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Pages 62–71
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
As the crowd walks, Felix tells stories to Zelda to distract her. Sick, hungry, and worried about his parents, he trails off. Zelda prompts him, reminding him that “William and Violet Elizabeth are in the big cake shop at the zoo.” Felix tells Zelda that a gorilla escapes the zoo, so William and Violet Elizabeth fill a hotel room with foods gorillas love and lurk in the room’s closet with a net.
William and Violet Elizabeth are characters in Richmal Crompton’s Just William series; Felix is repurposing the books he loves to take emotional care of Zelda, showing how stories can help children endure painful situations. When Felix loses his focus, Zelda returns him to the story; while it’s possible she simply wants to know what happens next, it's also possible she is trying to take care of him at the same time as he takes care of her, indicating their growing emotional bond.
Themes
The man Felix asked about books goes into hysterics, shouting at the Nazis. One Nazi strikes him down with a gun, and other Nazis kick him. Felix blocks Zelda’s view and talks loudly about the gorilla-catching plan. When Zelda pooh-poohs the plan, Felix asks her to invent a better one. Zelda says that they could “dig a big hole, like those people over there,” to catch the gorilla. Through trees, Felix sees hundreds of people digging while soldiers aim guns at them. When Zelda asks what the people are doing, Felix can’t invent a response. Zelda suggests that “a gorilla has really escaped” and throws her arms around Felix.
Nazi soldiers sometimes forced their victims to dig their own mass graves before shooting them. It is likely that the people Felix and Zelda see digging are about to be shot and buried in a large mass grave. Felix’s inability to guess what’s going on and Zelda’s panicked suggestion that a “gorilla really has escaped” highlight their innocence, their attempts to use stories to make sense of the world, and their unspoken, panicked sense that something truly terrible is going on.
Themes
Zelda says that the gorilla’s nice friend tried to get the army not to bother the gorilla, so soldiers hit him with a gun. Felix realizes that she saw what the Nazis did to the shouting man. Felix hugs Zelda and says the friend will “get better” and then he and the gorilla will start a cake shop in the jungle. Zelda agrees, but Felix knows neither of them fully “believes it.”
That Zelda witnessed the Nazi soldiers beating the Jewish man who protested shows how hard—and perhaps counterproductive—it is to try to hide the truth from children when large-scale social evils are occurring. That Felix and Zelda respond to the violence they’ve witnessed with a story neither of them can believe suggests both that escapism is a defense mechanism for children and that it can’t fully shield them from reality.
Themes
When the crowd reaches the city, Felix notices that unlike “in stories,” it’s ugly, full of Nazi banners and soldiers, without a cake shop in sight. The city-dwellers shout “dirty Jews” at the crowd. Felix thinks it should be obvious that they’re dirty; they’ve been traveling for hours in the rain. Zelda says she doesn’t like the city; Felix wants to cheer her up but can’t think of stories. Nazis are forcing Jewish people to get on their knees and clean the cobblestones while city-dwellers laugh. Upset, Felix hopes his parents didn’t have to clean.
Yet again, the difference between “stories” and reality strikes Felix; more experiences of the wider world are forcing him to confront ugly truths. He is noticing more violent, virulent antisemitism—without, however, fully understanding it. He finds the pejorative “dirty Jews” confusing, for example, because travelers in bad weather are naturally going to be dirty.
Themes
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Felix sees Nazis tossing Jewish children into a truck while their parents yell and sob. He wonders why the Nazis would take children away from their parents. Wanting to stay and find his own parents, Felix grabs Zelda and looks for somewhere to hide. Shots ring out. Felix sees two bleeding bodies. Then a Nazi soldier, having grabbed a child, shoots a man trying to retrieve the child. Zelda screams. A Nazi grabs her and aims a gun at her. Felix begs him not to shoot and then, sick and exhausted, collapses in the street.
During the Holocaust’s mass murders, it was not uncommon for Nazi soldiers to kill young Jewish children first because they were too small to engage in forced labor. Moreover, during the Nazi occupation of Poland, some “Aryan-looking” Polish children were stolen from their parents to be raised in German homes. Through the Nazi indifference to children’s lives and family unity, in contrast with Felix’s desperate search to find his parents, the novel asserts the inhumanity of Nazi ideology and the importance of family.
Themes
