The Fifth Son (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)
At a glance:
- Author: Elie Wiesel
- First Published: 1983
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Historical realism
- Time of Work: The 1960’s to the 1980’s
- Setting: New York City and Reshastadt, Germany
- Genres: Long fiction, Realism, Historical fiction
- Subjects: 1950’s, 1960’s, 1970’s, Murder or homicide, New York City, 1980’s, Revenge, Nazism or Nazis, Germany or German people, Holocaust, Jewish
- Locales: New York, NY, Germany
Characters Discussed
The narrator, a young Jewish man, born in New York City in 1949 and living in a Hasidic section of Brooklyn. Reared and educated as an Orthodox Jew, he was silent and often gloomy as a young child. Later, during adolescence, as he studies to become a writer and teacher, he sets out on a quest to uncover the inaccessible mysteries of his father’s painful experiences in Germany during the 1940’s. The narrator deeply loves his father, considering him the most important influence in his life. Since childhood, the narrator has felt cut off from his...
[The entire page is 950 words long]
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