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Summary
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Once, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Storytelling
Innocence and Ignorance
Antisemitism vs. Human Dignity
Family
Morality, Violence, and Complicity
Summary
Analysis
“Once I was living in an orphanage in the mountains,” the narrator says. At dinner, a nun ladles him some soup. The soup steams up his glasses, and the narrator prays “to God, Jesus, the Virgin Mary, the Pope, and Adolf Hitler” for the steam to dissipate. He finds his way to a table, lifting his soup overhead to keep other children from stealing it, by listening for his usual companion Dodie, who gulps his soup audibly.
The narrator starts his story with the word “once,” reminiscent of the traditional fairy-tale opening “once upon a time.” This allusion suggests that the narrator likes storytelling and treating his life as a story. Since the narrator is living in a remote orphanage, readers may wonder if the narrator’s family is dead. Soon after, the narrator shockingly prays not only to God and various religious figures but also Adolf Hitler (1889—1945), dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, who engineered the Holocaust, an antisemitic genocide carried out during World War II (1939—1945) that killed approximately 6 million Jewish people. This prayer suggests that the narrator is ignorant of who Hitler actually is and what Hitler has done.
Themes
The narrator sits down, wipes his glasses, and sees an entire carrot in his soup. He's astonished; he hasn’t seen a carrot since he came to the orphanage “three years and eight months” before. Any carrots the orphanage buys are chopped into bits to share among the children, the nuns, and the priest. The narrator thinks he might be the only child in Poland with a carrot; he considers whether the carrot is a miracle but discards the idea since it’s 1942, not “ancient times.”
The story takes place in 1942 in Poland—three years after Nazi Germany invaded and began occupying Poland, starting World War II (1939–1945). If the narrator came to the orphanage “three years and eight months” prior, it’s possible that due to the orphanage’s remoteness, he doesn’t know about the invasion or the Holocaust—though that still doesn’t explain why he would pray to Hitler. In this passage, the narrator interprets the carrot in his soup as a stroke of luck, almost (but not quite) a miracle, which shows both his innocence and the poverty in which the orphans live.
Themes
The narrator concludes that the carrot, his “favorite vegetable,” must be a message from his parents. They’re telling him that they’ll take him back from the orphanage soon because the situation is getting better for “Jewish booksellers.” While the other children wolf down their soup or examine it for tiny bits of meat or vermin feces, he grabs the carrot and pockets it. He’s worried that if higher-up Catholic administrators find out his parents are alive, they may punish the nuns for caring for him, a non-orphan.
Because vegetables are so rare at the orphanage and because carrots happen to be the narrator’s “favorite vegetable,” he makes up a story to explain the carrot’s appearance: namely, that the carrot is a message from his parents. In this moment, the carrot represents the narrator’s hope for reunification with his family. Here he reveals that his parents are “Jewish booksellers.” While he believes they left him at the orphanage because the situation in Poland was getting bad for Jewish booksellers, readers can guess that his parents foresaw the Nazi invasion of Poland and—as the Nazis began persecuting Jewish people in Germany upon Nazis’ rise to power in 1933—knew that the situation was going to get very bad for Jewish people in Poland. The narrator’s ignorance suggests that adults in his life have been concealing important truths from him—truths that are particularly important to him because, as a Jewish boy, he is in danger of antisemitic violence and death during the Nazi occupation.
Themes
Mother Minka shouts, “Felix Saint Stanislaus.” She tells the narrator—Felix—not to play with his food: if he’s discovered a bug in his soup, he should “eat it and be grateful.” Felix speculates that his parents are in the village and that they convinced Father Ludwik to deliver the carrot to him. He feels indebted to Mother Minka for “mak[ing] a joke to draw attention away from my carrot.” He recalls how his parents chose to leave him at this orphanage not only because it was the nearest, but also because Mother Minka used to patronize their bookshop and “never once criticized a single book.”
As readers probably doubt Felix’s assumption that the carrot is a message from his parents, they must likewise assume that Mother Minka is not “mak[ing] a joke to draw attention away from” it. When Mother Minka tells Felix to “eat [a bug] and be grateful,” she’s dead serious. Felix’s misinterpretations of the carrot and of Mother Minka show that his hopeful innocence leads him to draw false conclusions. Yet Mother Minka used to be a patron of his parents’ bookstore, which means she must know that his family is Jewish—and she nevertheless adds “Saint Stanislaus” to his name, which could be a reference to one of several Polish Catholic saints. This name—which Felix’s Jewish parents likely did not give him—suggests that Mother Minka is pretending that Felix is Catholic, hiding his Jewishness to protect him during the Nazi occupation. Thus, while Felix interprets Mother Minka’s gruffness too optimistically as humor, he may ultimately be correct in assuming the best of her.
Themes
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Since Mother Minka is now glowering at another table and doesn’t see Felix smiling at her, he turns his smile on Sister Elwira, who’s serving children dinner and trying to comfort a weeping little girl. Felix thinks how good the nuns are and how much he’ll “miss them” when he leaves and “go[es] back to being Jewish.”
Felix cares about the nuns, but while he’s been living with them for almost four years, he wouldn’t hesitate to leave them to rejoin his parents, which shows how much he loves and prioritizes his family. His unconscious assumption that it will be easy to “go back to being Jewish” reveals once again his childish innocence and ignorance about the genocidal antisemitic violence occurring in Nazi-occupied Poland.
Themes
Dodie asks whether he can have Felix’s soup. Felix wants to help Dodie, a real orphan, but he gulps his soup without sharing because they never have much food. Then he and Dodie laugh at the idea that he would’ve shared. Sad that he’ll leave soon and that he’s lied to Dodie, Felix tries to think of something nice he can do for him.
Though Felix has no hesitation about leaving the orphanage and returning to his parents, it grieves him to leave the nuns and his orphan friend Dodie. His desire to help Dodie, whom he perceives as less fortunate because Dodie’s parents are actually dead, shows his instinctive goodness—a goodness that Nazi antisemitism would deny he’s capable of.
Themes
Later, while Mother Minka examines the orphans to see whether they’re dirty enough to need baths, Felix jumps the line and asks whether “Dodek” can bathe first, claiming that since illness killed Dodie’s parents, he wants to become a doctor and needs to practice excellent hygiene. Felix hopes that Dodie hasn’t heard him, since Dodie’s real ambition is to become “a pig-slaughterer.” Mother Minka glares and orders Felix to the back of the line. Felix goes, since “nuns can have good hearts and still be violent.”
From context, readers can guess that “Dodek” is Dodie’s real name and “Dodie” is a childish nickname. Here, Felix uses his fondness for stories to make up a lie, trying to get Dodie into the communal bath first, while the water is clean. Dodie’s desire to become a “pig-slaughterer” is a bit disturbing, as is Felix’s acceptance that “nuns can have good hearts and still be violent,” which suggests that Mother Minka uses corporal punishment on the orphans. Yet Felix seems fond of both Dodie and Mother Minka; either Felix is mistaken about their characters, or there is more to both than their occasional violent tendencies.
Themes
As Felix goes, he ruminates that Dodie might make a good doctor: one time, he reattached several legs to a fly whose limbs he had pulled off. Seeing that the first child into the bath has dirtied the water, Felix recalls the warm, clean baths his parents used to give him and how they used to tell him stories. In his mind, he orders his parents to come get him quickly.
The anecdote Felix tells about Dodie pulling the legs off a fly both deepens and complicates the readers’ sense of Dodie’s violent tendencies. On the one hand, Dodie maimed a defenseless insect; on the other hand, since he tried to fix the damage, it’s possible that he acted out of childish innocence without understanding the permanent harm he would cause the insect. Felix’s memories of his parents telling him stories, meanwhile, suggests that he learned his love of storytelling from them.
Themes
