There
are books that not only create vivid characters but settings of incredible
detail and vitality. In Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay the world the story unfolds in is portrayed as vividly as its characters. The smells,
textures and sounds of Prague, New York, the Antarctica are all infused with mood
and memory and potentiality. Unlike the settings of Austen or Asimov, Chabon’s
descriptions of the world before, during and after the Second World War are
fundamental to the story. Not one brick or breathe or smudge of smoke can be
omitted.
The HD quality of the
settings amplify the youthful exuberance and energy of two cousins:
Sammy the American who as a gay man suffers much in the pyscho-babble anti-love
morality of the USA; Joe the young Jewish exile from occupied Czechoslovakia,
struggling to find a way to rescue his family. The vividness of the settings,
their very richness and tangibility also highlights the terrifying muteness
from Joe’s homeland. The holocaust is never depicted in this story, yet that
silence from abroad is as powerful as it is chilling.
Joe, crippled by this uncommunicable
horror, struggles to make the transition from the lost and utterly
irrecoverable world and family he grew up in to the new life offered to him
in America by Sammy and Rosa the artist who falls in love with Joe. In the15 years
or so that the story covers Joe experiences joy, passion, success, riches,
failure, grief, anger and desperate murderous rage. Sammy, a gay man in
anti-gay world suffers also, humiliation and self-denial and the terrible
chains of prejudice that bind and bite his heart, soul and creativity.
Unsurprisingly, things get
complicated and confused in the lives of Joe, Sammy, Rosa and Tommy (the son of
Joe and Rosa) and yet in the end the solution is very simple. No matter what society
throws at us, we should accept what we are and love and support those around
us. It is a message that may not seem that radical or innovative - Charles Dickens
pretty much used it as the theme for all his novels - but the pain and
murderous violence that is always quietly waiting in the background of this
tale is a reminder not only of what happens when we turn against love and
acceptance, but of how easy it is for each of us to stray onto the path that
leads step by small and steady step to the gates to Auschwitz. Conversely, awareness of how
easy it is to stray into evil is a powerful incentive for us to stay loving,
kind and accepting.
Related links on Nazi violence:
Related articles on acceptance and intolerance:
Articles
and books and words
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