Character Analysis: The Hidden Meaning

The Hidden Meaning Nikos Kazantzakis says, “Everything in the world has a hidden meaning” and this can certainly apply to the novel Vaclav & Lena, by Haley Tanner. In the novel, one of the protagonists named Vaclav has a passion for magic and Lena is his assistant. They perform tricks for Vaclav’s parents because Lena doesn’t have any parents. One of their magic tricks is the disappearing coin trick, where Vaclav borrows a coin from his father and makes it magically disappear gaining praise from Rasia, his mother, even though his actions reveal where it went. Then, when Vaclav finds the truth behind Lena’s parents from her aunt, he doesn’t want her to hear it and decides to make up his version of it. The disappearing coin trick relates to

Vaclav’s goal is to make the coin disappear. However, he is only able to hide it and make it not visible to the audience. He waves his wand while “holding the coin packet stiffly in his right hand and nervously slipping his left hand into his back pocket” (10-11). Although he cannot completely remove the coin from the universe or destroy it, he is able to hide it from the audience’s view by trying to slip it into his pocket. In the trick, Rasia and Oleg, Vaclav’s father, are the audience. Meanwhile, in Vaclav’s version of Lena’s parents, he describes them as “Ph.D. students at the University of Moscow, both there on scholarship, they were so brilliant…She was a scientist, and he was a poet” (285), when in reality, it is the complete opposite. Trina describes Lena’s parents as “junkies”, “criminals”, and “drug addicts” (273). Vaclav attempts to hide the reality about Lena’s parents in the like manner when he tries to hide the coin from the audience’s view. In Vaclav’s story, Lena is the main audience

In the disappearing coin trick, Vaclav does not perform the trick in a clean manner, meaning that Rasia can notice what he does to make the coin disappear. This is noticeable when Rasia thinks “she was not supposed to see Vaclav tip the coin out of the paper packet and into his open hand, and that she was not supposed to see him put the coin into his pocket when he went to take out the wand” (11). Even when she sees this, she continues to praise both Vaclav and Lena saying “Bravo!” (12). Later, in Vaclav’s story about Lena’s parents, Lena is aware that the story is not accurate because she “knew that it was a lie, but she loved it and believed it, like a fairy tale, like a song, like a bedtime story, like a magic trick” (288). Even though Vaclav makes the story up, but includes some true parts, Lena still wants to believe it. This establishes a correspondence between Rasia and Lena since they both choose to believe in something that they see the flaws in. The disappearing coin trick can have many symbolic meanings but it most definitely reflects Vaclav’s story about Lena’s parents due to the strong connections. In summation, Vaclav’s disappearing coin trick relates to Vaclav’s story of Lena’s parents because Lena serves as a distraction to the audiences, Vaclav makes an effort to hide the reality,