Summary: Chapter 9
On Monday morning, Reuven’s father takes him to Dr. Snydman’s office
for an eye examination. The doctor pronounces Reuven’s eye perfectly
healed and says he can read again. Reuven is excited to get back
to his studies and to make up his exams.
That Friday, Reuven calls Roger Merrit, Billy’s father,
to ask him about Billy’s eyesight. Mr. Merrit informs Reuven that
Billy’s surgery was unsuccessful. When Reuven asks if he can visit
Billy, Mr. Merrit says his company has transferred him to Albany,
and Billy has already moved there. When Reuven gets off the phone,
his hands are freezing, and he cannot concentrate. He sits on his
porch and watches a housefly trapped in a spider web. Reuven blows
on the web to free the fly and watches as the spider tumbles from
the broken web and disappears from view.
Summary: Chapter 10
During the first month of summer, Reuven and
Danny spend almost every day together. In the mornings, they study
Talmud with their fathers—although Reuven spends three days a week playing
ball instead of studying. In the afternoons, they read together
in the public library. David Malter frequently joins them, quietly
researching for an article he is writing. On Saturdays, Reuven and
Danny discuss Talmud with Reb Saunders, but Danny’s father does
not ask Reuven any more questions about Danny’s extracurricular
activities. Danny and Reuven spend most evenings together, walking
and talking, although occasionally Reuven goes to movies with his
other friends, an activity from which Danny is prohibited. Reuven
and his father devotedly follow the progress of the war in the newspapers,
and Danny begins reading Freud in German.
One week, Reuven’s father travels to Manhattan to do
research. Reuven spends the week studying with Danny at the library.
During this period, Danny is frustrated with Freud’s German and
seems stuck. Then one day, during a Talmud session with his father,
Danny realizes that he must study Freud like he studies Talmud,
with dictionaries and commentaries. Up to that point, Danny explains
to Reuven, he had been reading Freud instead of studying him. He begins
to make progress with this new approach.
Meanwhile, Reuven reads a book on symbolic logic. He
lends Danny some books to read while Reuven and his father are at
their cottage near Peekskill during the month of August. Upon Reuven’s return,
the boys meet in the library, and Danny is excited to discuss what
he has learned about Freud. The two agree to talk about it in the
near future, but as the new school year begins, Reuven becomes too
busy to talk with Danny about Freud.
Analysis: Chapters 9–10
In Chapter 9, Reuven’s conversation
with Mr. Merritt about the failure of Billy’s surgery forces Reuven
to confront the existence of unjust suffering as he did in the hospital.
He realizes that he has no control over such senseless pain. He
also realizes that such pain is the result of nothing more than
bad luck. In the face of such arbitrary cruelty, Reuven wonders
how to make sense of the world around him, how to reconcile the
idea of an all-powerful, all-knowing God with such random, senseless
suffering. This conflict within Reuven foreshadows the struggle
that the world’s Jews—and the characters in the novel—face in the
wake of the Holocaust.
