Previous
Pages 81–90
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
Later, Felix’s fever breaks. Zelda jumps on his bed and demands a story. Felix looks around and asks where Barney and the other children went. Zelda, stifling laughter and pointedly ignoring coats heaped on the floor, says that Barney is finding food. The coats go flying, revealing the other children laughing in a pile. Zelda explains that the coats are their story tent. Felix wants to say that Nazis might be killing their parents and “a story isn’t going to help,” but he doesn’t, because the children aren’t to blame. Felix blames himself for the danger to his parents: when he was six and his parents were trying to get U.S. visas, he asked the bureaucrat in charge whether he’d gotten the red spots on his skin “from sticking his head in a dragon’s mouth.”
Right now, Felix is focused on what stories can’t do: they can’t “help” save any of the children’s parents from the Nazis. While Felix is correct, he is ignoring how play and imagination—exemplified by the story tent—give the traumatized children a small opportunity for joy in a terrible situation. Felix’s reminiscences suggest his harsh overcorrection to his previous enthusiasm for stories is due to guilt: he believes the fairytale-inspired question he asked the bureaucrat in charge of visas may have insulted the bureaucrat and prevented his parents from escaping Poland.
Themes
Henryk asks for a story. Felix refuses, saying he must leave. He looks around and concludes that they’re in a cellar with an exit overhead. He finds a door in the ceiling with stairs leading up to it but can’t open it. The girl with the bandaged arm (Chaya) explains that Barney locks it. When Felix hits the door, Zelda tells him to be quiet because they’re hiding. Ruth adds that Hitler hates Jewish children. Felix protests that Father Ludwik praised Hitler, and Hitler is “the prime minister or the king or something” of Poland. Zelda, scornful, explains that Hitler runs the Nazis. The girl with the bandaged arm explains that Hitler told the Nazis to grab Jewish children; only the ones who hide remain.
Here readers learn why Felix has been praying to Hitler: Father Ludwik spoke positively about Hitler. While it's possible Father Ludwik was intentionally lying to keep the horrible truth from Felix, as Felix’s parents and Mother Minka did, it’s more probable Father Ludwik was a genuine Nazi sympathizer—in which case Felix’s ignorance put him in great danger: if Felix had let slip to Father Ludwik that he was Jewish, Father Ludwik might have betrayed Felix and Mother Minka to the Nazis. Thus, the novel indirectly shows why it is better to tell children frightening truths for their own safety than to keep them ignorant.
Themes
Felix realizes that when his parents said they were leaving him at the orphanage so they could fix their business, they were only telling him a story—which “saved [his] life.” The children again demand a story from Felix. Felix starts telling them about William finding a “magic carrot.” When Zelda and another child start fighting about how many wishes the carrot grants, Felix asks them what they’d wish for. When Zelda says she’d wish for her parents, the girl with the bandaged arm (Chaya) asks them to say what else they’d all wish for.
Felix’s conclusion that his parents’ story “saved [his] life” suggests that, given his age at the time, he doesn’t think he could have accepted the truth and successfully concealed his Jewishness if his parents hadn’t lied to him. This conclusion in turn implies that lying to very young children can sometimes protect them—though Felix’s subsequent adventures suggest that once children reach a certain age, concealing the truth from them is dangerous. Realizing that his parents’ story saved him convinces Felix again of stories’ value, and he becomes willing to tell stories to the other children. As carrots in the novel have previously represented hope, Felix’s story about a “magic carrot” is a way to keep the children’s hopes up by getting them to think about their wishes for the future.
Themes
Ruth says she’d like neater hair. A boy named Jacob says he wants his dog. Henryk says he wants his dog and his grandmother’s dog. The toddler says he wants a carrot. The girl with the bandaged arm wishes to be “alive”; when the other children laugh, Ruth explains to Felix that the girl’s name is Chaya, Hebrew for “alive.” When the wood-chewing boy, Moshe, says nothing, Chaya says he’d probably like “the rest of [his] house,” and Moshe nods.
The children’s wishes illustrate both their innocence and the horrors that antisemitic violence have wreaked on their lives. The children aren’t wishing for their parents because their parents are likely dead, so the fact that two boys wish for their dogs implies that Nazis killed their pets also. The toddler wishes for a carrot, suggesting that his imaginative horizons have narrowed to food due to hunger. Chaya makes a funny joke about her name—but in so doing, she avoids making a wish at all, suggesting she is no longer comfortable hoping for things given the situation in Nazi-occupied Poland. Finally, when Chaya suggests that Moshe would like “the rest of [his] house,” it implies that the wood Moshe constantly chews is part of a family dwelling the Nazis destroyed.
Themes
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Zelda insists that Felix share his wish, but his imagination fails. He’s transfixed by the idea “God and Jesus and the Virgin Mary and the Pope” might also hate Jewish children if Hitler does. The other children, rather than wait for Felix, start a “lice hunt.” Zelda scolds Felix. He apologizes, lies down, and tries to use his imagination to figure out how he'll save his parents “before Adolf Hitler’s Nazis kill them.”
Felix’s worries show how antisemitism can harm Jewish children psychologically as well as physically: realizing that one powerful figure he has been taught to respect hates him for no good reason, Felix becomes intensely anxious that all powerful figures hate him, and because of this anxiety, he can no longer concentrate on the other children’s games. While the other children turn picking lice off themselves into a game—showing how children can use their imaginations to derive fun even from disgusting activities—Felix takes on the massive responsibility of using his storytelling skills and imagination to rescue his parents from the Nazis.
Themes
