Previous
Pages 29–40
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
Walking almost nonstop for two nights and a day, Felix reaches his hometown. The buildings look as he remembers, but he thought the town contained more food shops. Now he wonders whether he invented them while he was hungry at the orphanage.
Felix also remembers his town bustling, but this town is empty. Looking around, confused, he sees his parents’ bookshop without “a single Nazi burn mark.” Dizzy with hunger, Felix wishes his parents were there, not elsewhere saving their business. Then he tells himself to toughen up, hide the books before the Nazis arrive, and find clues about his parents’ location.
The town’s emptiness reminds readers of the horrors of Nazi Germany’s occupation of Poland: the vast majority of Polish Jewish people were murdered, Polish intellectuals (including teachers, doctors, and priests) were executed, and many non-Jewish Polish people were dislocated to make room for German settlers. Because the adults in Felix’s life have concealed the truth about the Nazi occupation from him, he cannot accurately interpret the deserted town and assumes the main danger is still just to his parents’ books.
Themes
Felix tries the bookshop door. It’s locked. He peers through a window and sees no books, only used clothes. Confused, he checks and finds his own initials on the front door where he put them before he left for the orphanage. Hearing voices from the apartment over the bookshop, Felix yells for his parents. Though the voices go quiet, no one responds. Felix infers that his parents no longer recognize his voice. He runs around the bookshop and through the apartment’s open back door. Inside, he finds a strange, angry woman who yells at him to leave.
The bookstore full of clothes and the strange voices in Felix’s family’s apartment suggest that after Felix’s parents fled or were arrested, non-Jewish Polish people stole Felix’s family’s property—demonstrating the indifference of some non-Jewish Polish people to the fate of their Jewish neighbors.
Themes
A strange man appears from the bedroom and tells the woman to catch Felix so they can “hand him over.” Felix flees. On his way out, he runs into Wiktor Radzyn, a Catholic boy from his old school, who yells “Jew” and says the place belongs to his family now.
The Radzyns have not only stolen Felix’s family’s property but are actively propagating antisemitism (yelling “Jew” like an insult) and trying to cooperate with the Nazis by “hand[ing Felix] over.” This reminds the reader that some Polish people cooperated with their Nazi occupiers and that violent antisemitism long predates Nazism.
Themes
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A crowd chases Felix, but he escapes and hides at the town’s outskirts. Watching people disperse, he wonders why they hate his family—“They couldn’t all have bought books they didn’t like”—and why the Radzyns are living in his family’s apartment. Abruptly, Felix decides the U.S. visas his parents applied for must have been approved. His parents must have sold the bookstore to finance a new one in the U.S. Felix recalls his father telling him once that in America, bookshelves are “solid gold.”
Felix is both innocent due to his personal goodness and ignorant due to adults’ attempts to hide the truth from him. Yet he already senses that his current theory—that people are persecuting his family over books—doesn’t explain the animosity he’s witnessing. Despite his forebodings, he retreats to storytelling again, deciding his parents must have left the apartment willingly because they got U.S. visas.
Themes
Felix reasons that if his parents have U.S. visas, they must have gone to the orphanage to get him. He decides to travel back there as fast as he can. Leaving his hiding place, he runs into a small boy and girl. The boy tells him they’re “playing grabbing Jews in the street.” The girl explains that she’s pretending to be Jewish; the boy, pretending to be a Nazi, will abduct her. She tells Felix to be a Nazi. When he refuses, the girl tells him to be a Jew and act sad because the Nazis took his parents. When Felix gawks, the girl says that her father told her that “all the Jew people got taken.” The boy tells the girl Felix “doesn’t want to play.” Internally, Felix agrees.
This scene shows how events like the Nazi occupation of Poland and the Holocaust corrupt and destroy children’s innocence. The two little children Felix encounters are incorporating scenes of genocidal antisemitic violence (“grabbing Jews in the street”) into their narrative play, because they seem to have witnessed such violence and because their parents have explained the violence to them in callous terms (“all the Jew people got taken”). Though Felix doesn’t grasp the full import of the children’s story-game, he understands enough to be frightened.
Themes
Felix sneaks back into town after dark and stakes out his Jewish neighbor Mr. Rosenfeld’s house. He wants to prove that the little girl is wrong—that the Nazis haven’t taken away all the Jewish people. When he doesn’t see Mr. Rosenfeld, he knocks on the door and calls out, saying it’s “Felix Salinger.”
Due to the little children’s disturbing game, Felix now suspects that the Nazis’ violent antisemitic activities may include more than just book-burning. It is possible that Felix’s last name, Salinger, alludes to famous American author J.D. Salinger (1919—2020), who wrote The Catcher in the Rye (1951); if so, the allusion emphasizes the centrality of storytelling to Felix’s character.
Themes
A man covers Felix’s mouth and snatches him into a nearby alley. The man, whose face Felix can’t see in the dark, tells him that Mr. Rosenfeld and Felix’s parents have been taken to the city: that’s why the “weasel Radzyns” are living in Felix’s house and selling clothes and possessions that Mr. Rosenfeld left behind.
The unknown man confirms what earlier passages have implied: some non-Jewish Polish people are using the Nazi persecution of Jewish people as an opportunity to steal their Jewish neighbors’ property. This man seems not to approve of such behavior, as he compares perpetrators like the Radzyns to “weasel[s].”
Themes
The moon lights up the alley, and Felix recognizes the man as Mr. Kopek, who “used to empty toilets with Mr. Radzyn.” Mr. Kopek tells Felix to “go hide in the mountains” and asks him to deny that he talked to Felix if “they” catch him. Felix tells Mr. Kopek that the Nazis won’t pursue him: he doesn’t have books. Baffled, Mr. Kopek gives Felix a package and flees.
Mr. Kopek used to work a sanitation job “empty[ing] toilets” with Mr. Radzyn. The men’s shared economic situation shows that economic difficulties didn’t cause Mr. Radzyn’s antisemitism, his theft of his Jewish neighbors’ property, or his willingness to turn Felix over to the Nazis: Mr. Kopek, in the same economic situation as Mr. Radzyn, warns Felix and tries to help him. Despite mounting contrary evidence, Felix clings to his belief that the Nazis are just book-burners—a mistake that Mr. Kopek is too confused by to correct.
Themes
Inside the package are bread and bottled water. Felix wonders why some people help “Jewish book owners” while other people are so hateful. He invents a story about children whose parents die under an avalanche of Jewish books at a warehouse and who swear revenge, but it doesn’t seem plausible. He thinks maybe he’ll invent a better story on his way to the city to find his parents.
Felix still doesn’t grasp the extent of the antisemitic violence around him, but he notices that people in similar social circumstances (like Mr. Kopek and Mr. Radzyn, two working-class Gentile Polish men) can have radically different attitudes toward religious and ethnic diversity. When Felix tries to explain antisemitic hatred, he comes up with a supervillain-style origin story that he himself can’t believe. The implausible story demonstrates Felix’s ignorance about evil, but his recognition that the story is implausible shows his growing awareness of his own ignorance.
Themes
