is his private mirror."
(Source: http://www.mcdougallittell.com/lit/guest/potok/) Chaim Potok wrote many other books and plays, I think the most important are: 'The Promise' and 'My Name Is Ashley Lev'.
Main characters
Reuven Malter
A Jewish guy during, and after the Second World War who lives in Brooklyn, New York. He lives with his father. They live in a religious part of Brooklyn, Williamsburg. Reuven's father is teacher, and Reuven attends the same school. This school is not a very orthodox school.
Danny Saunders
I think he is actually the main character in this book. He was raised strictly orthodox. Reuven and Danny meet eachother during a baseball match. They actually can't be friends. But things are never sure.
Reuven's father
A teacher at a Jewish school, he is religious, though not orthodox. And so was Reuven brought up.
Danny's father
A rabbi, almost obsessed by the Talmud, he doesn't communicate very much with his son, they only talk about religion. Later in the book he changes a littlebit, he also surprises the reader and the characters because he isn't that bad.
Plot outline
One day Reuven's baseball team plays against the very strictly Hasidic School (note: Hasidic School with capitals is correctly). It is not a very nice match, the Hasidic School makes it a kind of religious war. Then Reuven has to do the pitching, he feels angry cause of this bad behaviour of the Hasidic School. That's why he doesn't evade the nasty ball from Danny, that ball hits Reuven in his face, which caused that his glasses broke, and one peace of glass came in his eye. Reuven went to the hospital. Danny has decided to visit Reuven at the hospital, first Reuven doesn't want to talk to him, because he thinks that Danny did it on purpose, but the second time when Danny came he changed his mind, and they talked. Their relation gets better and better, Reuven's father really tries to get them closer to eachother, and Danny comes for his third time, and their relation is amicable.
Then Reuven was discharged from hospital, luckily that didn't mean the end of their friendship. Reuven visits Danny at his house, where he discovers that Danny's father is a rabbi, Danny and his father don't really talk, if they talk the subject is always religion, all the time a kind of tests if Danny knows enough. Reuven feels bad about it, he feels terribly sorry for Danny, especially when Reuven discovers about Danny's interests in 'forbidden' literature. Forbidden because it was not written in Jewish. But after all his father finds out about this reading, his father is not mad, but sad. Danny continues reading, generally about psychoanalysis.
Then Danny's father discovers about this friendship, and he forbids it. From now on they can't communicate anymore, they only talk when Danny tells Reuven about the Talmud, or asks him questions about it. About two years later Danny's father starts to realize that Reuven is a good boy, maybe not Hasidic, but he accepts that.
One day Danny decides to tell his father something very important, but very difficult too. He tells his father he doesn't want to be a rabbi. His father really surprised Danny by telling him he already knew that Danny wouldn't become a rabbi.
Danny changes his look, he removes his beard and earlocks… This is a significant end of an incredible story.
Genre
As it is in the list under Adolescence, it is about growing up. Changing your settled future.
Theme and explanation of the title
A boy who encounters his settled destination, and who has a 'forbidden' friend. The title is simple, the chosen, Danny was chosen to be a rabbi from the moment he was born.
Point of view
First person narrator from Reuven, though he actually isn't the main character.
Location
Brooklyn, New York. A district where live many Jewish people.
Time span
the story begins towards the end of the Second World War until 1949
My opinion
Although this book was written in a boring style, I liked it very much, because it is a good story, the father really surprised me, I think he'd surprise everybody, but in the story he would have been a very boring character if he would have continued his strict regime. After I read 'The Cement Garden' I was very happy when I read the end of this book (I mean 'The Chosen'), because I read so many books with a bad ending, and this book has at last a positive end. I'd give this book a 9. Although I have to admit that I have been able many times to predict events in the book, which still had to happen.
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