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Analysis: The Chosen By Chaim Potok

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“Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.” ~ Albert Einstein. This story tells some thing about how Danny and Reuven, two children from two different culture, became friend. In the book The Chosen, Chaim Potok uses Danny to shows out that people could separate from their culture and people could be friend even though they have different culture and belief. Readers could find out that Danny was response for thing that he did in the beginning of the story. The book shows out Danny knows a lot of knowledge but he did not really distinguish the knowledge that he get by himself. Throughout this book, Danny show out responsible to things he did, have deep knowledge, and very brave. First of all, Danny show out responsible to things he did. He hit Danny’s face and broke his glasses by the baseball. After the game, Mr. Galanter calls a cab to take Reuven to the hospital, and Danny went to the hospital for apologize to Reuven. This shows out that he is very responsible to things that he did, even though they were in different culture. After Danny went to the hospital to apologize to Reuven, Reuven said, “Well, I don’t want to listen. Why don’t you go home? Go home and be sorry over my eye!”(Chapter 3), but in the next day Danny came back again for apologize to …show more content…

In the book The Chosen, Chaim Potok describe Danny as a child that love to study, and this makes him have a really deep knowledge. When Danny tells some thing about Freud to Reuven, Reuven describe himself as “What I heard was new, so new that I couldn’t grasp it at first”(Chapter 12). Though this part, readers could find out that Danny studied many hard thing that Reuven did not know. When Reuven cannot figure out what is Freud, Danny explain to him patiently. When someone could teach some knowledge to others very clearly, this shows out that that person really understand that knowledge. Readers could find out that Danny really masters many

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His father told him to talk to him that he needed a friend because he was special. The time Reuven was in the hospital they learned about each other and became friends. Reuven learned that Danny wasn’t allowed to read any secular books and his father would not like it (who was the rabbi of the Brooklyn sect of Hasidism), and that Reuven’s father had been recommending those books. Shabbat dinner Reuven asked his father more about Danny, his father used history from as far backs as the early 1800s of the first Jews in

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Also, since David was working so hard during the end of the book, Reuven felt obligated as a son to help his father’s dream to expand the Jewish population and form a new Jewish state. Becoming a rabbi would be the best way for Reuven to continue his father’s dream after his death. Reb Saunders also affected Danny’s career path. Reb Saunders said that Danny would not be a Jewish tzaddik for a synagogue, but a “tzaddik for the world. And the world needs a tzaddik” (Potok 287).

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Reuven was glad that Danny came to visit again despite their previous encounter. after sending Danny away, he was surprised at his own actions and had come to regret it at the end. His own father reminded him that the Talmud says that if a person is willing to apologize for his own wrongdoing, then you must at least try to understand and forgive him and that is exactly what Reuven intends to do after feeling angry and depressed with himself from what he had said to Danny. Throughout this chapter, an unlikely friendship between the two boys develop. They begin to talk and learn more about one another rather than dwelling in fateful day of the ballgame; in other words, they let bygones be bygones.

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When describing scenes in the story, the author uses many vivid settings that paint a perfect picture in my mind. This quote is also very crucial to how Reuven became to hate Danny. This was the start of the nervousness Reuven was experiencing while playing baseball against Danny. 3. “I found myself growing more and more angry, and I felt the anger begin to focus itself upon Danny Saunders, and suddenly it was not at all difficult for me to hate him.”

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When they meet at the baseball field they judge each other based on rumors they have heard or by the actions of the team. Reuven thinks of them as the “whole snooty bunch of Hasidim” (Chosen 62). Reuven thought Danny was a malicious person because he knew that Danny purposely tried to hit him. But later when Reuven opened up to Danny and stopped being so judgmental, Reuven realized that Danny was kind and just needed a friend. When Reuven is hit with the baseball, there is a chance he might be blind.

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Reuven found a new appreciation of his health since he could have gone blind. Another example of perception change from the novel is when Reuven realizes Danny isn't how he appeared to be. During the story, Mr. Malter says “Things are always as they seem to be, Reuven?”. He says this because Reuven told him that it seemed like Danny hit him deliberately.

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In Chaim Potok’s, The Chosen, Reuven does not change over the course of the book. Reuven allows his emotions to make him act and think rashly rather than learning more about the situation. In the early chapters of, The Chosen, Reuven makes assumptions on people without understanding what they may have been thinking. When Reuven is in the hospital after the softball game and his father comes to visit, they discuss Danny and him hitting Reuven’s eye: “[Danny] said his team would kill us apikorsim”

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In his book The Promise Chaim Potok leads the reader on a heartbreaking journey full of spiritual conflict and decision. As a sequel to The Chosen, The Promise picks up with Reuven Malter, the main character and a Jewish man now in his mid-twenties, attending Hirsch University, a Jewish seminary in Brooklyn, New York. Reuven keeps his friendship with Danny Saunders, whom he met on a baseball field during his teenage years and later went to college with, even though they now go their separate ways as Reuven becomes a rabbi, and Danny practices psychology. During the summer Reuven dates Rachel Gordon, the niece of Abraham Gordon, a man excommunicated from the Jewish society, and meets Abraham’s son, Michael, a stubborn teen with a mental issue. Also, over the same summer Reuven’s father, David Malter, wrote a controversial book about the Talmud.

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This shows that Danny’s character in the book is highly influenced by Reb Saunders’ way of raising him. On this page, Danny explains how he reconstructed the text from the talmud by himself. Rav Gershenson is proud of this and tells him that his father is a good teacher and that he is blessed to have such a father. This shows that Reuven and his father are very much

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Reb Saunders looked exhausted and sickly. Reb Saunders talks to Danny through Reuven, never speaking to Danny. He then explains why he raised the Danny the way he did. Reb saw that his son had a brilliant mind, but had little soul in his father’s eyes. Reb wanted Danny to realize the immense suffering in the world so he could develope a great soul.

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“I [Reuven] saw Danny all the time in school, but the silence between us continued. We had begun to communicate with our eyes, with nods of our heads, with gestures of our hands. But we did not speak to each other.” (Pages 255-256) Reuven and Danny were not allowed to speak to each other, so they communicated without speaking. They kept their friendship alive even though Danny’s father had tried to kill it.

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With everyone around knowing Danny cannot stop

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Although The Chosen focuses equally on both Reuven’s and Danny’s personal and religious development, it is Danny’s story that provides the central conflict of the novel and sets in motion both protagonists’ process of discovery. Danny and Reuven’s similarities—their love of learning, quick minds, and deep Jewish faith—allow them to relate to one another and become friends. At the same time, their differences in family situations, culture, and relationships to the non-Jewish secular world allow them to learn from one another. Throughout the novel, Danny learns restraint and introspection from Reuven. As Reb Saunders points out in the final chapter, Reuven entered Danny’s life when Danny “was ready to rebel.”

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655 Words | 3 Pages

In “The Chosen,” Chaim Potok uses the relationship between Danny and Reuven to show the social and political problems that they dealt with. Reuven didn’t fully understand the Hasidic view on things; he asked his dad, Mr. Malter, many questions, that of which his dad knew most or just gave his opinions. Reuven was drug into Danny’s father, Reb Saunders’s, synagogue multiple times, where he learned more about the Talmud and the history behind the Hasidic religion. Reb Saunders’s was considered a tzaddik, by which everyone looked upon him as a god, but a tzaddik is just a pious leader that is a messenger between God and man. Also, with Reb Saunders being a tzaddik, he will have to pass down the role to his son, Danny.

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Colour has meaning, making the decision to use black and white was a step toward articulating a certain feeling for the audience. Gerald Mast in his discussion around monochrome photography notes that lack of colour is a vote for the visual beauty of necessity - one which focuses on shapes, forms, shadows and textures in a way the human eye, that sees everyday life in colour does not. (Brinkmann, 11), colour has a subconscious effect on its viewer and thus can be carefully selected to encourage interpretation of a certain kind. One of anxiety, claustrophobia and realism in ‘Grace’. Colour is a sensation, Rhodes and Leon argue, as opposed to a material existence - seeing particular colours enhances particular feelings in colour psychology,

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