Student Essay on The Beginning - Chaim Potok Commentary

Calvin Unholz

Chaim Potok- In the Beginning Commentary

,,In the beginning" Chaim Potok describes his reflection of his childhood and how,,all beginnings are hard" to foreshado his later life. Potok uses David as the protagonist to show the struggles of beginnings and growing up.,,All beginnings are hard" is waht this piece of prose shows, portraying a theme of survival and struggle of starting something new.

The core focus of this passage is about starting new beginnings.,,All beginnings are hard" is something that David has to learn,which his father tells him,"You cannot swallow all the world at one time", through this he is trying to tell David that he must be tolerant and learn the new beginnings are never easy. Linked to this it can be said that this piece of prose can be linked to the theme of generation and wisdom, as it is Davids Father who is passing on his wisdom through a generation to his son. David does the same, not by passing this on to his own children, but as a teacher,,when I standbefore a new class at the beginning of a school year...I say to them what was said to me: Be patient...all beginnings are hard."

In this extract of prose I can not see a clear tone as the passage is written as a flashback, the protagonist is not writting in a sense of melancholy or happines, he is just writing down his memories of the past as if it were a diary,,I marvel that we survive our beginnings. Mine was filled with strange accidents." Potok uses this to enhance his theme of wisodom and reflection.

The structure that Potok portrays through the Protagonists writting is a very clear structure and precise structure, the first sentence starts of with,,All beginnings are hard." The effect of this is that the first sentence conveys the main topic of this extract to the reader. The first sentence is very short and clear, which attracts the reader, as by saying,,All beginnings are hard" it allows for the reader to ponder about what kind of beginnings David will be talking about pulling them to further reading of the text. David then jumps straight into a flashback of his mother telling him again what is important, that having to start from the beginning is hard, in Davids case it was because he just started becoming sick again.The Structure jumps back and forth between Davids flashbacks of his childhood and moral matter from his parents to him, and from himself to students, this effect of structure allows for Potok to not only write a piece of prose, but to also bring across a message to the reader,,Especially a beginning that you make by yourself. That's the hardest beginning of all." Potok used the protagaonist in this piece of prose to portray his messages through direct quotes from David.

,,Be patient. You are learning a new way of understanding the Bible" is what David says to his students, this use of first person narrative given by Potok is eminently used to bring across a message towards the reader. By using this form of narrative, is seems to the reader as if David were talking to the reader himself, allowing for the wisdom of the text to be layed out to person reading the text. Again this use of narrative links back to the theme of wisdom and generation, as through using this it is as if Potok is trying to pass on the wisdom through the generation of David the protagonist, to us the reader.

In this passage, there is not much figurative imagery used, except for the once sentence,,Our family doctor- a short, pink-faced,red-haired man who spoke Yiddish and English fluently.." I think it was important for Potok to include this one sentence of figurative imagery into this passage as he was trying to enhance that the protagonist is an Orthodox Jew who immigrated to (most likely) a western country. Potok must have found this important to link to the theme of wisdom and generation, it is very likely that he was trying to enhance that in the Orthodox Jewish generation matter, it was important to pass on family wisdom such as starting new beginnings, but also,,that we survive our beginnings"

In conclusion, this piece of passage is focused of the theme of wisdom and passing this wisdom through generations. Chaim Potok uses a protagonist to protray his themes through his writing to the reader. The piece of prose acts as a type of guide for the moral issue of beginnings, as Potok gives examples of how beginnings are hard, but by using the structure in his piece and the flashback stories Potok also tries to portray that although one"cannot swallow all the world at one time","we survive our beginnings."