There are five characters in The Slave who are full of intrigue. Naturally, Jacob, the main character and slave, is one, but the other four are minor, yet copious and near prophetic, characters. The second and third characters are Adam Pilitzky and Theresa (Lady) Pilitzky; the fourth and fifth are Waclaw the ferryman and the Jewish emissary. Also, there will be frequent references to a Wanda/Sarah, Jacob’s wife, although she is physically present in neither scenario. Jacob has a conversation with each of them, but their conflicting personalities and beliefs open the field for inquisition. In literary terminology, everyone fulfills an archetypal and/or biblical role! For this essay I’m going to examine two sequences of events which involve several of the most intriguing characters. First, I’m going to establish consistency amongst the character of Jacob. I’m going to test the consistency between the The Slave’s Jacob with that of The Bible’s Jacob. Second, I’m going to analyze Jacob’s encounters with the aforementioned minor characters. Though they are short-lived characters, their lessons and impacts are powerful.
Jacob is the archetypal hero. Isaac Bashevis Singer, the author of The Slave, was obviously heavily inspired by The Bible. We know little about is his life before his textual life. And ain’t it quaint; Jacob happens to be an early biblical figure. We must examine the scriptural, textual, and literary inception (within the Biblical paradigm and timeline) of Jacob. Go!: He is begot of Rebekah, his father is Isaac [son of Abraham]. Given our instated biblical paradigm, immediately we must note that Jacob is of royal blood. Symbolically speaking, he is grandson of the real king, Abraham. Jacob is also a twin; he and his outdoorsman brother, Esau, are rival twins. In Genesis the Lord says to Rebekah, “Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels: and the one people shall be stronger than the other people: and the elder shall serve the younger.” (Genesis 25:23) Jacob is a house cat, not a hunting dog; “And the boys grew: and Esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the field; and Jacob was a plain man, dwelling in tents. And Isaac loved Esau…but Rebekah loved Jacob.” (Genesis 25:27). The brothers’ inherent power struggle grows so fierce that Jacob’s foil and equal grows to hate him. From the eyes of Esau, Jacob has ashamed him, though you could say he grew jealous from the combination of a bad business deal and a brief moment of favoritism. Therefore, he plans to slay his brother. Soon thereafter, Isaac and Rebekah catch wind of the plot and instruct Jacob to flee. This where Jacob’s biblical recount will cease because of Isaac’s final wishes for his son. “And Isaac called to Jacob, and blessed him, and charged him, and said unto him, ‘Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan.’” This is a biblical call for anti-miscegenation. Singer’s Jacob character embodies the sensitive, studious, nerdy character from The Bible. In the novel, it’s ironic that Jacob is an actual slave. Yet, Jacob’s temperament is that of a Prince, subordinate to the code of the Father(s) [entailing either Isaac or God]. Singer’s Jacob is a granary dweller. There’s not nothing in them “tents,” there’s books and knowledge! Like the nerd he is, Jacob ritualistically studies the divine rules of the Torah and Talmud. Its rules guide his philosophy and guide his life, and Jacob is very strict with himself. You could call him oppressed because of his enslavement, but “His rule was to prefer difficult to easy.” (Singer, 297) One might call it oppression, butJacob might call it equilibrium.
After Isaac’s final wishes, Singer begins The Slave. The Cossacks’, the barbarians, revolutionaries, or war engagers [whichever you prefer], bring the “wrath of Esau” upon Jacob’s life. They pillage Jacob’s home, murder his family, and launch his career as a bona fide slave. The wrath has afflicted his livelihood, and Jacob still finds himself in a different town, as his parents instructed in The Bible. Thereafter, Jacob continues what he’s been doing since his pretext. He’s back to his normative routine, he works and studies in solitude, but then a girl enters the picture. Wanda/Sarah changes everything. Jacob’s divine, enslaving instructions forbid Wanda from him, yet his submission to the laws isn’t enough to control his emotions. Sexually associating himself with a gentile would make him guilty of lust, idolatry, eventual miscegenation and lying, and numerous continuing acts of blasphemy against his Father(s). You see; in one case, by sticking with his normative routine with no girl, he’s indentured to the gentiles. In the other case, if he gets the girl he’s a guilty blasphemer. Conceptually, he’s a slave no matter how he plays it.
The first sequence of events is between Jacob, Adam, and Lady Pilitzky in their home after a recent scuffle involving Jacob and Adam, whence there was a miracle amongst the townspeople (or merely an exploitation of Jacob and his wife’s, Wanda and/or Sarah, secret). His wife has committed two sins simultaneously, miscegenation and “mute-ation” (the aforementioned secret), and he’s a contributing blasphemer. Wanda/Sarah is eight months pregnant, give or take, with Jacob’s child and her fate lies within the arms of the Adam the skeptic. Simply, Jacob is in a tight spot going into this examination. Adam’s realistic and a proud, Christian-bred leader, though he is quite paranoid, seldom optimistic, and a socially clumsy drunk. He is outspoken for most of his conversation with Jacob because he’s trying inform Jacob of skeptical views about God. For example, Adam asks Jacob with a slant in his tone, “Have you ever heard of Democritus, Jew?” Jacob does not know, and Adam continues. “Democritus was a philosopher who said that chance ruled everything. The Church has proscribed his writings, but I read him. He believed in neither idols nor Gods. The world, he said, was the result of blind powers.” (Singer, 187). Jacob probably expected a more interrogative format; instead it was a philosophical converse. Then the conversation seamlessly transgresses after Adam’s final proclamation. Theresa asks the heretical Adam to retire for the evening, and she is now Jacob’s lone host. She embodies the archetype of the temptress, a flickering-eyed femme fatale; a good and bad idiosyncrasy. For example, she’s honest about what she speaks or shows. She tells Jacob of when the Swedes invaded the Pilitzky manor. They flogged (or tortured) her with amusement. Jacob inquires why people would do such a thing, and Theresa half-jokingly responds, “’If my suitor had been young and handsome, or at least healthy’ (Lady Pilitzky’s tone changed) ‘I might have been tempted. ‘All’s fair in love and war,’ as they say.” Jacob then compares the Swedes actions to those of the Cossacks, but Theresa smiles and interjects, “Ah, the Swedes are angels? No, Jacob, all men are alike. Frankly, I don’t blame them. Women have only one use for them.” Jacob denies any Jewish involvement with such bad behavior, but Theresa’s witticism is, “Jew or Tartar, a man is a man. Why, your men were allowed a host of wives. The great kings and prophets had harems.” Jacob appeals to Judaism’s rules, what’s forbidden, and prior speculative Rabbi-administered edicts, but Theresa at long last delivers her argument’s nail in the coffin. “The Christians forbid it too.” She begins. “But what does human nature care about edicts? I don’t condemn a man for wanting. If he gets a woman to say ‘yes’ I don’t condemn her either. My view is that everything comes from God – including lust. And not everyone’s a saint, and not every saint was always saintly. Anyway, how does it hurt God? Some take the position that a secret sin where there is no sacrilege injures no one…” (Singer, 189) Adam is a more traditional Christian fundamentalist as opposed to Theresa, an analytic or synthetic Christian.
If we refer back to the pretext, the biblical account of Jacob, then there are a couple parallels which we could draw. For example, Adam advocates anti-miscegenation between Jews and Christians (or gentiles). Isaac, Jacob’s father from The Bible, shares this view with Adam from The Slave. Moreover, if Adam acts somewhat like Jacob’s father they share the view regarding the forbiddance of racial intermixture. His symbolic mother figure must be Theresa. In The Bible, Jacob’s father favored his brother, but his mother is like Theresa. Undoubtedly, Theresa is fond, or “favors,” of Jacob. She is all too honest and friendly. These parallels are malleable, but what we do have above is an argument which justifies all of Jacob’s sins. He was beaten in this argument, plain and simple, and he is free to absolve himself of his sins if he can accept Theresa’s incredulous, and extraordinarily insightful, advice.
The second sequence is between Jacob and Waclaw the ferryman. At this point, Jacob has lost his wife, lost his son, and most recently escaped the road to execution, and he’s been on the fresh fugitive path for some time until he runs into a river. He needs to cross, then, naturally, he finds the Waclaw ferryman. He’s a self-sufficient, self-aware, hard worker and has everything going for him in his own eyes. Although, if he were a character from the biblical pretext then his tendencies and characteristics scream Esau reincarnate. “He was as black as a gipsy, barefoot, half naked, with long, curly hair, and wore trousers turned up to the knee” whom lives amongst nature in a hut along the river and even has a dog. This is the image of a man of the wild, an outdoorsman like Esau. Even the name Esau literally distinguishes his hair from the rest of his characteristics. Such references from The Bible include his birth description, “And the first came out red, all over like a hairy garment,” (Genesis 25:25) or Jacob’s account, “Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man.” (Genesis 27:11) The symbolism continues when Waclaw gives Jacob an apple and bread. The Lord prophesized that one of the brothers would serve the other. Jacob is fresh out of captivity, this is the freest he’s felt in some time, and Jacob would usually refuse nearly all hospitality. For example, earlier in the book he refused anything from poorhouse beds to single slices of bread. Now, he’s accepting an entire slab of Waclaw’s bread and an apple. This behavior is unheard of from Jacob! He’s being served by his long-lost counterpart; Jacob is taking a break from slavery, even if it’s for only a moment, by accepting the food. “One thing I’ve learned in my life: don’t get attached to anything. You own a cow or a horse and you’re its slave. Marry and you’re the slave of your wife, her bastards, and her mother…When I hear such things, I say to myself, Waclaw, not you. You’ll be nobody’s slave. I’m not a peasant. I have noble blood…Here at the ferry I’m as free as a bird. I think what I please. Twice a day the passengers come and I do my job.” (Singer, 259) Jacob’s knee-jerk reaction is “No, man cannot be entirely free…Somebody must plow and sow and reap. Children must be raised.” (Singer, 260) Waclaw finally insists that’s not the type of life he’s interested in. Instead, Waclaw is proud of whom he is, though he doesn’t know his origin he acts like a noble Prince from a lost bloodline of prestige. Now, the two once “rival” brothers have now matured, and even though they disagree they still can agree to disagree like adults. The next day Jacob’s salvation, a Jewish emissary, comes to the ferry services. Jacob initiates contact and eventually shares his entire experience with the wise, old man (his suggested archetype). His story contains all of the joys and pains from his first wife, the Cossacks tirade, his enslavement, his new love, fleeing from the gentiles, her conception and death, and even the blaspheming or idolatrous details. The emissary’s feedback appeals to the religious law, “But behind the law, there is mercy. Without mercy, there would be no law.” (Singer, 265)
Every side character in the two examined sequences brings something to the table. They may not be prophets, but they provide auspicious insight. First, Adam referred to Democritus, a believer in neither Gods nor idols. If neither of these concepts exists then neither does sin. We may choose to rely on pure faith or pure materialism, but neither is wrong. Adam’s brief, radical notion promotes absolute free thinking and belief to Jacob a loyal subordinate of the Torah. Second, Theresa loosely suggests that ‘All’s fair in love and war.’ Love is an ecstatic feeling of enlightenment of happiness, paradise, faith, or even understanding God. On the contrary, war is an epitomic symbol of suffering, hatred, and hell. All’s fair in love and war because anything goes in a world of extremities. If you experience love or war then you’ve seen the edge of the abyss. Theresa’s perfunctory lesson advocates Jacob to think less about who he’s allowed to love, and more about who he wants to love. If Jacob truly loves Wanda then the sin of miscegenation should be in the back of his mind. Together, Adam and Theresa are two sides of the same coin, and they provide Jacob with some food for thought. Their point is that amnesty is achievable amongst sinners. That’s the first sequence of events, now onto the second. The third character, Waclaw, is a curveball. He and Jacob get along great, but they believe in opposite ideas. Waclaw is an example of a free thinker because he’s not attached to anything. That’s his lesson: “don’t get attached to anything…[or]…you’re its slave.” Whereas, Jacob says you can never become unattached because someone has to do the dirty work (i.e. raising children, common manual labor). Jacob believes that women are naturally meant to wed as children are meant to be raised, but the irony here is that his two wives are dead as are three of his children. That Jacob’s point, though; he’ll always feel their ethereal presence. He’s ‘attached’ for eternity through love. Fourth, and lastly, the emissary essentially pardons Jacob. He empathizes with Jacob, and extends God’s mercy upon him. Absolution of men is possible in a compassionate world. The presence of these four other side characters allow Jacob to die with peace in mind. His last thoughts are trivial; from Proverbs, “Who can find a virtuous woman?” (Singer, 311) Jacob, a sinner, found at least two. Jacob recognizes near his death that a virtue of a woman is not preordained, they are judged by those who long for love. All in together now, these four teachers of Jacob conclude that God’s written rules needn’t be the lone determinant of your life’s philosophy.
“Free will exists, but so does foreknowledge. ‘All is foreseen but the choice is given.’ Each soul must accomplish its task, or else it would not have been sent here.” (Singer, 266) You choose to love, but love chooses you back. Your soul chooses you, too, and you’ll find God if you espouse your soul, submit to love, and let yourself become a slave to the best things in life.
