Focus Literary Elements

Novel/Jewish-American fiction

New York during World War II.

Third-person point of view from the perspective of Lawrence Newman.

The tone is one of persistent moral outrage while the mood is pessimistically prescient about the potential for fascism to take hold in America.

Protagonist: Lawrence Newman. Antagonism: fascism and anti-Semitism.

The conflict of the story arises from the ironic consequences of a Christian anti-Semite mistakenly being thought Jewish solely from the alteration to his appearance when he begins wearing glasses.

The story comes to its conclusion as result of Newman undergoing an awakening to his prejudices which climaxes in his decision to not correct a police officer’s assumption that he is Jewish following Newman’s reporting a case of anti-Semitic violence against neighbor.

Newman’s decision to become involved in the anti-Semitic attack which occurs at the end of the novel by reporting it to the police is ironically foreshadowed in the novel’s opening scene in which his prejudicial discrimination keeps him from reporting an apparent attack against a Puerto Rican woman happening right in front of his law one night.

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Although mentioned explicitly by name, the narrative only alludes to the details of the real-life Christian Front movement which not only expressed much in common with Nazi ideology, but was gaining strength and adherents in American until the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese finally brought the U.S. into active war with Germany as well.

The dominant imagery throughout the novel is the linkage of Newman’s new glasses to his growing ability to see systemic anti-Semitism and prejudice or—by removing them—willfully ignore seeing it: “He reached up and with a flowing motion slipped off his glasses and with wide, watchful eyes stuck them in his shirt pocket.”

The entire plot of the narrative is constructed upon the paradox that the central victim of anti-Semitism in the story not only isn’t actually Jewish but is himself rabidly anti-Semitic.

The opening scene of Newman allowing his own prejudices to ignore an act of violence against another person is placed into parallel with the closing scene of Newman’s awakened sense of empathy stimulating him to report to the port an act of violence against another.

Through recurring use, the word “element” becomes a metonymic code word affording anti-Semites a way to talk about Jews with each other without actually explicitly identifying them.

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