The Chosen/The Promise (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Chaim Potok
- First Published: 1967
- Type of Work: Novel
- Genres: Long fiction, Psychological fiction, Bildungsroman, Domestic realism
- Subjects: 1950’s, Maturation or coming of age, Family or family life, New York, North America or North Americans, Northeast, U.S., United States or Americans, Parents and children, Tradition, Teenagers, New York City, Education or educators, 1940’s, Religion, Friendship, Jews or Jewish life, Fathers, Judaism, Talmud, Rabbis, Synagogues
- Locales: Brooklyn, NY
The Chosen met with popular success upon publication, despite its being concerned with a small and narrow Hasidic Jewish community in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. The story of Danny Saunders, son of the imperious and strictly Orthodox Reb Saunders, and Danny's friend Reuvan Malter, son of a teacher at a Jewish yeshiva (parochial school), has universal implications: Can the culture of one's early years be transcended without being denied?
Danny has been chosen by his father to be the next leader of the Hasidic sect, but Danny feels trapped. His father, in an...
[The entire page is 843 words long]
