Jacob the Liar Literary Elements

Historical Fiction, Tragedy

A ghetto in Poland during World War II.

First-person narration. The narrator is a character in the novel, though he spends most of the text recounting Jacob's story.

Tone: dark comedy. Mood: bleak, anxious. The narrator uses a tone that is wryly comedic while describing events of extreme horror and pain.

Protagonist: Jacob Heym; Antagonist: The Nazi regime.

Jacob Heym happens to learn that the Russian army is heading in the direction of the ghetto where he and other Jews are held captive by the Nazi Party. He tells this news to a friend and lies by saying he has a radio to make the information seem more reliable. It soon gets out that Jacob has a radio. He is forced to continue lying about the advance of the Russians while conditions in the ghetto stay the same or deteriorate.

The climax of the novel comes after Jacob confesses to his friend Kowalski that he does not really have a radio. The next day, Kowalski is found dead, having committed suicide because of the news.

The narrator hints at what will happen after Jacob tells his friend Mischa that he has a radio, saying "People will come to Jacob, to Heym the possessor of a radio, and want to hear the latest news; they will come with eyes such as Jacob has never seen before. And what on earth is he going to tell them?"

A Nazi officer named Preuss tells a Jewish doctor named Kowalski that the doctor's position "isn’t exactly enviable" while he is being taken to examine Hardtloff, the head of the ghetto.

The novel alludes to the Biblical Jacob, who lies to his father, Isaac, to gain the birthright that is promised to his older brother.

Vivid imagery of violence being carried out against Jews is used to emphasize the bleakness of the situation in which they find themselves.

Metonymy: A Nazi soldier driving a car is described as "a well-pressed uniform," hinting at the subordination of the individual to the ideology of Nazism amongst adherents to the Nazi Party.

When Jacob prepares to tell everyone that his radio has died, he plans to say that "Yesterday it was still singing like a little bird, and today not a murmur." This personification of the radio emphasizes just how important it had become to the residents of the ghetto.