Perfection | Themes

Perfection Themes

The Importance of Truth

The events of the story are set in motion by Roger’s discovery of the Saromsker Rebbe’s imperfection—his deception about eating non-kosher chocolate. Roger has witnessed an extreme “imperfection,” the Holocaust in which his parents were murdered. He knows that he can no longer trust the Saromsker Rebbe to bear witness to the truth with the absolute integrity needed to avoid another Holocaust. He himself intends to bear witness to the truth of the Holocaust until the day he dies. In order to know the truth of the current political situation, he listens to the radio, but what he learns leads him to another task: saving the Yankees from a string of defeats. In a broader sense, Roger lives his life in accordance with the truth, in that he is incapable of lying. He knows that a lie is the beginning of the breakdown of integrity, “the outrider of malevolent forces,...
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