What is the setting of "The Devil's Arithmetic" by Jane Yolen in Chapters One and Two?

In regards to the story, setting can also refer to the immediate surroundings, social/cultural circumstances, and historical period.

In Chapters One and Two, we learn that Hannah Stern is part of a close-knit Jewish American family in New York City. So, in terms of setting, the author has chosen to focus on the Jewish American culture or social experience in (present-day) New York City. Here, it's noteworthy to point out that the author differentiates between the Jewish second-generation experience and the Jewish experience during a specific historical period (World War II) in these two chapters.

In the first chapter, Hannah lets her mother know that she isn't looking forward to the Passover seder at Grandpa Will and Grandma Belle's apartment. She complains that every Passover seder dinner is a repeat of the previous one. Hannah tells her mother that she's tired of "remembering" the Jewish Holocaust experience. 

However, Hannah's mother reminds her that her grandparents find great comfort in their presence during Passover; they value family above all else during such important celebrations. So, the social setting is that of a close-knit Jewish American family in present-day New York City. In Chapter Two, we learn why Hannah doesn't enjoy the Passover family gatherings. Her Grandpa Will seems to be fixated on the Holocaust experience; when Hannah and her family enter her grandparents' apartment, her grandfather is screaming at the TV screen. 

Across the screen marched old photos of Nazi concentration camp victims, corpses stacked like cordwood, and dead-eyed survivors. As the horrible pictures flashed by, a dark voice announced the roll of camps: "Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Chelmno, Dachau . . ."

So, we have a different setting here: World War II. The introduction of this setting (in terms of historical period) foreshadows the parallel universe Hannah is transported to later in the novel. The author further reinforces the tragedy and devastation of the Holocaust experience through a personal story of Hannah's. In Chapter Two, Hannah explains why she dislikes Passover seders at her grandparents. 

Accordingly, at Aaron's bris party (not long after he was born), Hannah experiences one of her grandfather's frightening screaming fits. Grandpa Will became extremely agitated when Hannah writes a string of numbers on the inside of her left arm. At the time, Hannah had thought her grandfather would be pleased by her actions; after all, he had similar numbers on his own left arm. What Hannah doesn't realize was that the numbers on Grandpa Will's arm resulted from his own incarceration during Hitler's reign of terror. 

Hannah reports that her grandfather began screaming the phrase "Malach Ha-mavis" ("Angel of Death") repeatedly after he glimpsed the numbers on Hannah's left arm. So, here, we're introduced to a setting that incorporates the Jewish Holocaust experience during World War II. In all, setting is an important literary device that establishes the mood of the story.

What is the setting of "The Devil's Arithmetic" by Jane Yolen in Chapters One and Two?

There are two aspects of setting that can be discussed:  setting of time and setting of place.  In Chapters One and Two of The Devil’s Arithmetic, the setting of time is the present day.  Because the book was published in the 1980s, we can safely say that is the time of the story in these first chapters.  In regards to the setting of place, this changes a bit within Chapters One and Two.  We could be very simple about it and say the setting is in the state of New York in the United States of America.  However, at the beginning, Hannah and her immediate family are in New Rochelle, New York.  Soon they are en route.  By Chapter Two, they are in the Bronx, New York.  Hannah’s family is preparing (at their own home in New Rochelle) to drive to Grandma Belle's and Grandpa Will’s apartment in the Bronx to observe the Seder meal on the first night of Passover.  They are en route during the drive when Hannah tells the story of the “walking dead” to her brother.  They are at the Bronx apartment (in later chapters) when Hannah’s experience with the Holocaust begins.

What are the key events in chapters 9-14 of The Devil's Arithmetic?

In chapter 9, Hannah has realized where she is and what time period it is.  She knows that The Holocaust is coming, and she is trying to save the people.  Even though they are being transported by truck to the train, they don’t listen to her.

How can you talk like that?  Your words will fly up to Heaven and call down the Angel of Death, Lilth’s bridegroom, with his poisoned sword. (ch 9, p. 67)

Hannah has been telling stories, and everyone thinks this is just one of them.

In chapter 10, Hannah experiences some Nazi brutality as all of the villagers are forced to lay on the ground while the soldiers take their valuables.  Hannah is even more frightened when they are all shoved into two boxcars.  The people laugh and tell stories, which frustrates Hannah.  She asks Gitl why they behave that way.

We Jews...joke about death because what you laugh at and make familiar can no longer frighten you. Besides...what else is there to do? (ch 10, p. 82)

When a woman’s child dies, the laughing stops.  Hannah cries.

In chapter 11 they arrive at a concentration camp, and Hannah reads the sign that says, “Work makes you free.” Men and women are separated, and Hannah’s friend Rachel dies.  Then all of Hannah’s hair is cut off.  In chapter 12 they receive numbers and clothes, but Hannah cannot remember her name when they ask her.  She is told it is Chaya, but she replies that now it is “J197241”.  In chapter 13 they are given a little food and told that if they do not do exactly what they are told they will die.

By chapter 14, things are getting bad.  Hannah and the others contemplate the Devil’s Arithmetic in their new numbers, and what they mean.  People who have given up on life are dying regularly, and Hannah is forgetting who she was.

Chapters 9-14 are very important in the book, because Hannah goes from trying to warn everyone about the horrors of the Holocaust to actually experiencing it herself.  She is frustrated and sad, and feels helpless.  Worst of all, she is losing contact with her real self and her real life.

What events occur in Chapter 17 of The Devil's Arithmetic?

Gitl tells Chaya that there is a plan to escape. Yitzchak and Shmuel are a part of it, as will Chaya be, because she is their "only flesh and blood." Gitl makes Chaya promise that if something happens to her and the others, she will remember. Gitl will not give Chaya any more information at this time, for her own safety. Gitl does confirm that Yitzchak is taking this risk because his children are gone, and he has nothing left to lose. As for herself and Shmuel, Gitl says, "If not us, who? If not now, when?" These words are part of the Seder ceremony celebrated by the Jews on the Sabbath.

A few nights later, when Chaya least expects it, Gitl tells her, "Chaya, it is now." Gitl hands her a pair of shoes and the two creep silently through the women's barracks to the door. Chaya asks, "what about Fayge," to which Gitl responds that despite her love for Shmuel, Fayge "has come to love her next bowl of soup more." When Gitl and Chaya get outside, they hear a shout, some shots, and the horrible screaming of a man. Realizing that the plan has been unsuccessful, she quickly drags Chaya back into the barracks. When the blokova sleepily asks what is going on, Gitl tells her she went to get her bowl to relieve herself, but dropped it when she heard shots outside. The blokova believes her story, and lets the matter drop after a short reprimand.

Back on their sleeping shelf, Chaya can feel Gitl sobbing. An awful thought comes to her - she has left the shoes Gitl had handed her outside. When she tells Gitl, however, the older woman is unworried. The shoes belonged to the blokova; when they are discovered, it is the blokova who will be in trouble, not them (Chapter 17).

Where does the story of The Devil's Arithmetic take place?

The story doesn't take place in only one location.  In the present time, the story takes place where Hannah lives, in New Rochelle, NY and when she travels to the Bronx in NYC for Seder.  However, in the story she is taken back in time to Poland, and then ends up in a Nazi concentration camp.

This is a book that you should definitely read -- and not just find the answers to questions.  None of us can be truly part of the human experience unless we have a real connection with the suffering our kind have caused.

Where does the story of The Devil's Arithmetic take place?

Jane Yolen's The Devil's Arithmetic deals with the historical impact of the Holocaust within a modern setting.  Initially, this story begins in present day New Rochelle, New York. It strikes me as a middle class or affluent suburb of New York.   A modern family, driving a modern car, travel to a family gathering.  While no exact year is given, it is contemporary as seen through Hannah, who is concerned with adolescent concerns of popularity, social acceptance, and being more like her friends.  This feeds her resentment of her familial and cultural traditions, one of which is the focus of the start of the novel.

What is the major conflict in The Devil's Arithmetic?

The obvious major conflict of The Devil's Arithmetic is the Holocaust. Through the story, the protagonist, Hannah, finds herself transported into a period when the Nazi government was systematically imprisoning, enslaving, and murdering Jews like herself. The struggles and horrors of life in a Nazi concentration camp clearly provide conflict in the novel. Yolen centers her novel around this conflict to shed light on the lived experiences of the Holocaust for modern young readers.

However, Hannah also experiences a personal conflict that drives the story. As a modern American teenager, Hannah experiences an internal conflict between what she desires to be (current, cosmopolitan, independent) and her heritage. This also causes an external conflict between Hannah and her parents, who wish for her to embrace her history and her Jewishness.

What is the major conflict in The Devil's Arithmetic?

This great novel contains what I would call a "macro" conflict and a "micro" conflict.

The large-scale conflict to which author Jane Yolen refers is the Holocaust. This, of course, was the infamous system driven by Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party which led to the death of millions of Jews and members of other minority groups in the 1930's and 1940's.

The "micro" conflict that takes place in this novel is our protagonist Hannah Stern's desire to live only in the present, which comes into conflict with her parents' desire to remember the past and the suffering endured by various members of their family.

It is only when Hannah is transported back to the world of a Jewish village in 1941 that she is led to understand the importance of the past.

What is the major conflict in The Devil's Arithmetic?

I would have to say that Hannah represents the crux of the conflict in Yolen's work.  She is a modern teen at the outset of the novel who is driven by a desire to be cosmopolitan and cannot understand the relevancy of her ancestors' struggle.  When she opens the door for the prophet Elijah, she enters into the major conflict of the work.  From someone who has no care about what it means to be Jewish, she becomes someone who is immersed in the middle of the Holocaust and must reconcile her prior feelings about her race with the realities that race faced.  I think within Hannah we see the crux of the conflict in the Holocaust, a setting where individuals had to choose between standing up for the trampled rights of others versus silence and apathy.  Just as Hannah endures this conflict, so did the historical victims of the Holocaust.  Her struggle ends up mirroring the struggles of her people.

What is the major conflict in The Devil's Arithmetic?

The main conflict for this book is the Holocaust. It is the unfair and deplorable treatment of the Jewish people in Nazi Germany. They are sent to concentration camps and killed via gas chambers.

If you are talking about the main conflict for the main character (protagonist) it is the fact she is not appreciating her Jewish ancestry and therefore is transported back in time to the Nazi era and becomes Chaya. The conflict becomes her struggle to survive, and ultimately... does she?

So depending on how you approach the novel, a historical context or for a character, there are two major conflicts. In some ways they secondary character conflict is obsorbed into the larger historical contextual conflict.

What are the key events in The Devil's Arithmetic?

The most important events in The Devil’s Arithmetic are Hannah’s transportation to the past, and her experiences in the Holocaust.

Hannah is just an ordinary American teenager who happens to be Jewish.  She does not see her religion as an important part of her heritage, and instead she just finds most of the observances a bore.  When she is transported back to the Holocaust in the form of Chaya, her Hebrew name, she is forced to come to terms with her identity and who she really is. 

"She was not Hannah Stern of New Rochelle, at least not anymore, though she still had Hannah's memories" (ch 8, p. 63.)

As she experiences the horrors of the concentration camp, Hannah finds an inner-strength she did not know she had.  She begins to stand up for others, and think of other people before herself.  She also realizes that she might die, because she alone knows what is going to happen.  This experiences helps Hannah grow, and soon she sacrifices herself to save her friend Rivka.  She now fully understands her family history, her name, and her heritage.

How are the characters described in The Devil's Arithmetic?

In this poignant novel, Yolen describes her characters' physical appearance in specific, concrete detail. I would argue that this is to help us picture them, feel that we know them, and empathize with their suffering.

Hannah is described by her Aunt Rose as a "beautiful young lady." Hannah personally disagrees with this description, as she has plain brown hair and wears braces on her teeth. When Hannah first gets taken back in time, she clearly has a frail appearance, and Chaya, as she becomes known, is described by Gitl as a "grave little whimpering bird."

Her brother, Aaron, is described as having fair hair, and Hannah points out that he has a great smile and will certainly not need braces.

When Hannah is transported back in time, she meets Gitl, who is described as a woman who clearly works hard. She is wearing "a smudged apron" and has flour on her arms. The second person she meets is Gitl's brother, Shmuel. The first thing Chaya notices is that he has "a thick black beard and a full head of black hair." She also notices that he has great boots. We learn that Shmuel has a genuine smile and bright blue eyes.

When someone knocks at the door door just as Chaya sits down to breakfast, she is hoping it's someone from her old life, when she was Hannah. However, it is Yitzchak the butcher, who is described as being broad-shouldered, with red hair and, like Shmuel, a thick beard.

The next people we meet are Yitzchak's children, Reuven and Tzipporah. They are described as having blond hair and being "no more than three or four years old."

Chaya then meets a group of girls around her age: Rachel, Shifre, Esther, and Yente. The first thing Chaya notices about Rachel is her "great, startled green eyes." Shifre is described as having a pale complexion, freckles, and exceptionally pale eyelashes that "made her eyes look shifty." Esther is a larger girl with rosy cheeks, while Yente is described as having a sharp chin and nose that create a "ferrety face."

Gitl introduces Chaya to her aunt-to-be, Fayge. Chaya is blown away by her beauty, describing her as looking "like a movie star." She has jet-black hair and a "strong nose" and is wearing plenty of gold jewelry.

The final character I will mention is Rivka, who is handing out bowls at the barracks on Chaya's first morning there. She is described as "plain-faced" and friendly, with her helpful advice being arguably the most memorable thing about her. She has a "broad forehead" and "deep-set brown eyes."

What are the themes in The Devil's Arithmetic?

This is a powerful little novel about the horrors of the Holocaust in 1942 Poland, and there are many possible themes to discuss, but two that I think are especially important and which ultimately tie to one another, are the ideas of survival and memory.

The novel opens with a modern-day Hannah at the family Seder dinner. She is bored and disinterested in the event and takes the prayers and the rituals in a rather blase manner. She feels she has heard all the stories too many times and they clearly don't have much of an impact on her anymore. She is annoyed by her family and just wants the night to end. It is at this point that the sci-fi time-travel piece of the story hits us. Hannah is "transported" back to Poland in 1942. She is a young Jewish girl name Chaya (which is Hannah's Jewish name) and she is almost immediately immersed in the tragic story of the transport trains throughout Poland that rounded up whole villages of Jews and took them to the concentration camps for forced labor and eventual execution. Hannah has all of the memories from her education on the Holocaust and knows exactly what is happening, but she is rather helpless to stop any of it from happening. She is terrified because she is so out of place from her "normal" life as a teenager in the United States.

But she quickly learns about the importance of survival. She learns the tricks of the camp and how to avoid being "chosen" for the ovens each day. She learns how to make alliances and deep friendships with the others so that together they can do what they need to in order to survive. She learns how to hide the children, get a little more to eat, stay out of trouble, etc. She learns these skills from her aunt, Gitl and other women in the camp, such as Rivka.

At the end of the novel, she realizes that she has lived her life of the future in America and has many memories, so dying wouldn't be as much of a loss for her as for others, so she switches places with Rivka as Rivka was being taken to the ovens. We learn at the very end of the novel that Rivka survived the camps and moved to the United States -- she is Hannah's Aunt Eva. Hannah's Jewish name is a tribute to the young woman, Chaya, who died in Rivka's place so that at least one of them would survive another day. 

The ultimate message of the novel is that the world should never forget what the Nazi's did during the Holocaust. The survivors will eventually die along with their memories, but the stories and the memories of the horror of the Holocaust should always be honored and respected so that nothing like that will even happen again. 

What are the themes in The Devil's Arithmetic?

In addition to the theme of remembering one's heritage and the atrocities that humans have committed in the past, another poignant theme of The Devil's Arithmetic is recognizing the heroism of the millions of Jews who were tortured and killed in concentration camps. After Hannah witnesses the Nazi Commandant taking a motherless boy, Reuven, to the the gas chamber, she is so angry with the inhumanity of the situation that she wants to fight back. Her friend Rivka, however, calmly asks her how she can fight back without weapons. She then tells her that it takes more courage to not fight back and that the real heroes are the people who endure the suffering and help other victims as much as they can while they're alive. This idea aligns with the religious moral of "turning the other cheek" and loving thy neighbor.

Furthermore, Rivka explains that one way to stay strong in times of suffering is to remember that while the Nazis can control them and hurt them physically, they can never touch who they truly are:

There will be times when he will surround you with walls of darkness. But remember always that your soul is secure to you, for your soul is entire, and that he cannot enter your soul, for your soul is part of God (143).

What are the themes in The Devil's Arithmetic?

In the novel The Devil's Arithmetic, one of the most important themes is that of the importance of remembering.  When Hannah Stern has to go with her mother to the Seder dinner at her grandparent's house, she protests because her friend celebrates the Christian Easter holiday with candy.  Hannah doesn't understand why she can't stay there rather than go to the Seder dinner and listen to the constant talk of the past - her grandparent's experiences as Jews under the Nazi regime, particularly that of her grandfather.  She doesn't understand why he can't just get over it and move on.

When she experiences first-hand the Jewish tribulations, though, as Chaya, she sees how atrocious the acts committed by the Nazis truly were, and during her time there learns that those left have to remember what happened both to honor the resiliance of the living and the dead and to prevent something like that from ever happening again.

What are the themes in The Devil's Arithmetic?

A thematic statement, of course, is one simple sentence about what the author is trying to convey about his or her particular subject.  This statement will often contain some kind of generalization about human nature or life in general. The thematic statement that Yolen explored in The Devil’s Arithmetic is as follows:  memory is both powerful and important.  This thematic statement is especially important in regards to the extermination of the Jews that the Nazis attempted during World War II.  This attempted extermination is appropriately called the Holocaust.  At the beginning of the story, Hannah is annoyed by her relatives’ desire to focus on memory (both in regards to remembering Jewish traditions and remembering the horrors of the Holocaust).  It is only through Hannah’s personal experience with the Holocaust that she learns how important and powerful memory is.  In this regard, The Devil's Arithmetic is truly a coming-of-age story.  In fact, as Hannah makes a decision to sacrifice her own life, she tells Rivka:

Run for your life, Rivka ... for your future.  Run ... and remember.

What is the setting in The Devil's Arithmetic?

The setting of a story can refer to both its time and place. The Devil's Arithmetic is an interesting story in that these aspects of it change dramatically over the course of the story. The first two chapters of the book take place in the present day (or, rather, the 1980s, when the book was written) in New York. Hannah and her immediate family live in New Rochelle and travel to the Bronx for a Passover Seder with Hannah's grandparents at their home.

In the subsequent chapters, Hannah is mysteriously transported to an entirely new setting, somewhere in Poland near the German border in 1942 during World War II. She starts off in a shtetl, a Jewish village. Pretty soon, Nazi soldiers arrive and deport the entire village to a concentration in Germany. It is during her several months in the camp that Hannah experiences first hand the depravities and horrors of the Holocaust. She and other women are forced to dig trenches and perform other tasks. Hannah watches as nearly everyone she knows is killed.

Toward the end of the story, Hannah courageously changes places with Rivka as she is being led to the gas chamber. At this point, Hannah and the reader are whisked back to the present (1980s), to Hannah's grandparents' Seder in New York.

Who is the main character in Jane Yolen's The Devil's Arithmetic?

Although Jane Yolen's novel The Devil's Arithmetic is written in third person, it's also clear that it is written in a third person limited point of view, which means the narrative is told by focusing on only one character, which is the main character or protagonist. We can tell by looking at just the first couple of chapters that the main character is Hannah due to the number of times she's mentioned.

Chapter 1 opens with Hannah declaring, "I'm tired of remembering," which is a central theme in the book. After this first reference to Hannah, we see that Hannah's name is the most frequently referred to name in the chapter. Plus, any time the author uses the pronoun "she," the author is referring to Hannah, as can be seen in the following sentence:

Sometimes she wished her mother would yell at her the way Rosemary's mother did, but she knew her mother would only give her one of those slow, low, reasonable lectures that were so annoying.

The pattern continues in subsequent chapters--each chapter begins with a reference to Hannah, and it is through Hannah's eyes that the reader views the story because Hannah does the most talking and the only thinking.

Beyond noticing from whose perspective the reader views the story, the main character can also easily be determined by thinking about which character does any learning or changing. The reason why is because the main character is the protagonist, and it is the protagonist who is faced with and must overcome the story's conflict. In The Devil's Arithmetic, the central conflict is that Hannah takes for granted the value of her family, the value of life, and does not have a true understanding of the horrors survived during the Holocaust. In the plot, Hannah is taken back in time to the Holocaust where she herself is herded into a concentration camp. Hannah undergoes a transformation in the concentration camp as she learns what it truly means to develop deep relationships and how painful it is to truly experience loss. The greatest turning point arises when she sacrifices herself by taking her friend's place in the gas chamber. After that moment, the plot is resolved when Hannah finds herself back in the present of the 1980s and looks at her family in a whole new light.

Hence, since we know it is Hannah who undergoes a transformation in the novel, we also know that only Hannah can possibly be the main character and protagonist.

What is the theme of The Devil's Arithmetic?

I would say that you could find many themes in the novel.  One such idea could be the importance of memory.  The notion of recollecting plays a vital role in the novel.  On one hand, Hannah starts off disliking her ethnic identity and does not see the importance of it.  In many ways, she seeks to forget that she is Jewish and hopes to alleviate such a burden through a superficial lifestyle that does not acknowledge what it means to have memory.  In seeking to forget it, she actually plunges into a world that she does not know, lacks understanding, yet it is a world that seeks to erase her and her people from its memory.  The fact that she, as Chaya, does not "remember" her aunt and uncle is another example of memory.  Her experiences in Poland are ones where the curse of memory are nearly impossible to overcome.

What is the theme of The Devil's Arithmetic?

Before you begin to answer this question you must first remember:

-  Theme is a subject or main idea of a work of literature.
-  Theme is NOT plot summary.
-  Theme statements do not give advice (they do not contain you, should, ought, etc.)
-  Theme statements should be supported by text throughout the work, not just one section.

That said, here are some notes about how to write a theme statement for ANY piece of literature.

1.  Make a list of SUBJECTS covered in the text (not plot details but things like, relationships, fighting, growing up, etc.)
2.  Choose one, or two that seem to relate to each other.
3.  Ask, "What is the author trying to say about (subject)?  *I like to put things through what I call the "cause-effect" machine.  Make a list of all the things that either caused the subject or the effects of the subject.  You use plot here, but by examining the patterns, you can often answer the bigger question: What is the author trying to say about (subject)?
4.  Answer the question in #3 with a complete sentence.  This is your theme statement.  Using words like causes or results in are often helpful.
5.  Prove your theme statement with examples from the plot.

A final word:

The key to theme statements is to make them broad enough to be universally applicable (ie. to other works of literature or perhaps even life itself) but not SO BROAD that they could be virtually applied to absolutely any work of literature.

For example (Think of Romeo and Juliet):

1.  Fighting always leads to death.  (Too narrow in one sense, but too broad when you consider - what kind of fighting?)
2.  Fighting can be a negative thing.  (Um, yes, duh.  Obviously.  Way too broad.)
3.  Hasty decisions often lead to unnecessary fighting, which can be disasterous.  (Just narrow enough, but still universally applicable.)

What is the main idea of The Devil's Arithmetic by Jane Yolen?

The main idea of this book is to reveal (and remember) the horrors of the Holocaust from a young adult point of view.  The main character, Hannah, is annoyed greatly by her Jewish faith as she travels to her grandparents’ house to eat the Seder meal.  During the meal, Hannah is transported back in time to 1942.  She finds herself part of a Jewish family and is suddenly called “Chaya.”  While entering the synagogue for a wedding, Hannah/Chaya and all of the other Jewish people are herded onto trucks and sent to a concentration camp.  This is where the horrors begin.  Women and children are sent to the gas chambers.  Others starve to death.  Still others are worked to death.  The story of Chaya is a tale of great bravery.  Chaya sacrifices herself for her friend Rivka when Chaya enters the gas chamber in Rivka's place, telling her to both “run” and “remember.”  This book is Chaya’s story.  As a result, the victims of the Holocaust are remembered in a very moving way.

What is "The Devil's Arithmetic"?

The camp is run with a macabre sense of logic and organization, on the part of both the Nazis and the prisoners.  The Commandant arrives at unpredictable intervals with his clipboard, on which he keeps a list of carefully ordered numbers and names.  He has come to do a "Choosing" - "anyone who cannot get out of bed (on that) day will be 'chosen'...for 'processing'".  It is a known fact that "processing" is a euphemism for "death", but no one acknowledges it.  On the Commandant's papers, people are not "killed", they are "chosen", they are not "cremated", they are "processed", and their remains are not "corpses", they are "rags".  The tallies the Commandant keeps on his clipboard give no proof of the grisly truth, because "what is not recorded cannot be blamed" (Chapter 15).  The Commandant uses a sick methodology to keep the camp running - the "Devil's Arithmetic".

Gitl applies the concept of "the Devil's Arithmetic" to the attitude the Jews must adopt to survive as well.  In a world gone insane, the rules which govern the camp, including the Choosings, become useful, because "in a world of chaos any guidelines (help)".  Each day that each one of them remains alive is an important victory - "one plus one plus one".  Again, brought on by necessity, this evil sense of illogic is another example of the "Devil's Arithmetic" (Chapter 16).

What is the conflict in The Devil's Arithmetic?

The conflict in The Devil's Arithmetic comes from two different sources: Hannah herself and the Nazis in the flashback scenes.

In the present day (the 1980s, when the book was written), Hannah is unable to fully comprehend the significance of the horrors of the Holocaust for her grandparents. Having grown up without experiencing the severe persecution they experienced during World War II, Hannah cannot comprehend how the Holocaust affected those that came before her.

While Hannah cannot help having a more privileged upbringing, she lacks compassion or understanding. She eventually overcomes these flaws during her experiences in the concentration camps, even choosing to die in Rivka's place. By sacrificing herself (all the while not knowing she will be returning to her comfortable life in modern New York), Hannah demonstrates that she is no longer the naïve, ignorant girl she was at the start, but a kinder, wiser person who can now better connect with her grandparents.

The other major conflict comes in the sections in the past: the Nazi persecution of the Jewish people. This conflict is more exterior than Hannah's having to overcome her inner emotional blocks. The Nazis round up the Jews and put them into concentration camps where they are enslaved, tortured, and killed in gas chambers. In the context of the novel as a whole, this outer conflict both provides suspense and prompts Hannah's character development.