Survival of a Man

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          This novel really grabbed my attention from the beginning and I was totally captivated when Yanek's father kept bringing up faith and hope. I knew he was going to get ripped away from his family, but I was caught by surprise when it happened so soon. His father's faith foreshadowed the reason for Yanek's perseverance and his internal struggle of morality. His uncle Moshe was the dividing line between morality and survival for Yanek; foreshadowing Moshe's inevitable imminent death.  It is because of these two's opposing opinions he is able to decipher when to be human and went to survive. In Yanek's religion a boy becomes a man at the age of thirteen. When we think of a thirteen year old in America, we picture a child. The novel reads, "Tomorrow is my birthday- the day I would officially become a man" (42).  The irony in this is with, or without a religion, by this time Yanek had become a man already by finding his family the pigeon coop. The constant struggle for survival and morality rips Yanek away from what we would consider a childhood, but in his case, it puts his new manhood to the test in a horrifying unjust manner.
            Yanek's father is the voice of reason and faith. He refers to life as a river. He suggest that it has no beginning, middle, or end, and that all we are worth is what we do upon it- how we treat our fellow man. When it comes to survival Moshe is the realist, and tells Yanek, "You should talk some sense into him now that you're a man, Yanek. The man who falls asleep on the river drowns" (47). It is up to Yanek to decide to float or swim. In life and in the water, we have to do both. Yanek's morality is put to the test when he is forced to listen to the man below him starve to death. He says, "If I just gave him half of it... but Moshe had warned me: Don't share with anyone. Not if you wanted to survive" (83). Yanek decision to not share haunts him later in the novel. However, Yanek also discovers later why Moshe said to be no one. To not stand out. He asked a familiar face if he was from Krakow and the man replied just as Moshe suggested: "No! I am no one! (97). A few days later Yanek realizes why he was trying to keep his identity hidden. It was his identity that got him murdered (103).
            Moshe and His father's ghosts help Yanek survive for almost nine years. Ms. Immerglick sums it up perfectly: "The last time I saw you, you were just a boy ! Now look at you. You're a grown man!" Yanek's response is even better: "I had grown, even in the camps" (252).
       

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