The time has come for an in-depth entry on Singer's The Slave. I have posted previously that I found the book compulsively readable(and that it could make a good movie)and mentioned that it has aesthetic parallals to the Bible--particularily in regards to narrative irony--. Now is when I go into specifics.

The name of the protagonist is that of one of the Patriarchs: Jacob. When the novel opens, he has been a slave in the peasent village of Josefov for four years. He has fallen in love with his master's daughter Wanda, and she with him. But he feels tormented by his desire, principally because she is a Gentile. Eventually a plan is formulated: he will convert her(she is greatly willing) and they will run away. Alas, things do not go the way either of them quite suspect.
*I have been delibrately oblique in my plot description up to this point. However I will now be refering to events which transpire later in the book, which would be construed as spoilers.*

Other Biblical motifs abound: Wanda's name is changed to Sarah(like Sarai became Sarah), like Rachel she dies in childbirth, and the baby is named Benjamin. I was also reminded of Genesis in how the book covered such a vast amount of time and territory in a rather economical number of pages(148 pages). Singer's style is of course not even as close to being as spare and ellipitcal as the J writer, but that doesn't matter. But even deeper then this is the aforementioned vein of irony running throughout. Probably the most prominent instance in the story comes at the conclusion. Jacob, now very old, as returned from Israel to collect Sarah's remains in order to bury them at the Mount of Olives, along with himself when he dies. But he cannot find the spot where she was buried, and he dies in the morning. The villagers(some of whom actually remebering him from years ago) decide to bury him in one of the clear spots in the burial ground. But when they dig into the earth, they find the skeltel remains of a woman with blond hair, and realize this is the wife of Jacob, and bury him there as well. Wow.

There is also the question of theodicy throughout the novel. One example is the end of part three of Chapter four, with Wanda pondering the difference of fate between her father(dearly loved by her and dying) and the Bailiff's cruel, immoral son Stephan.

"Jacob said that God was just, that He rewarded the good and punished the wicked, but Stephan,idler, whoremaster, assasin, flourished like the oak, while her father, whose whole life had been dedicated to work and who had done injustice to no one, crumbled into ruins. What sort of justice was this?"(pg. 40)

And then the mistaken instances of ephipany that occur in Part Two. The first example of Sarah, who is passing as a mute, crying out when it appears that Jacob will be killed by Adam Pilitzky, the Christian land lord of their village. The event is interpreted as a miracle, and Sarah, previously derided is now regarded as a holy woman. In parts four through five of chapter nine a small band of pilgrims arrive at Jacob and Sarah's home. Yet another prime example of irony occurs when they are greeted by Jacob.

"'Good evening, visitors. Bless you.'

'Good evening rabbi,' the man answered in a deep, gruff voice.

'I am not a rabbi,' Jacob said, 'only a humble Jew.'

'God has granted you a saint for a wife,' one of the women answered, 'so you must be a saint also.'" (pg. 96).

The other instance of mistaken epiphany(or perhaps a mistaken view of the demonic would be more accurate)is when Sarah, delivering the baby, in great pain, begins to babble in Yiddish and Polish. The villagers believe her to be possesed by a devil, before inevitably, the truth is discerned.

These mistaken incidences of a supernatural prescence through a questioning eye on religon. But, I would argue, it is the ultimately uniting force of irony(Jacob and Wanda/Sarah do eventually manage to be to together, albiet not in the way that Jacob and planned) that signifies the presence of God in the world of this story.

I will note one more thing before ending. What does the title mean? Of course Jacob is a literal slave during Part One. But he also feels that he is a slave to forces that he cannot control, first to desire for Wanda and more enduringly, to the sense of divine will, however absent God may appear to be.