Mr. Sammler's Planet

Set in late 1960s New York City, the novel follows Artur Sammler, a septuagenarian Polish Jewish intellectual and Holocaust survivor, over the course of roughly two days as he confronts the impending death of his beloved nephew, the disorder of his extended family, and the moral disarray of contemporary American life.

Sammler lives on the Upper West Side in the apartment of his niece-by-marriage, Margotte Arkin, a well-meaning German Jewish widow. He has only one functioning eye, the other having been destroyed by a Nazi rifle butt during the war. Over preceding days, he has been riding the Riverside bus and observing an elegantly dressed Black pickpocket, a tall man in a camel's-hair coat and homburg hat, stealing from passengers. Sammler reports the crimes by telephone, but the police are indifferent. Despite the danger, he finds himself compulsively returning to watch, drawn by an illicit fascination with the criminal act and its capacity to sharpen perception.

Sammler's personal history unfolds through memory and reflection. Originally from Cracow, he spent two decades in London as a correspondent for Polish journals, moving in intellectual circles and befriending H. G. Wells. He and his wife, Antonina, returned to Poland in 1939; Antonina was killed in 1940. Sammler was shot into a mass grave and survived only by clawing out from under the corpses. He later fought as a partisan in Zamosht Forest, where he ambushed and killed a German soldier who begged for his life, experiencing the act as a fierce, rapturous joy. He recalls this killing as a formative event, one that gave him an understanding of why power structures are drawn to murder. Near the war's end, the Polish partisans turned on the Jewish fighters, and Sammler survived by hiding in a mausoleum, fed bread by a cemetery caretaker.

Sammler's daughter, Shula (also called Slawa, a name from her years hidden in a Polish convent), is an eccentric scavenger obsessed with her father's unwritten memoir about Wells. His nephew, Dr. Arnold (Elya) Gruner, a successful gynecologist and real estate investor, rescued Sammler and Shula from a displaced persons camp in 1947 and has supported them financially ever since. Elya's two children are sources of bitter disappointment: His daughter Angela pursues a life of sexual adventure and confides its details to Sammler, while his son Wallace, gifted but directionless, has cycled through aborted careers and once lost fifty thousand dollars in a Las Vegas venture.

Lionel Feffer, a young, scheming former student-reader, persuades Sammler to address a seminar at Columbia University on the British intellectual scene of the 1930s. Sammler arrives expecting a small group but finds a packed amphitheater. He lectures on Wells's utopian Cosmopolis project until a bearded heckler interrupts, denouncing Sammler in crude, sexually degrading terms: "Why do you listen to this effete old shit? ... His balls are dry. He's dead. He can't come" (34). No one defends him.

That same day, the pickpocket follows Sammler into his apartment lobby, pins him against a wall, removes his glasses, and silently displays his penis, a gesture of intimidation and warning. Without a word, he replaces Sammler's glasses and departs. Shaken, Sammler finds a note from Shula: She has left him a manuscript by Dr. V. Govinda Lal, an Indian biophysicist, titled The Future of the Moon, about lunar colonization. She has stolen the only copy from Columbia.

Sammler visits Elya at the hospital. Through careful observation, he grasps the full gravity of the situation: Elya has a congenital aneurysm, a defective blood vessel in the brain worn thin over a lifetime. A clot has formed, and any heartbeat could rupture the artery. Elya knows he is dying but maintains composure, reassuring Sammler about his future. Sammler is deeply moved by Elya's generosity and dignity. Wallace, meanwhile, tells Sammler he believes his father has hidden undeclared cash in the family's New Rochelle house, money received for performing illegal abortions as favors for prominent figures. He wants Sammler to probe Elya for information; Sammler refuses.

When Feffer reveals that Pinkerton detectives are searching for whoever stole Lal's manuscript, Sammler immediately realizes Shula is the thief. He writes a letter of apology to Dr. Lal and sends Margotte to deliver it. Feffer also reveals he knows about the pickpocket and proposes photographing the criminal with a miniature camera to sell the story to a magazine. Sammler warns him against this.

Sammler visits Elya again that evening. Angela, distressed, confides that she and her boyfriend Wharton Horricker participated in group sex with another couple in Acapulco, and that Elya has apparently learned of the episode. Elya, awake and bitter, calls Angela and Wallace vile names, expressing disgust with both his children. His eyes hold unshed tears, "rerouted, absorbed into the system" (147).

That night, Sammler rides to New Rochelle with Emil, the longtime chauffeur, and Wallace. He finds Shula at the Gruner house. She reveals she has locked Lal's manuscript in a locker at Grand Central Station and produces the key. Margotte arrives with Dr. Lal, who calms when Sammler assures him the manuscript is safe. Over a late supper, Sammler and Lal engage in extended conversation about space colonization, Wells's legacy, and the failures of revolutionary movements. Pressed to share his views, Sammler speaks of the modern surge of individuality, its spiritual poverty, and the grotesque failures of ego. He discusses Rumkowski, the "mad Jewish King of Lodz," whom the Nazis installed as elder of the ghetto, who presided over death with pageants and royal robes. Sammler concludes that the spirit knows its own growth is the real aim of existence, and that the best condition is disinterestedness achieved through willing as God wills.

Meanwhile, Wallace has taken a wrench to attic pipes searching for hidden money, causing a massive flood. The fire department is called. The next morning, Sammler is stranded in New Rochelle until Emil returns. He telephones Elya, whose voice has an unsettling quality.

En route to the hospital, Emil spots a disturbance near Lincoln Center. Feffer is pinned against a bus by the pickpocket, who is trying to seize the camera Feffer used to photograph a theft. A crowd watches but no one intervenes. Sammler appeals for help, then turns to Eisen, Shula's estranged husband, a volatile Russian Jewish artist who has recently arrived in New York carrying a bag of heavy metal medallions. Eisen swings the bag and strikes the pickpocket with devastating force. When the man goes down, Eisen prepares to strike again. Sammler seizes his arm, horrified. Eisen argues: "You can't hit a man like this just once. When you hit him you must really hit him. Otherwise he'll kill you" (242). Emil pulls Sammler away.

At the hospital, Sammler urges Angela to make some sign of reconciliation to her dying father, praising Elya as a man who fulfilled his obligations with generosity and kindness. Angela is offended and furious, accusing Sammler of living a cloistered life. The conversation fails.

Shula telephones from New Rochelle: She has found Elya's hidden cash stuffed into a hassock. Sammler firmly instructs her to turn over every cent to the family lawyer. Then Dr. Cosbie, Elya's surgeon, appears and tells Sammler that Elya has died. The aneurysm hemorrhaged. Elya, recognizing the signs as a physician, asked to be taken from his room to spare Angela, and asked Cosbie to say good-bye to Sammler. Sammler insists on seeing the body. A nurse escorts him to the post-mortem room. Standing over Elya, Sammler delivers a silent prayer, asking God to remember this soul, a man who met the terms of his contract, "the terms which, in his inmost heart, each man knows. As I know mine. As all know. For that is the truth of it, that we all know, God, that we know, that we know, we know, we know" (260).