The Tumblers (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Nathan Englander
- First Published: 1998
- Type of Plot: Holocaust, war
- Time of Work: World War II
- Setting: The ghetto in Chelm, Poland, and a circus train
- Principal Characters: Mendel, Gronam the Ox, The Rebbe, A French horn player, Raizel
- Genres: Short fiction
- Subjects: Twentieth century, Escapes, 1940’s, World War II, Jews or Jewish life, Trains, Nazism or Nazis, Entertaining or entertainers, Eastern Europe or eastern Europeans, Holocaust, Jewish, Poland or Polish people, Jews and Gentiles, Luck or misfortune, Acrobatics or acrobats
- Locales: Poland
The Story
“The Tumblers” is told in the third person through an omniscient narrator. The main action in the story occurs during the Holocaust both in Chelm, a ghetto town that in the classic Yiddish tales is traditionally peopled by fools, and on a second-class train filled with a circus troupe.
The protagonist, Mendel, is the grandson of Gronam the Ox, a town leader whose comic actions follow the tradition of the absurd tales involving the fools of Chelm. Gronam won notoriety for his quick thinking when he renamed all the bad things in the ghetto as good things and...
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