Previous
Pages 112–120
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Once, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Storytelling
Innocence and Ignorance
Antisemitism vs. Human Dignity
Family
Morality, Violence, and Complicity
Summary
Analysis
Felix lies on the mattress beside Zelda, who sobs until she falls asleep. Then he works on a written version of his story for the Nazi officer until he falls asleep too. Barney shakes him awake, says they’ve run out of water, and asks Felix to help get some. Then he hands Felix nearly new boots that fit. Felix, baffled, asks where he got them, and Barney admits he traded food for them because people should “have something good in their life at least once.” Though astounded by Barney’s generosity, Felix believes he has more good things in his life than Barney or the other children.
Felix treats Zelda like his little sister, staying with her while she cries. Similarly, though Felix and Barney have just met, Barney treats Felix almost like a son, trading some of their limited food so that he can give Felix “something good.” These interactions show how the characters, having lost their original families under tragic circumstances, form important familial bonds with others who have suffered similar tragedies. Felix assumes that he has more good things in his life than the others because he believes that his parents are alive; his unthinking assumption may foreshadow that something bad has happened to his parents.
Themes
In the print shop, Felix and Barney hear voices outside. Spying through a window, they see Jewish people wearing armbands escorted by a Nazi soldier. One Jewish person asks the soldier where they’re going, and the Nazi soldier says, “Countryside […] Much food. Easy work.” Felix asks Barney whether they can go to the countryside too. Barney, horrified, says no. Felix, thinking his parents must be in the countryside, resolves that once he’s given his story to the Nazi officer, he’ll ask where in the countryside his parents are. Then he’ll leave and take Zelda with him.
Once again, an older character fails to tell a younger character the truth and so puts the younger character in potential danger. Barney clearly knows that the Nazis are not taking their Jewish prisoners to the “countryside” to enjoy “much food” and “easy work,” but he doesn’t explain what he knows to Felix—and Felix, in his ignorance, comes up with a plan that could get him and Zelda killed if enacted.
Themes
Barney enters an apartment without knocking. Felix, following, sees “a Jewish candlestick, the type that holds a row of candles,” which looks like someone has stomped on it. Barney says it’s his friends’ apartment. Felix supposes the friends forgot to lock their doors when they traveled to the countryside.
Felix doesn’t know what a menorah is called, referring to it as a “Jewish candlestick,” which emphasizes yet again that the Nazis persecuted and murdered both religious Jewish people and non-religious ethnically Jewish people like Felix. Felix’s guess that Barney’s friends must have simply forgotten to lock their doors on the way to the countryside demonstrates once again how, when he is spinning a hopeful narrative, he often ignores more plausible explanations.
Themes
In the next room, Felix sees special equipment and realizes they’re in “a dentist’s surgery.” Barney is rifling the cupboards for syringes and “small bottles filled with liquid.” When Felix asks, Barney explains it’s an anesthetic and that children shouldn’t touch it, because it’s dangerous—if you take too much you “go into a very deep sleep and never wake up.”
This scene contains a rare example of an adult giving a necessary explanation to a child in an age-appropriate way: Barney warns Felix off the dangerous anesthetic by telling him that it can kill people. The attention the novel pays to the anesthetic here seems to foreshadow that the anesthetic will be important later.
Themes
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Barney and Felix enter a bathroom and find water in the tub and toilet tank. Barney tells Felix to go find food in the kitchen while he fills some buckets. In the kitchen is a toddler covered in blood in a highchair. When Felix screams, Barney comes running. Felix, sobbing, says you shouldn’t kill children and demands to know why the parents didn’t “do something.” Barney hugs him and says that parents can’t always protect their children, no matter how hard they try.
Throughout the story Felix has been implicitly assuming, with a child’s innocence, that if he can find his parents, everything will be all right. The shocking appearance of a dead toddler reveals to him that parents can’t always “do something” to protect their children—that evils like antisemitism can destroy families even when family members are entirely devoted to one another.
Themes
Barney says that Felix’s parents “loved” him and “did everything they could” to save him. Confused by Barney’s use of the past tense, Felix asserts that he’s going to find them in the countryside. Sighing, Barney admits that the countryside is a lie—the Nazis are transporting Jewish people to kill them.
When Barney refers to Felix’s parents in the past tense, it reveals that he believes the Nazis have already killed them. Much as Felix finally realized he had to tell Zelda the truth about her parents’ deaths, Barney seems to realize here that he needs to tell Felix the truth about what is happening to Polish Jewish people.
Themes
When Felix demands to know how Barney knows this, Barney explains that an escapee from the “death camps” came to the ghetto to warn people. Felix shouts that Barney would have warned the travelers they saw earlier if his story were true. Barney, struggling with his emotions, says that no one would have believed him any more than they believed the escapee, whom the Nazis murdered—and Barney must survive to care for the children. Felix tries to invent a story about how his parents could have escaped, but he keeps picturing the dead toddler. He recalls Barney’s syringes and wishes he could use one to “never wake up and never feel this bad again.”
Barney argues that no one would have believed him about the “death camps”—that is, the concentration camps that the Nazis built in Poland for the mass murder of Jewish people, such as Auschwitz. This argument suggests that even true stories have limited power to persuade because people refuse to believe things that they don’t want to believe. Barney’s admission that he’s surviving for the sake of the children once again suggests that he has adopted them as his own family. Felix’s wish to die by suicide rather than “feel this bad again” shows how traumatic knowing the truth about evil can be, even when one needs to know the truth.
Themes
