Friendship In Chaim Potok's The Chosen

Friendship is a wonderful yet confusing thing. This concept is brilliantly displayed in Chaim Potok’s The Chosen. In the book, the main character, Reuven, and Danny Saunders become friends through an interesting turn of events during a baseball game, the short version being that Danny ended up putting Reuven in the hospital with a baseball in the eye. After Reuven gets over some feelings of bitterness towards Danny, the two grow to be great friends. There are many difficulties when it comes to friendship, but the beauty of a good friendship is that good friends can power through them. Genuine friendships are excellent things to have. It’s nice to have somebody to confide in when you don’t know where to turn. In The Chosen, Reuven states that he “didn’t mean to offend you [Danny] or anything, I just want to be honest.’ ‘I want you to be honest’ Danny said.” (Page 119) These is the kind of relationships that good friends can have. They can just be honest with each other about their feelings, and not have to worry about judgement in a bad sense. Sadly, friendships

“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. Even though their friendship was nowhere near like it used to be, it was still alive. The Chosen is a very intriguing novel, and an excellent read. It blends a lot of real-world problems into a coherent story. Chaim Potok did an especially good job of capturing both the ups and the downs of friendship, and organized them in a way which one could almost feel some of them for