Previous
Pages 18–28
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
Passing through the orphanage’s gate into the forest, Felix notes that he didn’t have to “dig a tunnel” or engage in other adventure-story tropes to escape. He reminisces about Dodie and then makes himself stop—he needs to focus on reaching his parents’ bookshop and figuring out how to find them.
When Felix notices the difference between fictional escapes and his own, the novel is slyly pointing out the difference between many stories and reality. Felix’s refusal to miss Dodie shows that he is consciously trying to prioritize his family over his non-familial relationships.
Themes
Hiding in a pigpen near the village, Felix recalls that when his parents took him to the orphanage, they traveled along a river. Felix tells the pig he needs better shoes and clothes and someone to give him directions to the river. He considers stealing the pig’s food but decides not to: the pig is penned, whereas he “can get food anywhere” because he’s “free.”
Felix won’t take food from the pig because he’s “free” to go where he likes and find food elsewhere, whereas the pig is not. Though Felix’s assumptions about his freedom show his ignorance of the situation in Nazi-occupied Poland, his refusal to steal food from a penned creature again shows his instinctive goodness and generosity.
Themes
After wandering through fields, Felix finds a remote house “with one of those carved metal things that religious Jewish families in our town have on their houses.” Felix knocks and calls out; no one answers. When he enters the house, he finds a turned-over chair, abandoned meals, the stove on, and the back door open. Hearing gunfire in the distance, Felix concludes that the house’s owners must’ve gone rabbit hunting and won’t return for a while.
By “one of those carved metal things,” Felix may mean a mezuzah, Torah verses—often in an ornamental protective case—that practicing Jewish people put on their house’s doorpost. Felix doesn’t know the words for Jewish cultural objects, which underscores that the Nazis are persecuting him and his family not for their beliefs or practices but for their ethnicity. When Felix hears gunfire, he assumes someone is hunting rabbits, again showing his ignorance of the danger he’s in.
Themes
Felix drinks water and eats some food, though he’s careful to leave some for the house’s occupants. He finds a hat and men’s clothes, which he cuts shorter to fit him. He also finds shoes, which he stuffs with rags to make them fit. He writes a note (torn from his notebook) apologizing for stealing. Hearing gunshots again, he recalls how his father told him that wild animals like water and infers that the gunshots must be coming from the river. He decides to head that way.
Felix makes sure that he doesn’t take too much food from the house and tears a page from his beloved notebook (which represents the love of stories inherited from his parents) to apologize for stealing. These actions show his moral goodness. When he deduces that the “hunting” is occurring near water, it shows both his logical mind and his dangerous ignorance.
Themes
Get the entire Once LitChart as a printable PDF.
Felix pauses at an intersection. He listens for gunshots but only hears nature noises. Reminded of a story he wrote, where his parents navigated to a troll’s cave by listening for its chewing, he thinks: “Sometimes real life can be different from stories.” At last, he hears gunshots again. He heads down a dirt road, sees tire tracks, and decides to hitch a ride if he can.
As Felix sees more of the world outside the orphanage, he quickly realizes that “real life can be different from stories”—but he still doesn’t realize how much more sinister the real world is than the world of children’s stories.
Themes
A truck is coming down the road. Felix walks into the road to flag it down and realizes it’s stuffed with “half-naked people.” Confused, Felix reasons that they must be farm laborers who’ve taken their clothes off to travel to a swimming holiday. When the truck doesn’t slow down, Felix eventually has to jump out of the road. Felix is astonished that the driver “was so busy daydreaming about his holiday” that he didn’t see Felix.
This incident emphasizes, once again, that Felix’s ignorance and his goodness prevent him from correctly interpreting the things he sees. The “half-naked people” are likely Jewish prisoners, and the driver likely saw Felix but refused to slow down—but such cruelty and callousness simply aren’t intuitive to Felix, who assumes that the prisoners are just travelers and that the driver put him in danger out of negligence, not malice.
Themes
Felix sees an “army truck” coming. He waves and calls out, asking for a ride. One soldier “pretends” to aim a rifle at him. Felix assumes the soldier is trying to “giv[e] a country kid a thrill.” The truck passes, bouncing over a pothole, and a gun goes off. Felix falls, stunned—the bullet passed near his head. Figuring it must’ve been an accident, Felix gets up and yells that he’s fine—but the soldiers in the truck don’t see him.
Felix is so unable to believe that other people have evil intentions that when a soldier shoots at him, he assumes it was an accident and tries to reassure the soldier that he’s fine. Felix’s emotional generosity once again highlights both his dangerous ignorance and his goodness.
Themes
Felix reaches the river and has a drink. He’s feeling better, having decided that the Nazis must be destroying books in remote areas first so they won’t have to travel there when winter comes. His parents’ bookshop in town should be fine. Suddenly, Felix hears loud gunfire. Though he still thinks it must be hunters, he’s glad he’s traveling the other way. Suddenly, the river runs red. Felix wonders whether it’s blood but decides the hunters couldn’t have shot that many rabbits: it must be “a trick of the light.”
In addition to murdering Polish Jewish people in concentration camps, Nazi soldiers also carried out genocidal mass shootings against Poland’s Jewish population. Given the truck of half-naked prisoners that Felix just saw, it’s likely that they were shot to death upstream, and their blood is turning the river red. Felix’s somewhat panicked insistence that the blood-red river must be “a trick of the light” hints that he’s beginning to suspect something is very wrong.
Themes
