The Characters In Chaim Potok's The Chosen

Everyone experiences some unfavorable circumstances, however unique. Some people undergo a bit of a challenging, questionable upbringing, like Danny Saunders, one of the main characters in Chaim Potok’s masterpiece, The Chosen. The way people handle these circumstances plays a role in the characters they develop into. Danny’s destiny was unpalatable to him. In accordance with tradition, Danny was to inherit the role of tzaddik from his father upon his death. His father, an increasingly important man, strove to enforce a number of rules, including the books his son reads. Danny, upon reading certain books, unfavorable to his father, readily accepted their contents without a moment’s hesitation. Throughout the novel, The Chosen, Danny demonstrates his imprisonment, rebellious nature, and gullibility. …show more content…
From him directly telling Reuven, to Chaim Potok creating an analogy of his situation, a variety of examples exist. Laying out his predicament to Reuven in chapter four, Danny explains to him about how the role of tzaddik works. “I have no choice. … It’s like a dynasty. … The people expect me to become their rabbi. … I’m—I’m a little trapped” (Potok 82). Against his will, Danny is stuck—“doomed” to become a rabbi. Another example exists as an analogy in chapter nine, when the text describes a fly stuck in the web of a spider, flailing frantically, striving desperately to free itself from the sticky, gripping threads of the web (173-74). In the described analogy, the web represents Hasidism, gripping Danny, imprisoning him. As displayed by Danny directly telling Reuven of his trapped state and then in the analogy painted by Chaim Potok, the fact that Hasidism imprisons Danny is evident through the