“You can’t improve your ancestors—you can only improve yourselves and inspire your children.”

Thomas’s words to the Pennacook Academy students on the first day of every English class he teaches showcase his forward-looking, liberal attitude. The words also clarify how his views are in stark contrast to the prevalent notions in Pennacook. For the townspeople of Pennacook, one’s ancestry is paramount and determines their place in life. Thomas’s debunking of the importance of ancestry makes the townsfolk eternally suspicious of him, while also introducing the theme of Chosen Family Versus Inherited Family Bonds.

“If you can imagine yourself in someone else’s shoes, this might make you a better person.”

Thomas’s words to his students illustrate his belief that reading fiction makes one more empathetic, since it enables people to view the interior lives of characters separated from them by time, circumstance, social milieu, gender, and other variables. His words reflect The Transformative Power of Literature.

“Not enough was known about where those orphans came from. With orphans, too much is missing; there’s always something you don’t know.”

The narrative uses a faux-sympathetic tone to commiserate with the people of Pennacook as they are scandalized endlessly by the Winslows, the tone adding humor to the proceedings. Here, the narrator seems scandalized—much like the townsfolk—that the Winslows would invite orphans, whose antecedents are unknown, into their home. The outrage of the narrator only serves to heighten the narrow-mindedness of the folk of Pennacook.

“Between the end of World War I and the beginning of World War II, orphans weren’t the only ones who felt a lack of permanence, but the Winslows understood that orphans should be allowed to take transience personally. An orphan is simply more of a child than other children—in the way that all children want the things they love to happen daily, on schedule. For everything good that promises to last, to stay the same, an orphan is permanently longing.”

These lines encapsulate the paradox at the heart of the experience of those who have faced loss in their childhood. Having lost stability, those dealing with childhood loss long for it with even more intensity. However, since life is fundamentally unstable, it keeps fueling the longing. That Thomas and Connie understand the psyche of those who have experienced early childhood loss makes them all the more suitable to raising orphaned children.

“‘Given Esther’s experience, it’s not for me to judge what she believes,’ Rabbi Herzfeld told Dr. Larch. ‘Esther deserves to know who she is and where she came from, and how much her mother was afraid for her. Fear is love,’ the rabbi said.”

Love and fear are firmly bound in the novel, with love driving people to protect others, especially their children, at all costs. Esther’s mother loved her so much she feared Esther would need the orphanage one day, which is why she arranged for her neighbors to drop Esther there. Knowing her mother’s fear is important for Esther because it will show her the extent to which her mother loved her.

“I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.”

These lines from Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre are an leitmotif in the novel, since Esther ultimately has them tattooed on her body. In Bronte’s novel, Jane speaks these lines after Mr. Rochester, who is already married, suggests he and Jane commit bigamy. Jane ultimately rejects the idea as it is against her principles, opting for a lonely but self-respecting existence. For Esther, Jane’s lines are a powerful reminder of the importance of holding onto one’s principles at any cost, invoking Survival and Identity in the Face of Prejudice.

“‘What we’re afraid of, Esther, is that we don’t know enough to help you with the Jewishness,’ Thomas said to her.

‘That’s not your job,’ Esther told the Winslows, she squeezed their arms affectionately, but more painfully. ‘You’re giving me an education, you’re making me smarter—my learning how to be a Jew is my job.’”

As these lines show, the dynamic between Esther and the Winslows inverts the child-parent relationship. Here, Esther, the “foundling,” is the one who reassures the older couple. She squeezes their arms to the point of pain, signifying her superior physical power. The inverted dynamic shows the force of Esther’s personality; the painful arm-squeezing is a characteristic habit. Later, when she meets Jimmy, Esther squeezes his arm so hard she leaves him in pain for days.

“‘We all know Honor will be a wonderful mom, and of course we’ll help her. Given what Esther is offering to do, there’s no reason Honor’s vagina needs to be involved. Nobody gets in, nobody comes out,’ was the way Prudence put it.

‘Well, really!’ Constance exclaimed.

Thomas Winslow didn’t say a word. Notwithstanding that he was the father of four daughters, the vagina wasn’t his area of expertise. In the novels of the nineteenth century, vaginal matters weren’t brought to light.”

An example of the novel’s use of humor, this passage juxtaposes Prudence’s frankness against the fumbling, good-natured response of Connie and Thomas. Though Thomas and Connie support their children unconditionally, the mention of a “vagina” stumps Thomas. The narrative voice dryly notes that the vagina wasn’t Thomas’s “area of expertise” despite having been surrounded by women all his life.

“‘As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them (for their days were long before the days of photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were like, were unreasonably derived from their tombstones.’

Both Constance and Honor wondered if Thomas was trying to make Jimmy feel better about his own circumstances. (At least the boy had seen photos of Esther and Moses Little Mountain—they weren’t tombstones).”

This humorous passage barely conceals the anxiety at its heart: The Winslow fear that Jimmy’s unusual upbringing may have scarred him. In the novel, such worry is central to parenting, with parents and parent-figures aware that even their seemingly small actions can shape an entire life. Thomas’s use of literature to try to help Jimmy make sense of his life also highlights The Transformative Power of Literature.

“In writing, Thomas was thinking, if you don’t make it as a novelist, maybe you never heal.”

The novel often juxtaposes fear with love, parents shown to fret endlessly over their children. In these lines, Thomas is more worried about the injuries from Jimmy’s writing than his wrestling practice, since the physical injuries will heal. However, if Jimmy does not make it as a novelist, the blow to his self-image may never heal, which is why Thomas wants Jimmy to choose a safer profession.

“His grandfather was right: James Winslow was a dreamer, in the way young writers in the making are. Yet Jimmy had read The Diary of a Young Girl and the Road into the Open very carefully; James knew where Annelies Eissler came from. At first, he’d imagined that his birth mother might be his German tutor—he’d hoped that Esther had made up Annelies Eissler to disguise herself. But Jimmy was told that his tutor was a ‘young woman.’”

One of the subtler themes of the novel is Jimmy’s yearning for Esther, the birth-mother who has is the stuff of legend in his family. These lines capture the bittersweet yearning felt by the young Jimmy, with him using his imagination to create the fantasy that Annelies will be revealed to be Esther. Jimmy’s longing to know Esther reflects Chosen Family Versus Inherited Family Bonds.

“‘Oh Tommy—a foundling for the child of a foundling!’ Constance told him, bursting into tears.

Thomas was crying too. They were good grandparents, who only sought to protect their grandson; yet their Jimmy’s belief in his intrinsic foreignness was unshakeable. He was determined to see himself as an orphan. All Thomas and Constance could do for the boy was to give him an orphan’s story with a happy ending.”

Thomas’s gift of Tom Jones to Jimmy on the eve of Jimmy’s departure to Vienna underscores the importance of stories in the novel, highlighting the theme of The Transformative Power of Literature. Since Jimmy sees himself as an orphan, Thomas wants Tom Jones to show Jimmy that an orphan can also have a happy life. Through giving Jimmy Tom Jones, Thomas, the teacher, is gifting him possibility, one of fiction’s greatest presents.

“This is the kind of thing roommates do for one another when they’re in their twenties—when thunder and lightning might be months away, a remote possibility.”

The Vienna sojourn captures the passion, urgency, and selflessness of youth, where roommates take great chances for each other. Here, Claude and Jimmy hide Hard Rain in their rooms so Jolanda and Hildegund can have uninterrupted time together. Claude and Jimmy do not fear consequences, such as being evicted by the Holzingers, because at their age, “thunder and lightning” or the vagaries of fate, can still be ignored.

“If he’d been alone, Jimmy might have stopped reading his mother’s proposal, but even a beginning writer knows the story gathers momentum when you have an audience.”

A metafictional nod to the process of writing, Jimmy’s realization that he cannot stop reading once he has an audience is akin to the author himself acknowledging that he will keep writing for his readers. Readers catalyze writing and give it shape, as much as the author themselves.

“‘You don’t get to choose to be Jewish, Jimmy—you just are Jewish,’ Fraulein Eissler told him. ‘No matter what your two moms say, your father and your birth mother are Jewish. You’re a Jew, Jimmy.’”

The subject of Jimmy’s Jewish identity is fraught with contradictions in the novel, with those who care for him vacillating about his cultural heritage. Annelise comes closest to the truth when she says that Jimmy is culturally and historically of Jewish origin. Even as a non-believer, he cannot shed the weight of history, because that history has formed him. This passage speaks to Survival and Identity in the Face of Prejudice.

“There is a telescope that sees into the future, Jimmy—it’s called the passage of time. Just wait and see.”

Irmgard’s words to Jimmy imply that the more time passes in one’s life, the better one can “see into the future” by being able to spot patterns and rhythms. The passage of time also helps one see into the future through the next generation, as Jimmy does with Vienna.

“No one likes dogs with balls, Jimmy, but castrated males hate dogs with balls more than Hard Rain does […] Hard Rain knows what to do when horny males try to hump her. No one likes being humped by a beagle with balls—I know the feeling.”

Irmgard’s cryptic response to Jimmy when he cautions her against walking Hard Rain among intact dogs, is an instance of the text’s use of absurdist humor. Irmgard’s reply has little to do with Jimmy’s concern; instead, she launches into a digression about no one liking to be humped by a dog with “balls.” The ominous ending phrase—“I know the feeling”—indicates that Irmgard does not like men.

“Hey, Sperm Man, way to go—you knocked up my girlfriend!”

Jolanda’s exultant declaration to Jimmy at the Amsterdam railway station is an example of the text’s use of irreverent humor. Such displays often occur in the context of a scandalized or stunned audience; here, Jimmy notes that the reactions around him show that most Dutch people well understand English.

“As James Winslow now understood, even parents who aren’t normal want their children to be. Aren’t normal children safer? He thought. This led Jimmy to fear for his own child. Given the landmark loss of Jimmy’s virginity, and how out of it he was at the time, Jimmy doubted his own child would be normal—not to mention Mieke’s contribution, and Jolanda’s. And with this thought, Jimmy also realized that the more you fear for a child, the more you must love it.”

Parental worry about children recurs through the novel, with fear for children being a natural corollary of parental love. Jimmy’s realization that all parents want their children to be “normal”—as in, not outsiders—is central to his understanding about Esther’s decision to raise him non-Jewish. Jimmy’s unconventional parenting arrangements with Mieke also reflect Chosen Family Versus Inherited Family Bonds.

“Real life, Jimmy and his grandfather knew, wasn’t plotted like a novel.”

This quote is an example of the text’s use of metafictional elements, with the author deliberately drawing attention to the artifice of his creation. When Jimmy says that real life is not plotted as a novel, Irving reminds the reader that what they’re reading is fiction. At the same time, Jimmy’s line is also a reminder of the unpredictability of life—and death. Unlike in a novel, where deaths are plotted, in real life, death sneaks up on a family, as it does in the case of Connie and Thomas. Thomas, expected to live for a while, gives up food after Connie’s passing, and dies within days of his wife.

“Constance Winslow had heard her husband say (more times than she could count) that religion was the bane of civilization. Those Winslow sisters grew up saying this to one another—later, to Jimmy.”

The Winslow clan are united in their mistrust of religion, Esther sharing their agnosticism. For the Winslows, religion is linked with antisemitism, since the persecution of Jewish people has its roots in the early church doctrine that blamed Jewish people for the death of Christ, a pernicious and debunked notion. While the link between religion and intolerance is clear, what the Winslows don’t factor is that for many minorities, religion may be a way of asserting their culture, such as the way her Jewish heritage helps Esther navigate Survival and Identity in the Face of Prejudice.

“‘No one knew how she lost her arm—No one asks […] The story I tell myself, Yimmy, is that the angels asked Esther if they could have her arm, and Esther gave it to them.’

‘Seriously, dear Siegfried—is this what you believe?’ Jimmy asked the good soldier.

‘I don’t believe in God, just in angels—your Esther is our angel, dear Yimmy.’”

The conversation between Jimmy and the grown-up Siegfried has a tragi-comic quality, not least because they refer to each other as “dear Siegfried” and “dear Yimmy” throughout. The poignancy comes from Siegfried’s assertion that Esther gave up her arm for Israel, his words underscoring the power of Esther’s sacrifice. The full import of Esther’s sacrifice will only become clear when Jimmy glimpses the immense love his biological mother has for him. Esther has not only given her arm for her people; she has also given up her heart for Jimmy’s safety.

“If somebody loves you—if there’s anyone you love—just be a Winslow, Jimmy.”

Esther’s advice to Jimmy in his meeting with her in Jerusalem shows her conflicted state of mind over Survival and Identity in the Face of Prejudice. As a member of the Mossad, Esther faces danger every day, even having lost her arm in an attack. She therefore associates being Jewish with permanent danger, a fate she does not want for Jimmy. Her imperative that Jimmy should “just be a Winslow” speaks to a pressing social fact: As an affluent white American man, Jimmy does occupy one of the safest social positions in the world.