61 pages • 2 hours read
Ronald H. BalsonA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Protagonist Catherine Lockhart is a 39-year-old litigator who lives in Chicago, Illinois, and works for the corporate law firm Jenkins & Fairchild. Her best friend Liam describes Catherine as “the prettiest thing you ever saw” (105). In characterizing the legal work she does, Catherine says, “They’re all commercial cases. All on behalf of mega-institutions. This bank versus that” (31).
While Catherine takes little pride in her work, she considers Jenkins & Fairchild to be her only employment option in Chicago. That’s because three years earlier, Catherine suffered an emotional and professional breakdown. Liam says, “When the shit hit the fan, she was devastated and went into a tailspin” (107).
Catherine’s character arc involves her decision to put her already precarious career in jeopardy by committing herself fully to Ben’s case. At first, she insists on representing Ben in merely an advisory capacity while working 16-hour days to keep up with the demands of her existing caseload. As the tragedy of Ben’s story unfolds, however, Catherine becomes haunted by the supreme injustice he suffered at the hands of Elliot. When her boss Jenkins attempts to coerce her into dropping Ben’s case, she quits her job, abandoning career-centered concerns in favor of pursuing justice.
Following this stand for justice, Catherine’s internal conflict is no longer a moral one. Instead, she becomes conflicted over her ability to provide Ben the justice he deserves. While Catherine’s anxiety is partially warranted by the fact that Elliot’s legal team possesses resources that dwarf Catherine’s own, this sense of uncertainty is driven largely by her memories of failing at Drexel Youngquist, particularly failing her mentor there, Mickey Shanahan. It is only in Chapter 54, after Mickey forgives Catherine, that she moves forward with Ben’s case confidently.
Ben Solomon is a secondary protagonist whose narrative dominates the middle third of the novel. An octogenarian Holocaust survivor living in Chicago, he accuses the wealthy businessman and philanthropist Elliot Rosenzweig of being an ex-Nazi SS officer who sent a number of Ben’s family members to their death and stole his family’s fortune. As a youth living in Nazi-occupied Zamosc, Poland, Ben displays courage and valor on numerous occasions, most dramatically when he infiltrates a Nazi sex ring in Rabka disguised as an SS officer to rescue his sister, Beka. Though pious and reflective, Ben also possesses a capacity for vengeance, as exhibited when he stabs Rolf in the chest for attempting to rape Beka. That said, his campaign against Elliot is less about revenge and more about reminding the world of Nazi atrocities. For example, if revenge is truly his aim, he would have brought an operational gun to the opera house at the beginning of the novel instead of the unloaded antique Nazi pistol. Ben’s decision to confront Elliot with a Nazi weapon from the past in a locale that represents the luxuries Elliot enjoys in America is meant to be symbolic.
Rather than follow Judaism in an Orthodox sense, Ben observes a form of Jewish mysticism known as Kabbalah. Built on esoteric principles, Kabbalah applies allegorical and metaphysical meanings to the Torah. For example, Ben believes that Hannah’s spirit is not only eternal but also present with him at all times and capable of carrying on conversations with him, both in dreams and in his waking life. He explains:
“Some feelings, some visions, come to me. There is no rational explanation. When you saw me moving my lips, I was talking to my Hannah. She was there for me. I believe her soul is eternal and as vibrant today as it was sixty years ago. In fact, I am certain of it. Do you think that makes me crazy? Maybe just a little strange?” (248).
Much of Ben’s relationship with Judaism also concerns his steadfast faith in God even in the face of the Holocaust and its unspeakable atrocities. In this respect, Ben adopts a pastoral approach, awestruck by the natural beauty of God’s creation and finding proof of his existence within it. In recalling the time he spent hiding out in Joseph’s mountain cabin with Hannah and Beka, Ben says, “If you want proof of God, Catherine, go to the mountains” (138).
The chief antagonist, Elliot Rosenzweig is a retired billionaire insurance executive and philanthropist. Often referred to in the media as “The Great Benefactor,” Elliot is one of the most civically generous and highly respected men in Chicago, having received the key to the city. Like Ben, he is over 80 years old and claims to be a Holocaust survivor. Until 1948, however, Elliot’s name was Otto Piatek. When Otto is 11, his father Stanislaw abandons him on the Solomons’ doorstep. Although he does not convert to Judaism, Otto becomes part of the Solomon family, looking to Ben as a brother and Abraham as a father.
When Otto is 17, his mother Ilse convinces him to join the Nazi party as an officer to avoid being mistaken for Jewish. At Abraham’s urging, Otto reluctantly agrees. At first Otto helps the Solomons by providing extra rations and advance information about the Nazis’ plans for the town’s Jews. But over time, he becomes fixated on his own career and all the benefits that come from its advancement. Though not outwardly anti-Semitic or sadistic, Otto is a passive and later an active participant in the intensifying cruelty against the Jews of Zamosc. He rationalizes his behavior first as a form of survival—both for himself and the Solomons—and later as a form of law-abiding civic duty. Upon refusing to give Ben back his family’s life savings, Otto’s reasoning is a brutal tautology: “Can’t do it, Ben. It’s against the law for you to have it. If they change the law, then I’ll give it to you” (204). Otto’s transformation from dispassionately cruel civil servant to full-blown sadist comes during his last wartime confrontation with Ben, when he orders that Ben be tortured, Abraham executed, and Hannah, Leah, and Lucyna sent to the Auschwitz extermination camp.
It’s initially unclear if Elliot and Otto are really the same person. While Ben’s honesty is without question, Catherine considers the possibility that he is either delusional or mistaken. Even after photographic evidence all but confirms Elliot’s identity, it is startling in Chapter 52 when Elliot, left alone with Ben, finally speaks to him as Otto. Although he seems contrite, this is a ruse designed to convince Ben to agree to a settlement. His final words to Ben are shockingly callous: “Just another dead Solomon” (344).
A 41-year-old private investigator, Liam Taggart is Catherine’s best friend and later her lover. Liam is of Irish descent and played tight end for his college football team, suggesting he is physically imposing. Although his moral fiber is strong, Liam’s ethics are more fluid; he is not above lying to or threatening sources for information if it will help Ben’s case.
He is a shrewd investigator, easily figuring out Carl Wuld’s identity and shady past, and a brave defender of Catherine and Ben’s interests. When Liam and Catherine make love on Christmas Eve, he confesses that he has loved her since the day they met.
Hannah Weissbaum is Ben’s girlfriend and later his wife. Before Otto becomes a Nazi, he, Ben, and Hannah are inseparable. Ben says to Catherine, “A triumvirate we were” (25). Everything the reader learns about Hannah is filtered through Ben or her best friend Adele, and so she is always described in highly idealized terms—beautiful and kind and loyal in all respects. In the present day, Ben carries on conversations with Hannah’s eternal spirit, though the reader only hears Ben’s side of the conversations.
Elzbieta Krzyzecki is Otto’s girlfriend from before he joins the Nazis. Although Otto dates many other girls during his time in the SS, he always comes back to Elzbieta, who remains loyal to him. A gentile afforded certain privileges as Otto’s main squeeze, Elzbieta nevertheless makes numerous sacrifices to help Ben and his family, including letting him borrow her car to rescue Beka and convincing Otto to give Ben his extra uniform. When returning the uniform, Ben notices a bruise on Elzbieta’s cheek, obviously in retribution from Otto. She proves instrumental in convicting Elliot when she testifies against her husband (albeit under threat of prosecution and deportation for aiding and abetting a war criminal).
Abraham Solomon is father to Ben and Beka, and surrogate father to Otto. Until the Nazi occupation, he runs a successful glass company founded by his grandfather in 1861. The family habitually defers to his wisdom, including when he advises Otto to join the Nazis. After the Nazis invade Poland, Abraham is made the head of the city’s Judenrat, an organization that liaisons between Zamosc’s Nazis and Jews. Even after the Nazis force all Jews out of their homes, Abraham refuses to leave Zamosc, believing that his work improving the lives of Jews any way he can still matters.
At Father Janofski’s church in Krasnik, he uses his engraving skills to help forge passports and other documents for the Polish Resistance until the Nazis discover his workroom in the basement, and Otto orders his execution.
Beka Solomon in Ben’s younger sister. She is 17 at the time of the Nazi occupation in 1939. She is strikingly beautiful and frequently attracts leering glances from Nazi officers, especially Dr. Hans Frank. Along with Hannah, she accompanies Ben to her Uncle Joseph’s cabin but is caught by the Germans. Like many other beautiful Jewish girls her age, she is taken to Rabka as part of a forced prostitution ring. Rather than submit sexually to a Nazi officer named Rolf, she throws herself out of a two-story window to her death.
Lucyna is a 16-year-old Jewish girl who is brought to Rabka as a prostitute along with Beka. Ben describes her as “a young blond girl, slight and fair-skinned” (184). After Ben learns that Beka is dead, he rescues Lucyna instead, bringing her back to Zamosc where she becomes a part of the resistance movement there. Despite Hannah’s attempts to nurse her back to health, Lucyna dies of malnutrition and exposure on the Auschwitz Death March.
Father Janofski is a Catholic priest and a key member of the Polish Home Army resistance movement. From his church in Krasnik, he leads a secret operation that involves forging documents and delivering intelligence to the Allied Forces. He provides shelter to the Solomons in return for Ben’s work as a courier and Abraham’s work as a forger. Meanwhile, he allows Hannah, Lucyna, and Leah to pose as nuns or postulates. Father Janofski dies after Otto orders the Gestapo to hang him from the steeple of his church.