Tell And Symbolism In Once And Then By Morris Gleitzman

Morris Gleitzman’s fictional novel, ‘Once and Then’ teaches us that everyone in life needs to see the world in a different way. Gleitzman shows this by using the perspective of a little Jewish boy. Felix’s dangerous, yet very meaningful journey to find his parents also shows that even though Felix is a child he can play such an important role in showing the reader what really happened. During the Holocaust, Jewish people had some hard times. Getting relocated, losing family members, but one thing we don’t know is how other people felt. Morris Gleitzman is using the main character, Felix, to tell a story that has never been heard before. In ‘Once and Then’, Morris Gleitzman uses Felix’s perspective, show not tell and symbolism to show the reader …show more content…
Felix who is a very vulnerable child, makes the readers realise that they cannot trust Felix to give them the actual story. When it was very obvious to the reader that the soldier was trying to kill him, to Felix it was just an ‘accident.’ Even though Felix is telling the story how he thinks it to be, Gleitzman wrote the book in such a way to make the readers realise that this is not what’s actually going on. When Felix hears gunshots, he thinks of it as “using up their bullets to save carrying them home.” Parts of the book like this, that are very distinct, are what shows the reader that this is not what is really going on. Gleitzman made this intentional choice to put Felix as the narrator because Felix’s way of understanding the situation gives the reader this naive lens that fades off after a while. Gleitzman’s techniques set up the reader to think in one way at the beginning but later on realise that this is not what’s really going …show more content…
While Felix was out looking for his parents he went back to the place they lived in before and found someone else living there, “And why is the Radzyn family living in our place? … Mr.Radzyn used to empty toilets.” This shows how unfair the Jews were treated during this time. The author doesn’t necessarily tell the reader that the Jews were treated badly, he tells us that just because some people are Jews they can be replaced by ‘toilet cleaners’. Everyone knows that toilet cleaning is not a job that is desired. What the author did here was used something that he knew everyone would know or think to be a bad thing so that it was made sure everyone could understand this message. The author wrote that ‘Mr.Radzyn used to empty toilets’ and their family was replaced with the Jews family in there house so this is showing that Jews were basically put on the same level as toilet cleaners. This truly shows that this can be both a children’s book and an adults