The Book of Daniel

“Why do the facts of Russian national torment make Americans feel smug?”

As American society heaves exhaustedly toward the end of the 1960s, true accomplishments and achievements are beginning to fade. Daniel is in a reflective mood as he scrutinizes his society and finds that Americans are being kept afloat only by schadenfreude rather than their own happiness. With nothing left to work toward and an increasingly pessimistic view of the future, Daniel believes that American society is clinging to a propagandized understanding of Soviet society which makes them feel better about their own alienated lives.

“I’ll play Monopoly with you.”

The comfort that Daniel can offer to a distraught Susan is deeply ironic. To placate his sister, who is suffering because her parents are being tried by a capitalist state for their anti-capitalist views, Daniel offers to play a board game that itself is a microcosm of capitalism. Even in their games, they cannot escape the specter of capitalism.

“The thing about the Isaacson family, the thing about everyone in our family, is that we’re not nice people.”

Daniel is keenly aware that no one in his family—including himself—is particularly nice. Whether they are nice or not, however, has little bearing on whether Paul and Rochelle deserve to be executed. The expectation of niceness is juxtaposed against the traumatic experiences of two children who must come to terms with their parents being executed by the state. Daniel comes to believe that he lives in a liberal society that mistakes manners for morals.

“There were foods one didn’t eat, like bananas, because they were the fruit of some notorious exploitation.”

As a struggling, working-class family, the Isaacsons try to be revolutionary in whatever way they can. Their limited material conditions, however, dictate that they can only exert political activism on the terms of the society in which they live. Revolutionary praxis becomes a matter of consumer choices, e.g., they decide not to purchase a certain fruit because of its imperialist associations with capitalist American-owned fruit companies. Despite their dedication to the cause, the family struggles to find meaningful ways of asserting their ideology in the society they are against.

“You’re all such big deals of suffering.”

Phyllis’s astute diagnosis of the Isaacsons’ thirst for self-destruction impresses Daniel, enough to momentarily consider whether he should stop abusing her. He carries on regardless, especially as she has framed his importance in terms of suffering. As such, making Phyllis suffer is a way for Daniel to stroke his ego, as well as to make her part of his family’s legacy.

“I am deprived of the chance of resisting my government.”

Daniel’s family history means that he is in a difficult position. He can either refuse to engage with radical politics, thereby abandoning his parents’ legacy, or he can join the radical cause, thereby justifying the government’s suspicions about his character. In either situation, he is being forced to play by the rules established by the government. He cannot rebel, because his rebellion is expected by the state, therefore removing his agency and the salience of his protest. Daniel resents the fact that he cannot protest on his own terms. This is just another thing that the state has taken from him.

“There were periodic drills in the event of nuclear bombs falling.”

At school, the children run through drills that prepare them for a potential atom bomb attack. These drills are an exercise in absurdity, as these routines could in no way protect the children from nuclear fallout. Ironically, the scenario they are practicing for was created by their own government. In the midst of the Cold War, such drills exist only to cultivate the feeling of paranoia and to justify further military spending.

“A painter on a ladder is very quickly blanking out Isaacson Radio, Sales and Repair.”

As soon as news of Paul’s arrest moves through the neighborhood, the evidence of the family’s existence is removed. By painting over the sign about Paul’s shop, the community can pretend that Paul and his crimes did not exist. Rather than engage with the question of Paul’s innocence, the community would rather pretend that he does not exist. In an aesthetic sense, Paul’s memory can be removed. In a cultural sense, his legacy will endure far longer than any shop sign.

“She will save most of the seven dollars by dragging us up the stairs, valises, bundles and all, and standing us with her on the elevated all the way to Brooklyn.”

The apolitical Aunt Frieda performs her quiet protest against the capitalist state. After Asher gives her cab fare to take the Isaacson children into her home, she wordlessly recognizes that the money would suit her better if she could spend it otherwise. She abandons the cab and takes the children on the subway, pocketing the difference. That she feels the need to do this illustrates the precarious nature of existence for the working-class people in capitalist society, even if they do not recognize the political nature of their actions.

“MacArthur came closer to overthrowing the government of the U.S. than any person in modern times.”

General MacArthur presented a far more acute threat to American democracy than Paul and Rochelle. While the Isaacsons were executed, however, MacArthur was celebrated as a war hero. The key difference is that MacArthur opposed the status quo from a right-wing position, while Paul and Rochelle opposed American society from the left wing. Society is willing to indulge right-wing opposition as a further bulwark against left-wing critique. Despite the vast gulf in the reality of the threat they posed, only the Isaacsons were deemed an existential threat to the state.

“I made a game of spying on Aunt Frieda.”

After being sent to live with his Aunt Frieda, Daniel unwittingly attempts to rationalize events in the only way a child knows how. He cannot understand why his parents have been accused of spying, so he turns spying into a game so that he can experience something of the accusations for himself. Daniel’s actions are a reminder of how confusing the situation must have been for a child, with play providing the only mechanism through which he can understand the accusations against his parents.

“They’re not killed.”

Here, resident psychologist at the Shelter, Mr. Guglielmi, argues that the Shelter cannot be like jail. He continues to argue about the nature of the American justice system. The foundation of his argument is that people in jail are not killed. Given the non-linear structure of the novel, however, the audience understands this to be untrue. The therapist’s understanding of the world is built on comforting lies that he tells himself and others, which functions as an analogy for the way the rest of society navigates the alienation of capitalist society.

“All societies indoctrinate their children.”

Paul recognizes indoctrination as a fact of any parent-child relationship. Parents imprint themselves on their children, knowingly or unknowingly. The difference between Paul and other fathers, he realizes, is that the ideology he has taught his son is deemed antithetical to the state. The ideology, not the indoctrination, is the issue.

“Perhaps she knew then he was not to have a brilliant career in the revolution.”

While other communists imagine themselves and their loved ones as heroes of a glorious revolution, Rochelle recognizes that she and Paul will never play these roles. The revolution is not some glorious dream that lives in her head. Rather, it is an essential reordering of the material world that will alleviate the poverty of herself and others. In this essential reordering, everyone—including herself and Paul—will have a role to play, however small. Rochelle is not an academic or a theoretician. She believes communism is a practical, necessary solution to poverty. Her pragmatism distinguishes her from her husband.

“Mr. Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowl.”

Daniel places himself in a lineage of literary Jews. He cites a line from James Joyce’s Ulysses, in which the Jewish character Leopold Bloom is introduced to the reader. The novel is famed for its revolutionary reexamination of language and literature; it is vigorously studied in academia. Though Daniel wants to see himself as Bloom, he is more like the academic who studies him. He studies revolution, rather than becoming a protagonist of the revolution.

“The courtroom was almost empty.”

After their failed escape attempt, the children are brought before a judge in an empty court. This scene is a cruel contrast to their parents’ trial, which takes place in a busy courtroom with the eyes of the world focused on the Isaacsons. The state will eventually execute Paul and Rochelle, but it has no idea what to do with their children. The children are given no attention or support, either in a legal or a public sense.

“It was Coca-Cola. My father had once told me that it rotted the teeth. That if you put a tooth in a glass of Coca-Cola it would rot away.”

Coca-Cola is presented in the novel as a symbol of consumerism in a capitalist society. It is banned in the Isaacson house, as Paul believes that it rots the teeth. In much the same way, he believes that capitalism is rotting the souls of the American people. They crave the brand name of capitalism, not knowing the damage it is causing to them. Soon, they, like their teeth, will be so rotted away that there will be nothing left.

“Daniel Isaacson, although the card is in the name of Daniel Lewin.”

Daniel attends a Vietnam War protest as a way to navigate his dueling identities. To the government, he is technically Daniel Lewin. This identity is a lie, however, made only for documents and bureaucracies. In reality, he is Daniel Isaacson. He still lives in the shadow of his biological parents’ execution, and, in the secret government files, he is very much the son of the Isaacsons. The disposal of his draft card is an empty gesture, as Daniel will never be allowed to join the military. It does, however, give him an excuse to publicly announce his identity and embrace his parents’ legacy in defiance of the state.

“It is a lot easier to be a revolutionary nowadays than it used to be.”

Daniel placates his wife by assuring her that being a revolutionary is easier than it used to be. His physical injuries are evidence of this decline; he has merely suffered a beating, while his parents were executed. In Daniel’s era, however, the failures of the revolutionary movement are all too apparent. Being a revolutionary may be easier, but it is a lot less likely to succeed.

“A highly visible military-industrial complex.”

The demonstration of the revolutionaries’ failure is shown in the visibility of the objects of their loathing. In his farewell presidential address in 1961, Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of the rise of the military-industrial complex. The revolutionaries of the era protested against it. By Daniel’s time, however, just a few years later, the same military-industrial complex feels comfortable enough to exist in a “highly visible” manner. There is no danger to the status quo, whose conspicuous existence is evidence of their triumph.

“In many ways I had it worse. Your parents after all were heroes to some elements.”

Linda compares her suffering to Daniel’s, suggesting to him that her situation is worse. He may have lost his parents, but they are now considered heroes of the left. For Linda, her father is still alive (though he has lost much of his mind), and he is demonized so much that his family is forced to leave their home and their identities behind. She questions whether it is better to have parents who died as heroes or parents who live as cowards in the minds of the public. Daniel does not agree, but her suggestion does give him pause.

“We are able to walk on air, but only as long as our illusion supports us.”

Samuel Moore's 1888 translation of The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels includes the quote “all that is solid melts into air.” Daniel repurposes this for the mid-century American mindset, framing the solidity of the melting world in terms of a cartoon. The delusion of happiness and solidity only continues if society refuses to acknowledge its falsity, like a cartoon character running over a cliff edge but only falling once they look down. As soon as the left wing can bring people to recognize their alienation and precarious position, Daniel believes, the age of capitalism will be brought to an end.

“He’s senile.”

At Disneyland, Daniel discovers that Mindish has become senile. This is a problem for Daniel, as the one man who could provide him with any sense of closure or catharsis can no longer be depended upon. Mindish has lost the capacity to align Daniel with reality, as any truths he knew have now vanished from Mindish’s mind. Nothing can be proved any longer about Daniel’s parents, so his meeting with Mindish forces him to accept ignorance.