Davita's Harp (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Chaim Potok
- First Published: 1985
- Type of Work: Novel
- Genres: Long fiction, Social realism, Bildungsroman
- Subjects: Maturation or coming of age, Values, Family or family life, New York, North America or North Americans, Northeast, U.S., United States or Americans, Communism or communists, Politics, New York City, Social issues, Religion, 1930’s, Jews or Jewish life, Women’s rights, Jews and Gentiles, Hebrew language, Spanish Civil War
- Locales: New York, NY
Ilana Davita Chandal, Potok's precocious narrator of Davita's Harp, is in sharp contrast to David Lurie of In the Beginning. Davita is Potok's first female protagonist, but she is also the first main character in Potok's novels to seek to join Orthodoxy from pagan society. She is rebuffed by that Orthodoxy, and in the end expresses the rage that David Lurie hoped to overcome by his mediation of secular learning and Orthodox tradition.
Davita's mother is a nonbelieving Jew, her father a nonbelieving Christian. Growing up in the New York area before World War II,...
[The entire page is 1025 words long]
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