The Fifth Son (Masterplots II: World Fiction Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Elie Wiesel
- First Published: 1983
- Type of Work: Historical realism
- Time of Work: The 1960’s to the 1980’s
- Setting: New York City and Reshastadt, Germany
- Principal Characters: The Narrator, Reuven Tamiroff, Simha-the-Dark, Bontchek, Lisa, The Angel, Ariel
- 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
The Novel
The Fifth Son describes a journey into the past, a pilgrimage that leads the narrator, the son of Holocaust survivors, to an understanding of his father. Although written from the narrator’s point of view, the novel has three other voices: Reuven Tamiroff, the narrator’s father, whose reminiscences and letters provide glimpses of a tortured man; Bontchek, another survivor, whose recollections reveal more about Reuven; and Simha-the-Dark, also a survivor, who finally unlocks Reuven’s past.
The novel begins with the narrator’s dream; in...
[The entire page is 1712 words long]
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