Summary
As Chapter 13 opens, it is the next day at the freight yard, and now everyone wants to work with Jacob. Mischa tries to move crates with Jacob but stops after Jacob yells at him for telling people about Jacob's radio. Kowalski starts working with Jacob next. After restraining himself for a bit, Kowalski finally asks Jacob if there is any new information from the radio. Jacob deepens his lie by telling Kowalski that the Russians have advanced another two miles toward Bezanika. Kowalski is pleased at this news.
The narrator introduces us to Lina, an eight-year-old girl with "long black hair and brown eyes." Lina's parents were sent away on a freight train two years prior to when the story takes place because her father, Nuriel, walked outside while wearing a jacket without the yellow stars on it. Lina was playing outside while her parents were taken away, and, as a result, she avoided the same fate. Afterwards, she moved to the building's attic, and Jacob became her primary caretaker.
On this night, like most nights, Jacob goes up to Lina's room in the attic. Lina is sick. The two chat until Kirschbaum enters the room. We learn that Kirschbaum was a renowned doctor who headed a hospital in Kraków until the ghetto was instituted. Kirschbaum says that Lina is recovering well.
Everyone in the ghetto is now anticipating the arrival of the Russians. Two camps now exist amongst the Jews in the ghetto—one that is desperate for news from Jacob’s radio, and one that views the radio as too dangerous. Herschel falls in the second group. We learn that at the freight yard, Herschel walks away (while staying within earshot) when people discuss the news coming from Jacob’s radio.
A power failure occurs, temporarily preventing Jacob from “using” his radio. Herschel views the power failure as his own achievement. Roman, Herschel’s brother, recounts that Herschel had prayed for God to address the situation with Jacob’s radio, as Herschel feared that the Germans would punish all the ghetto’s inhabitants when they learned of the transgression. After Herschel finished praying, Roman says, the lights began to flicker, and Herschel took this as a sign from God.
During the power failure, people are distressed at the silence from Jacob’s radio. Jacob himself, however, is relieved that he can cease lying, at least temporarily. Kowalski and Jacob talk at lunch after moving crates together in the morning. Mischa and Schowch, another worker at the freight yard, sit down with Jacob and Kowalski. The two new arrivals propose that Jacob plug in his radio at Kowalski’s house, which still has power. Jacob pretends to be interested in the idea, but Kowalski rejects it (as Jacob knew he would), citing the riskiness of the scheme.
In Chapter 17, Lina stands in the doorway and watches two local boys, Siegfried and Rafael, whispering on the curb across the street. Lina attempts to hear what the boys are talking about, but they move away from her after she crosses the street to be nearer to their curb. She follows them to a shed that used to house Panno the carpenter’s workshop. Lina crouches outside the shed’s window, which is missing its glass, to hear what the boys are saying. She hears them talking about blowing up the military office, realizing this plan will not work, and then deciding to lock the German officers up instead.
Suddenly, Mrs. Bujok, Siegfried’s mother, appears and asks Lina if she knows Siegfried’s whereabouts. After Lina tells Mrs. Bujok that her son is inside the shed, Mrs. Bujok enters the shed to remove Siegfried and send Rafael home. Lina leaves the scene, shouting towards the shed that the boys are stupid.
The narrator again pauses to address the reader directly. This time, the narrator focuses on the question of the ghetto’s apparent lack of resistance. He says plainly that “there was never a trace of resistance.” As for himself, he says that he would have participated in resisting the Nazi rule, but he is not the type to lead such a movement. The narrator says that he has since heard about resistance in Warsaw and Buchenwald, and he acknowledges that “an oppressed people can only be truly liberated if it contributes toward its liberation.” Yet, he says, “Where I was, there was no resistance.”
Analysis
The introduction of Lina both heightens the stakes of the novel's conflict and develops Jacob's characterization. By showing us Lina, Becker makes the threat of the Nazi Party somehow even more intense, as the destruction of Lina's innocence and naïveté would seem particularly tragic. Additionally, the relationship between Jacob and Lina helps us better understand Jacob as a character. We see him for the first time as a caregiver, which makes him even more sympathetic. We also better comprehend what compels Jacob to persist in such a dire situation.
Jacob's motivations for lying also come into more clarity here, as his desire to spread hope may be fundamentally connected to his relationship with Lina. Lina presents a model of life in the ghetto that is fundamentally disconnected from reality, and, therefore, it requires lying in order for it to spread. After Jacob begins to lie, he may see how hope looks when it is in the faces of people other than Lina, and perhaps it is this that makes him feel the need to continue lying. It is difficult to say if Becker means to suggest that Lina's hope is a positive quality in such a situation, as the end of the novel seems to quash this idealism—yet it may be a necessary one to be able to persist, even if only temporarily.
In this section, we learn of a new conflict within the ghetto—that of what to think about Jacob's radio. The two camps on this question to some extent mirror the possible audience responses to Jacob's lying, with the ironic twist that the residents of the ghetto do not know that what they are arguing about is in fact completely fictitious. As the intensity of this debate increases, the tension in the novel only grows, bringing us ever closer to some inevitable breaking point. Jacob cannot continue lying forever; if nothing ever changes, this tension and conflict will only increase. As such, the reader is expected to understand that Jacob's lying is fundamentally unsustainable.
The conversation between Siegfried and Rafael, which is overheard by Lina, offers one logical outcome for the youthful hope that Lina herself shares. They are the only characters in the text who we see considering violent resistance to the Nazis. This is because they believe such a thing to be possible, while the others, who are older and less hopeful, do not. We see in chapter 18 that the narrator would have supported violent resistance, yet he did not consider launching an uprising himself. Hope, if utilized correctly, might have enabled the ghetto to liberate itself—but nothing ever happens. In this light, perhaps the spreading of hope was a necessary prerequisite for an uprising, but there was simply not enough time to make one happen.
Chapter 18 illustrates the extent of the Nazi domination in the ghetto. That no armed uprising ever occurred demonstrates that the Nazi officials administrating the ghetto had successfully convinced the residents (other than Siegfried and Rafael, apparently) that doing so was impossible. This mental domination in conjunction with the physical confinement of the ghetto effectively helps the reader understand how fully the Jews were oppressed under the Nazi regime. Private forms of resistance, such as the existence of Herschel's secret earlocks, undermine this perspective to an extent, but it almost goes without saying that if the Jews believed an uprising was possible, they would have launched one. Private actions were therefore left as the only possible outlet for resistance.
