The Lesson of Chaim Potok’s The Chosen :: Potok Chosen Essays

The Lesson of The Chosen   The Chosen, written by Chaim Potok, is about two boys from different religious sects that become friends despite all of their conflicts. Danny and Reuven participated in a baseball game against each other and Danny smacked the ball directly into Reuvens face, shattered his glasses, and a piece of glass penetrated his eye. Danny went to visit him in the hospital hardly, before he could say anything, Reuven started screaming at Danny and commanded him to leave while Danny only wanted to say that he was sorry. When Reuvens eye healed, Danny went over to Reuvens house and they apologized and forgave each other. From past on Danny and Reuven attend each other achieve their fore nearly important ambition in life. Reb Saunders poses an important question, How can we raise ourselves above the circulate? which is the main theme in the novel.  Danny searches for intellectual truth, Reb Saunders, Dannys father, tried to become as spiritual a s possible while still on this earth, and Reuven desires to help other people.   Danny Saunders yearned for more knowledge other then Talmud and wanted to raise his intellectuality higher then what he obtained in his isolated world. He learned Talmud most of the day and After a while it gets a little boring(69). The first time Danny met Reuven properly, Ru point was astonished because, Danny recited about a third of a page of Talmud leger for word, including the commentaries and the Maimonidean legal decisions of the Talmudic disputations. He did it coldly, mechanically, and, listening to him, Reuven had the feeling he was watching a sort of human machine at work(69). He studies Talmud as if it were involuntary. Danny himself sometimes even ...gets the feeling we are all ants because he has the same routine everyday, and learns Talmud over and over as if he was programmed. Also, ants do not do what they wish but are programmed and have natural instinct. This is ben eficial in some ways, because if they all do the same thing their work pays off. They are capable of building resplendent mounds that are amazing knowing that they are still ants and if it is destroyed they can speedily and sufficiently rebuild it exactly as it were before.