The Fifth Son: Analysis of Major Characters
"The Fifth Son: Analysis of Major Characters" explores the complex relationships within a Jewish family and the haunting legacy of the Holocaust. The narrator, a young Jewish man raised in a Hasidic community in Brooklyn, is driven by a desire to understand his father's traumatic past in Germany, where he endured the horrors of World War II. Reuven Tamiroff, the narrator's father, is a librarian whose silence about his experiences masks profound grief stemming from the loss of his six-year-old son, Ariel, to a Nazi officer known as the Angel. Simha-the-Dark, Reuven's close friend, engages in philosophical debates about vengeance, adding depth to the narrative as they both grapple with their shared history of violence against their oppressor.
The Angel, whose real name is Richard Lander, serves as the embodiment of cruelty and betrayal, skillfully manipulating trust before inflicting harm. The narrator also navigates his youthful love for Lisa Schreiber, a vibrant college student who aids him in his quest for understanding. The story weaves together themes of memory, trauma, and the search for identity, making it a poignant reflection on the impact of the Holocaust on personal and familial relationships. Other characters, such as the narrator's mentally disabled mother, Rachel, and Bontchek, an old friend of Reuven, further enrich the narrative with their distinct perspectives on loss and survival. Overall, the analysis invites readers to contemplate the ongoing effects of historical trauma on individual lives and relationships.
The Fifth Son: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Elie Wiesel
First published: Le Cinquième Fils, 1983 (English translation, 1985)
Genre: Novel
Locale: New York City and Reshastadt, Germany
Plot: Historical realism
Time: The 1960's to the 1980's
The narrator, a young Jewish man, born in New York City in 1949 and living in a Hasidic section of Brooklyn. Reared and educated as an Orthodox Jew, he was silent and often gloomy as a young child. Later, during adolescence, as he studies to become a writer and teacher, he sets out on a quest to uncover the inaccessible mysteries of his father's painful experiences in Germany during the 1940's. The narrator deeply loves his father, considering him the most important influence in his life. Since childhood, the narrator has felt cut off from his father's thoughts; he has ached to share the older man's wisdom and pain. In his quest, however, he is able to learn of his father's past from the latter's notes, written to his dead firstborn son, and from the discourses of his father's two old friends.
Reuven Tamiroff, the father of the narrator, a librarian living in Brooklyn, New York. After surviving World War II in Davarowsk, Germany, along with his wife, Reuven settled into a quiet life of books and scholarship on his beloved philosopher, Paritus. When his wife's mental breakdown in the mid-1950's forces her to live in a hospital, Reuven rears his son, the narrator, alone, showing him love and attention, taking him nearly everywhere he goes, and allowing him to visit with the one old friend who visits their home. He cannot speak of his past; the secrets of his life in the ghetto and the concentration camps are so terrible that they cannot be put into speech. To help overcome his grief, he writes loving letters to his dead six-year-old son, who was murdered by the Angel, a Nazi officer in Germany.
Simha-the-Dark, the only close friend of Reuven, both in Germany and, later, in Brooklyn. A clever metaphysical man who earns his comfortable living as a merchant “selling shadows,” Simha meets with Reuven on the last Thursday of each month to argue philosophical issues. The issue that most occupies the two men is the justification of acts of vengeance against acknowledged enemies. This subject looms over all other problems for them because of their own vengeful assassination of the Angel in 1946, which, twenty years later, they discover to have been unsuccessful. Even with his troubled past, Simha is able to live according to Jewish law, which requires that each person live in joy, although that joy may be incomplete. He pleases those around him with mesmerizing anecdotes illustrating his quiet wisdom.
The Angel, Richard Lander, the military governor of the ghetto and town of Davarowsk, Germany, during World War II. A mediocre actor, Lander speaks with a false and cruel kindness, apparently enjoying the duplicity of creating trust in the Jews of the ghetto, only to annihilate them later at his whim. He survives the bomb attack by Reuven and Simha but, twenty years later, is confronted by the narrator and must exist knowing that his identity has been discovered.
Lisa Schreiber, the young woman the narrator meets at City College and whom he comes to love. Vibrant and popular, she is attracted to the shy narrator and invites him to spend the evening with her. Her father is a well-to-do banker, and Lisa has an independence that allows her to help the narrator in many ways in his quest for the Angel. She charms Reuven, and, although she and the narrator separate during their adult lives, she is the love of the narrator's young life.
Ariel, the brother of the narrator, born eleven years before him in Germany. He is executed by the Angel at the age of six; however, Reuven continues to write him letters years after his death. He was a beautiful, strong, and brilliant child hunted down and killed specifically to punish Reuven, the leader of the Jews in the ghetto.
Rachel Tamiroff, the mentally disabled and hospitalized mother of the narrator. When the narrator was six years old, she lost her sanity (she said that she was “missing something”) and has spent the remainder of her life in a hospital in upstate New York. The narrator recalls her anguish and her solemn beauty, but not until he is a young man does he learn that his brother Ariel was also six years old when he was murdered by the Angel.
Bontchek, another friend who experienced the Holocaust with Reuven. He did not participate in the attempted murder of the Angel. An oversized man, he meets Reuven by accident in the New York Public Library, where Reuven works, after a separation extending back to the end of the war in Germany. He often meets with the narrator, taking him to the theater and concerts and explaining the mysteries of his father's life. Even though he has had an intimate friendship with Reuven and Simha, he is not invited to the Thursday evening discussions. Only later is it revealed that this is because he did not participate in the assassination attempt on the Angel.