Conflict In “The Chosen” Essay, Research Paper
Danny s Conflicting ForcesIt is a classic story of two fathers and two sons and the pressures on all of them to pursue the religion they share in the way that is best suited for each. In the book The Chosen by Chaim Potok, we get to know the characters Reuven and Danny. They are two unlikely boys that become friends, as a result of an accident. As Reuven and Danny mature they realize in each other a friend, and a person that may guide them in life and explore ideas and worlds neither had ever considered before. If it weren t for Reuven and his father, Danny s life could have been spent carrying on the tradition of a rabbi, a life he would have yearned to escape. Because of Danny s great intelligence he wanted to look beyond Hasidism and Jewish controversy to study life and psychology. He wants to know why people act the way they do and not to be tied down with a destiny of which he doesn t want. Danny believes in his religion but he does not want that to be his whole life. Danny has many problems that he faces such as if he should follow his mind s desire or the plan set for him before he was born, by a father who doesn t even know his son. The result is an internal conflict with Danny s own desires and wants and the desires of his father which create a theme and eliminate the book as a whole. At the start of The Chosen, Danny is a fifteen year-old Hasidic boy, son of the tzaddik Reb Saunders and destined to follow in his father s footsteps as the leader of his Hasidic section. Little Danny possesses a huge intellect, and is bored with his 2everyday teachings and religion. He instead wishes to study psychology, despite the obvious conflict between the non-religious teachings of Freud and his Hasidic belief. After injuring Reuven Malter in a softball game, Danny becomes his friend and finds a greater access to a more worldly fellowship. Danny lives in a world that is controlled by his father and the ways of Hasidic tradition, and is raised silently from a very important father in the Jewish community. Danny never condemns him for the silent treatment he received from his father. He thinks it is necessary for training to become a tzaddik. He still must face the battle between his father s life-long wish and his Hasidic background on one hand and the more secular life he desires on the other. Our two conflicts are the Hassidic tradition that Reb Saunders has been teaching him all his life, and Danny s new interest in psychology and Freud s teachings. Danny feels restricted by the tradition that destines him to succeed his father in an unbroken line of great, respected Hasidic rabbis, while his own excited mind is beginning to reach out into forbidden areas of non-religious information. Danny knew at a young age he would follow his father and now has realized what he has to give up for that to happen. Reb Saunders said teaching in silence helps to find your own person and that “one learns of the pain of others by suffering from one s own pain.” “It destroys our self pride, our arrogance, our indifference toward others.” (278). He taught Danny the way his father taught him, which is through silence. This kind of upbringing also enabled Danny to look for other things to stimulate his intellect. Because Reb wanted Danny to learn about the world by himself, and 3from personal experience, he was opened to the world of reading, which introduced him to psychology.
He was intrigued by psychology and to understand more about it, he taught himself German, so that he could read Freud in the original text. Danny became increasingly amazed with Freud s teachings. Caught in the struggle of a strange method by which his father is teaching him compassion for human suffering, Danny finds in Freud the means for handling pain and suffering. Once he started to learn about psychology, it pulled him in and his interest in Hasidic traditions started to fade. Danny absorbed and utilized Freudian psychoanalysis and its means for the healing of human pain and suffering. These two conflicting forces tear Danny up inside because as much as he wants to please his father and the traditions he was born to follow, he has an overwhelming urge to look for a more worldly education, that doesn t contain just religion. These two elements illuminate the meaning of the book as a whole. One suggests that the theme doesn t need the outside world to solve problems. The outside world is disturbing and unnecessary. Using your own inherent ideas you can solve all your problems from inside your own tradition. Reb Saunders thinks that all Danny needs is the Hasidic tradition and of course a Hasidic soul. Reb said, “Better I should have had no son at all than to have a brilliant son who had no soul. . . .And I had to make certain his soul would be the soul of a tzaddik no matter what he did with his 4life.”(279). Since Reb never took the time to talk to Danny, except during lesson, he doesn t know what Danny wants in life or what he thinks or feels. The only world that Reb Saunders knows is the religion of a Hasidic Jew, because that has been his influence his whole life. However, Danny has been influenced by Reuven, Reuven s father and literature. The second element insists on an openness to the outside world. Not everything out there is disturbing. This element focuses on the good things in the world. There are some beautiful things that haven t even been seen yet. To take what you know from the outside world, and to incorporate them with your own tradition is what Danny wants to do. He does not want to give up the Hasidic religion, yet he wants to follow his own dreams. He wants to learn more about psychology and also the world that he knows little of. Danny s struggle of his tradition to become a Hasidic rabbi and his wanting to be part of a more secular society are the two conflicting forces that surround him in this novel. Should he please Reb, and do what a long line of fathers and sons have done for many generations or should Danny let his own mind and heart tell him what to do. In the end, Danny s world of psychology and education won over his tradition. Though, Danny is still a Hasidic Jew, he had to change to be allowed to go to the college of his choice to further study Freud. Reb Saunders has known that Danny wanted to become a psychologist and not a rabbi. He just could not accept it. Reb knows that Danny will study psychology, yet still will be a tzaddik. Danny s conflict is universal. Whether or not children should follow in their parent s footsteps is 5questionable. Even if the child does not become what is destined for them, those ideas and teachings that were rooted in them from the beginning will always stay there, because it is the core of all that they have learned in life.