payment page
Summary
Chapter One
Exodus is told in the third person omniscient, and it opens with reporter Mark Parker landing in Cyprus. Mark is successful enough that he sometimes gets recognized in public. Mark learns that his old friend Kitty Fremont will meet him in Kyrenia instead of at the airport. As Mark travels to the city by taxi, he reminisces about his past with Kitty and Tom Fremont. The three friends grew up together, Kitty and Tom the quintessential all-American couple. Mark has always carried a torch for Kitty. She is beautiful and thoughtful, but she has always been deeply in love with Tom. After high school together, Mark and Tom became college roommates, and Kitty and Tom married young and moved to Chicago where Tom worked his way up at a public relations firm. Naturally compassionate, Kitty became a nurse. They had a baby girl, Sandra. Meanwhile, Mark became a journalist and then married and soon divorced a girl named Ellen.
Mark is creative and a strong writer but has no interest in being a novelist, and he originally felt that he was a terrible reporter. However, in 1938, Mark found his passion when he became a foreign war correspondent with the American News Syndicate. Tom died in battle as a Marine in 1942 after the United States joins World War II. Soon after, Kitty also lost her daughter Sandra to polio. Her world having crumbled in a matter of months, Kitty disappeared until 1946. After the war, Mark covered Nuremberg and is now on a leave of absence in Greece before going to Palestine. During a casual conversation with a fellow newsman, he had heard Kitty is working at a Greek orphanage. Now, he is heading to a hotel in Kyrenia to meet her. They haven’t seen each other in eight years.
Learning that Kitty has been delayed, Mark decides to nap at the hotel. He wakes up to find Major Fred Caldwell, a British officer, in his room. Mark knows Caldwell from his war coverage and considers him a colonizer with no conscience. Caldwell dislikes Mark because Mark reported on a tactical error made by the British in Holland during the war. Caldwell, representing the occupying force in Greece, demands to know why Mark is in Cyprus. Mark tells him he’s on vacation and planning to spend time with a friend before going to Palestine on assignment. Mark also takes the opportunity to let Caldwell know that the mighty British Empire is dying. Caldwell reminds Mark that he's in Cyprus for vacation, not to act as a reporter, and then leaves.
Chapter Two
Forty miles away from Mark’s hotel, two men wait in a forest near a bay. One is a Cypriot forest ranger, and the other is David Ben Ami. They stand on the ruins of Salamis, a city dating back to the time of Christ. A man, Ari Ben Canaan, arrives in a motorboat. He and David speed away in a waiting taxi on a nearby road. The two men are part of the illegal organization Mossad Aliyah Bet.
Chapter Three
Mark and Kitty are finally reunited. After having dinner and catching up on superficial details of their lives, Kitty opens up about the loss of Tom and Sandra. Kitty ran away to New York after their deaths to get lost in the crowds. After a one-night stand with a man whose name she couldn’t remember, she hit rock bottom. Standing in the bathroom of the stranger, Kitty realized that she would be able to move on. She returned to nursing and found herself in the Greek orphanage after the war. It suited her because it was an all-consuming job with no connections to her former life. After letting out these memories that have caused her shame for so many years, Kitty feels lighter.
Chapter 4
Brigadier Bruce Sutherland is the British miliary commander of Cyprus. He meets with Caldwell to inquire about his meeting with Mark. Caldwell is concerned is that Mark is in Cyprus to report on the camps full of Jewish refugees at Caraolos. The refugees, most of whom have been in Nazi concentration camps, are being detained in Cyprus until the Palestine mandate is decided. Caldwell, a brutal Nazi sympathizer, wants to punish the Jewish detainees for what he considers their unruly behavior. Sutherland flatly refuses to punish detainees, and he believes that Mark has no intention of reporting on the camps. Sutherland tells Caldwell that the detainees have the world’s sympathy after the war. Sutherland is an unusual British officer in that he too feels sympathy for the plight of the Jewish people.
Analysis
In Exodus, Uris tells the story of the Jewish people's struggle over the past three thousand years: their exile from Israel, oppression in all corners of the world, the genocide of the twentieth century, and ultimately the bloody War for Liberation that they fought in order to establish the Jewish nation of Israel. However, the novel opens with Americans. Mark Parker and Kitty Fremont are far removed from the trials of the Jewish people, having grown up in middle America in the years before World War II. Mark and Kitty’s early background seems simplistic and uncomplicated compared to the rest of the novel, but these characters represent America, a country that eventually becomes the first country to recognize the independent State of Israel. Moreover, Mark and Kitty are not as uncomplicated as they first appear. Mark has reported on war, most notably World War II and the Nuremberg trials. He is well-versed in the atrocities that took place at concentration camps in Europe and is sympathetic toward the Jewish people. Mark only appears in Book 1 of the novel, but he plays an important role in publicizing the Exodus mission, which sets an entire series of events into motion. On the other hand, Kitty is at first reluctant to become involved with the Jewish people. She considers them to be so different from her that she is typically not comfortable around them. Because of this, Kitty seems an unlikely hero for the Jewish people, except that she too knows loss and deep grief. The grief she has experienced over the loss of her husband and child connects her with the Jewish people she encounters in Cypress and compels her to be part of the historic Exodus mission. Although they are from a completely different world, Mark and Kitty become friends of Israel.
As opposed to the sympathetic Americans, British Major Fred Caldwell represents the worst of the British occupation in Palestine. Caldwell’s pride is the cause of his dislike for Mark and Americans in general. Mark reporting on a blunder made by the British during the war puts Caldwell at odds with him. Mark dislikes Caldwell because he is arrogant and a champion of the British military’s penchant for colonizing. Caldwell wants to ensure that Mark is not going to make the British look bad once again by reporting on the detainment camps of Cyprus, land that he refers to as being owned by the British, so he takes it upon himself to walk into Mark’s hotel room unannounced. Mark warns Caldwell that the British empire is dying, an accurate prediction that foreshadows the events that will unfold over the course of the novel. Caldwell’s hatred for the Jewish people is not yet apparent, but in referring to Mark’s coverage of the Nuremberg trials as overdramatic, it is clear that Caldwell does not have Jewish sympathies.
As David Ben Ami awaits the arrival of Ari Ben Canaan in a forest, Uris hearkens back to ancient times. David stands near the ruins of Salamis, a city that was founded shortly after the end of the Trojan Wars and destroyed by Arab people in the name of their Islamic religion. This setting connects David and Ari with an ancient past, a significant connection as the men are later identified as being part of the centuries-old struggle for Jewish freedom. However, right now their business is a mystery. In contrast to the nervous Cypriot forest ranger who helps David, Ari and David come across as calm and collected while carrying out a secretive mission. Ari is arriving in Cyprus in this chapter to orchestrate the escape mission of the Exodus ship with David. The two men are doing the dangerous work of an illegal organization, but their sense of pride in their mission and righteousness in their cause fills them with confidence and self-assurance. They also display a high level of preparedness and skill in their work, having carefully planned every detail including enlisting the forest ranger and motorboat driver as well as the driver of the getaway taxi. Ari and David are extremely thorough and feel they are carrying out the work that began with their ancestors.
When Caldwell reports to British Commander Bruce Sutherland about his meeting with Mark, their actions as men of high military rank are typical of the post-World War II era. They soon cloud the room with cigar smoke, and both have a strong drink. Caldwell says that he doesn't have a specific reason to distrust Mark but he distrusts him nonetheless, his dislike stemming from Mark’s prior reporting, which cast the British in an unfavorable light. On the other hand, Sutherland has no interest in harping on Mark’s reporting, illustrating that Sutherland does not share Caldwell’s prideful streak. Sutherland shows himself to be more measured and reserved than his aide and argues that stories about detainment camps would no longer be worth Mark’s time as a reporter. Sutherland has to forcefully shut down the idea that Mark should be threatened to stay away from the camps in Cyprus. Furthermore, Sutherland sharply counters Caldwell’s position that the Jewish people at the detainment camps should be harshly disciplined. He points out that the Jewish people have the world’s sympathies. Although Sutherland first appears to be a typical British commander, his forceful counter to Caldwell’s cynical colonialism and anti-Semitism suggests that there is more to Sutherland than meets the eye. Indeed, Sutherland appears to have an unusual level of empathy for the Jewish people as his thoughts turn to the plight of the detainees in the camps on Cyprus.
