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From the Lions' Den: Survivorsin E. L. Doctorow's The Book ofDanielMichelle M. Tokarczyk aa Rutgers UniversityPublished online: 09 Jul 2010.
To cite this article: Michelle M. Tokarczyk (1987) From the Lions' Den: Survivors in E.L. Doctorow's The Book of Daniel , Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 29:1,3-15, DOI: 10.1080/00111619.1987.9939911
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From the Lions’ Den: Survivors in E. L. Doctorow’s The Book of Daniel
MICHELLE M. TOKARCZYK
U p o n its publication, The Book of Daniel was praised by reviewers for its stylistic excellence and imaginative treatment of a daring theme. Although the novel has received relatively little critical attention in subsequent years, it continues to be regarded as outstanding and insightful. In her article on The Book of Daniel, Barbara Estrin rightfully states the book is “ . . . a description of the hysteria of McCarthyism as it surfaced during the trials of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. Moreover, it shows the devastating effect of the mentality of the period on subsequent decades.”’ Critics have likewise noted that the novel cannot be facilely categorized as a fictionalization of the Rosenberg case. Paul Levine, for one, contends that The Book of Daniel is about Daniel’s personal legacy as a surviving Isaacson.’ Any perceptive reader will notice that the novel depicts the Isaacson children as seriously scarred by their parents’ arrest and execution. What is not im- mediately obvious is that the children-Daniel and Susan Isaacson-Lewin and Linda Mindish-of the defendants in the fictional atom spy trial have psychological traits of survivors.
Psychologists broadly define survivors as those who “ . . . have come into contact with death in some psychic or bodily fashion . . . and have remained a l i ~ e . ” ~ This definition can thus apply to people who emerge from things as diverse as personal accidents and natural catastrophies. But some literature (that on concentration camp victims in particular) suggests that survivors of political persecution or atrocities have unique problems. They know they are part of a group that has been targeted for destruction, but they have
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managed to escape while they saw many others p e r i ~ h . ~ Like the Biblical Daniel, they have escaped from the lions’ den.
Doctorow’s The Book of Daniel portrays the scars of political persecu- tion on its indirect victims, the children of those sentenced in a controversial trial. By doing so, it underscores the novel’s theme that the anti-Communist hysteria of the 1950s was not, as many Americans would like to believe, a brief aberration washed away by the political progressivism of the 1960s.
While The Book of Daniel is not, as Doctorow himself has emphasized, a fictional account of the Rosenberg case, the actual case is obviously impor- tant to the novel. The political climate, disturbing features of the trial, and, most important, the left’s view that post-World War I1 America was veer- ing toward facism, provide a convincing context from which survivors can emerge. For these reasons, it is useful to review some facts of the actual case and their adaptation in The Book of Daniel.
Throughout the novel, there are many illusions to the post-war hysteria America was actually going through in the early 1950s. In one of his analyses, Daniel notes that after a war has ended, people are often still unable to give up the heightened patriotism and distrust of outsiders necessary for waging war. After World War 11, Americans remained con- cerned about loyalty and increasingly intolerant of nonconformity. In March of 1947, President Truman issued an executive order calling for federal employees to take loyalty oaths. The government tried to enforce loyalty, or what might more accurately be called political conformity, in a number of ways. An estimated ten million people whose political allegiances were suspect were asked questions ranging from “Do you belong to an organization that is affiliated with the Communist Party?” to “DO you read the New York Times?”’
America’s post-war hysteria might not have persisted into the 1950s if anti-Communist feeling had not been aggravated by two events: the Russian explosion of an atom bomb and the Korean war. The fictional Rochelle Isaacson fears that she and her husband will pay for every setback in Korea; when the actual Rosenbergs were tried, headlines of their trial were beside news of American defeats in Korea. Judge Kaufman, who presided over the Rosenberg trial, probably was not alone in his belief that the couple had caused the Korean War.
Being Communists made the Rosenbergs targets of prejudice. So did be- ing Jews. Many Americans harbored anti-Semitic feelings. In particular, there was a stereotype of Jews as Reds. The loyalties of Eastern European Jews with radical political ideologies were often questioned. An awareness of growing anti-Semitism possibly biased Judge Kaufman against the defen- dants. The issue of Jewishness was likely to rankle him. Like Doctorow’s fictional Judge Hirsch, he could be described as an “assimilationist.” His record was one of successful integration-at forty, he was the youngest
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judge. He had attended Fordham Law School and earned top grades in religion, thus gaining the nickname “Pope Kaufman.” Distancing himself from his Jewish identity had helped his career. So he might have resented the unfavorable attention the Rosenbergs were drawing to Jews and been lax in protecting their rights.
Throughout the trial, the prosecution got away with many questionable tactics. Patriotism, not espionage, became the issue. In his opening remarks, the prosecution suggested Communists were likely traitors. The Rosenbergs, like the fictional Isaacsons, were cast as enemies of the American flag.
Such insinuations probably had a negative impact upon an already loaded jury. “Loaded” does not imply the jury was fixed to find the Rosenbergs guilty, but that it was not composed of peers who might be objective about the defendants. Rather, like the fictional Isaacson jury, it was devoid of Jews and political progressives. It consisted of a group of homogeneous, conventional Americans, including an examiner, an auditor, two book- keepers, an accountant, and an estimator. Often those who choose such professions have authoritarian personalities, which are characterized by great respect for authority, little tolerance for nonconformity, and distrust of outsiders. A jury composed of people with such traits would be inclined to distrust the defendants and be uncritical of the government that represented the prosecution.
While many Americans did not recognize the injustices in the trial until years later, there were some substantial protests at the time.6 Distinguished scientists Albert Einstein and Harold Urey wrote to President Eisenhower, raising doubts about the validity of the prosecution’s charges and asking the President to grant the Rosenbergs clemency.’
This request was not granted. After numerous appeals failed and a stay of execution imposed by Justice Douglass was hastily removed, the Rosen- bergs were executed. Throughout the world, many people were shocked. On the American Left, many feared this execution was only the beginning. They felt as Ethel Rosenberg had about herself and her husband: The cou- ple were the first victims of American fascism.
In We Are Your Sons, the Rosenberg sons describe their anguish over their parents’ arrest and execution. But the trauma did not make either of the boys anti-social or mentally unstable; both appear to be well adjusted. In a fictional work, portraying the offspring of political victims as well- adjusted people would suggest that the effects of the McCarthy Era outrages would be undone over time. By depicting the spy trial’s children as people suffering from survivor syndromes, Doctorow suggests that injustice has lasting effects.
This theme is established early in the novel through the figure of the dead grandmother. As her “Bintel Brief” indicates, she has endured poverty,
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persecution, and the early death of loved ones: this is her legacy. That Daniel fantasizes she speaks to him, even smells her, indicates her suffering will have an enduring influence on him.
Daniel’s parents’ ordeal leaves a much stronger imprint. Even a quick analysis shows that the mature Daniel is not a normal, all-American man, even given the perspective of 1967, when it was trendy for students to act ec- centrically against accepted values. He is intensely preoccupied with his parents’ arrest, trial, and death; his relationship with his wife and child is often sadomasochistic; he is unable to commit himself professionally or politically. In essence, Daniel cannot recover from the trauma that took his parents from him and redefined his own identity. He is a survivor struggling to find his place in the society that killed his parents.
Daniel’s problem of deciding how much of his survivor identity to main- tain is complicated by the government’s action to undermine his identity. Often oppressive governments eradicate opposition by killing subversives or, more subtly, by making them invisible. In The Origins of Totalitarian- ism, Hannah Arendt states that the ultimate deprivation of human rights occurs when one’s voice becomes irrelevant because it is explained away as the result of something in one’s background.* Daniel’s family background defines his political stance for the government. Despite his apolitical nature, the FBI routinely investigates him because he is an Isaacson. This identity in itself limits the political statements he can make: Burning his draft card is meaningless because the government would never draft such a potential subversive.
But the treatment he receives from his government is not nearly so dif- ficult for Daniel as his own deeply rooted guilt. In his essay “Trauma and Regeneration,” Bettleheim describes the feelings of undeserved fortune among concentration camp survivors:
Having to live for years under the immediate and continuous threat of be- ing killed for no other reason than that one is a member of a group that is destined to be exterminated and knowing that one’s close friends and relatives are indeed being killed-this is sufficient to leave one for the rest of one’s life struggling with the unsolvable riddle of “Why am I spared?” and also with completely irrational guilt about being spared.’
As a child seeing his parents killed, Daniel undoubtedly felt that he too was in danger, and thus he has a survivor’s feelings of having fortuitously escaped. Such feelings arp hinted at in The Book of Daniet in Daniel’s reference to the Negro spiritual which Robeson sang, “Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel . . . then why not every man?” What, Daniel, (as both child and adult) asks, makes him worthy of rescue, the chance to build a new life, when his family has suffered so. He can isolate nothing.
Feeling unworthy of rescue, Daniel is full of guilt that manifests itself in his negative self-image. Repeatedly he describes himself as a “criminal of perception” and “betrayer.” Daniel does have horrible streaks of cruelty
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that are revealed when he burns his wife with a cigarette lighter and tosses his baby higher and higher, catching him lower and lower. However, Daniel thinks of himself as a bad person. His sadistic acts are consistent with his poor self-image.
Part of what contributes to this poor image is Daniel’s experience of helplessly standing by while his parents were arrested and executed. In a novel that deals with power, it is significant that children are the most powerless, most vulnerable group, unable to act on behalf of themselves or their loved ones. Daniel’s intense desire to aid his parents is first revealed in his attack on and death threats to the FBI men who arrest his father. During his first visit to the Death House, Daniel emphatically reiterates this desire: “I won’t let them kill you. . . . I’ll kill them first.”” After leaving the prison, Daniel is haunted by his father’s voice and the humiliation of having to leave his parents incarcerated.
A similar kind of guilt and failed sense of responsibility has been ob- served in Hiroshima survivors who have lost loved ones, particularly if the loved ones had helped to save the survivor’s life (as Paul saved Daniel’s life when a bus of radicals was attacked after a concert at Peekskill). Perhaps the greatest cause of guilt is the feeling that some unconsidered action might have saved lives. People cannot reasonably expect that they will think of all solutions, but emerging from a life-threatening situation is so extraordinary that it makes survivors have unreasonable expectations of themselves.
One of the most demanding burdens survival places upon a person is the sense of a survivor mission-the imperative to reveal what one has endured so others learn a crucial lesson. Susan feels compelled to get involved in radical politics, because she believes she has unique personal knowledge of government abuses. Her fury and hurt over Daniel’s apparent rejection of his Isaacson mission are so great that she disowns him.
Although Daniel is not involved in radical politics, his fantasy of his dead grandmother’s words to him shows that he also believes that he has a special duty: “I have recognized in you the strength and innocence that will reclaim us all from defeat. That will exonerate our having lived and justify our suf- fering” (83). Along with his feeling that this burden is too great to bear must be one that the dead woman is wrong in her perceptions: The surviving Daniel is really a weak, evil person, unworthy of a special mission.
This sense of inadequacy is reinforced by others. Not realizing what a burden he places on his young son, Paul asks Daniel to help him with the defense. After Paul’s arrest, Rochelle tells Daniel why his father was in- carcerated, stopping herself only when the boy begins to cry. Even the pain of losing his parents might have been more bearable if it were not mixed with a relief that someone else died rather than himself. For many sur- vivors, as for Daniel, this relief is a particularly painful component of sur- vivor guilt. When Susan is hospitalized, Daniel at first feels he cannot go on
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without her, but then concludes: “ I can live with anyone’s death but my own” (223). Daniel’s survival is full of such discoveries about himself: that he is cunning, resilient, cruel. Although the knowledge of these traits makes him feel unworthy to carry on the family mission, it does not free him from his perceived bond to the Isaacsons.”
The memory of their parents structures Daniel’s and Susan’s lives. Childhood days at the Lewins’ are full of “ghosts” that manifest themselves in casual conversation, household rituals and, most important, in the parent-child relationship, all of which evoke painful recollections. The most powerful evidence of the pervasiveness of these memories is the structure of Daniel’s account. Historical events, contemporary occurrences, and political theories are all juxtaposed with the narration of the Isaacson’s arrests, trial, and death. Like a narrator in Eliot’s Waste Land, Daniel has shored the fragments of his childhood memories and acquired knowledge against the ruin of his life. But the need to impose order by writing an ac- count in itself suggests how obsessive Daniel’s memories of his original parents are.
Clearly, Daniel feels a strong problematic pull to the deceased Isaacsons. Studies have shown that persistent identification with the dead is self- destructive for survivors; the living need to separate themselves from the dead (Lifton 203). Daniel’s need to do so is suggested in his account of his Death House conversation with his father: “ ‘You’re getting to look a lot like me,’ he (Paul) said to his son” (264). By referring to himself as “his son” rather than “me,” Daniel attempts to distance himself from his father. As an adult, Daniel similarly questions the necessity of living in memorial to one’s ancestors. Perhaps his desire to separate from his original family is best seen in his becoming a Lewin. This new identity enables him to live without people’s constant suspicion and with the benefits of affluence. But in spite of the comforts his new life offers Daniel, he is not at ease with it. His discomfort is characteristic of survivor guilt defined by Lifton as “anger turned inward because the survivor cannot help but internalize the world in which he has been victimized” (203). Such anger is apparent in Daniel’s statement that his relationship to the society that killed his parents is constant and degrading. In an attempt to protest against this society and thus re-establish his Isaacson identity, Daniel participates in the “March on the Pentagon.” After his beating and arrest, he sadly realizes, “It’s a lot easier to be a revolutionary nowadays than it used to be” (274). Nothing short of death can equal his parents’ experience.
Susan’s fate further attests to the impossibility of living as an Isaacson. Unable to aid revolutionary groups, she slashes her wrists rather than jeopardize her status as a progressive Isaacson. In part, her eventual death is the result of her refusal to compromise her radical beliefs.
Complete rejection of one’s past identity, however, is also dangerous. In
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blunting her memories, Linda Mindish blunts all her perceptions; thus, she does not immediately see Daniel as dangerous, but rather as pathetic. Shrewdly, Daniel observes: “ . . . all she has accomplished is to fortify her fear. One sharp poke of the finger and the fortifications totter” (300). Her father, Selig Mindish, is destroyed by his attempt to bury the past. Although his body survives in California affluence, his mind deteriorates into premature senility. His condition vividly illustrates that a survivor iden- tity cannot be totally relinquished if one is to prevail mentally and emo- tionally.
Daniel’s difficulty in choosing a middle ground between the Mindishes’ total renunciation of their survivor identities and Susan’s total embracing of hers is a typical survivor’s dilemma. The healthiest alternative is what Bet- tleheim calls reintegration, which involves trying to pull something positive from a traumatic experience while at the same time accepting the extent of the traumatization (35). The process is complicated, however, for in order to derive something positive from a traumatic experience, the experience must be relived in one’s mind. Memory is often not reliable in recalling emotionally charged events, and people are often reluctant to relate their traumas if they cannot recall them clearly. Hiroshima survivors, for exam- ple, often expressed hesitancy to relate their experiences because they were uncertain they could give authentic renderings.
Daniel likewise has special problems conveying the meaning of his parents’ experience because he cannot verify their guilt or innocence. Since the truth is “irretrievable,” he cannot know when he is lying, and often suspects that he is either doing so or exploiting his past. Linda Mindish and he, he believes, are “flawless, forged criminals of perception” who would use their sad lives to any end (291).
In a novel in which images of fire are so extensive, “forged” suggests one who has come through the flames and has not been destroyed but radically changed. The word also connotes a “forged” or false victim. In this sense, it suggests Daniel’s pain cannot be trusted because he is so prone to fabrica- tion. Going through the fire made Daniel a “criminal of perception.” As Barbara Estrin explains in her essay: “Daniel and Linda understand the na- ture of the fires that burned them and their knowledge in turn renders them deadly. They become the objects of their perception, reciprocating the bur- den of evil without changing it . . .” (202). Essentially, Daniel and Linda Mindish are contaminated by their contact with evil. Daniel becomes a cruel child who spies on his aunt in the bathroom and a sadistic adult who torments his wife and child. Linda Mindish becomes a calculating person who goes to all lengths to divorce herself from her past, even if doing so is obviously detrimental to her father. Yet, if one does not understand the nature of evil, as Susan does not, one runs the risk of not developing the cunning necessary for survival.
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Daniel bitterly recognizes that he had to become shrewd to continue to live in the society he views with contempt. His distrust of many social values is suggested in his pseudo-hippiedom, his failure to work on his disserta- tion, and his poor performance as a husband and father. He has become embittered, as is common for survivors (Lifton 256): Daniel is cynical about all ideologies and wary of the people who embrace them. Susan, in contrast, suffers because she blindly accepts the New Left’s ideology. Her breakdown is partially triggered by the realization that young radicals view her parents with contempt and she is politically isolated.
The difficulty she and Daniel face in finding and maintaining ties is characteristic of survivors. Studies of Hiroshima survivors have found that the extensive physical and psychic damage of the bomb limited the possibil- ity of cooperation among victims (Lifton 47). Bettleheim has pointed out that some of the concentration camp atrocities, such as leaving prisoners outside in freezing weather for long periods of time, gave many survivors increased confidence in their resilience as individuals, but destroyed any sense of group safety (“Individual,” 66). The entire concentration camp ex- perience undermined belief in group solidarity and safety through unity: People were not able to unite and resist.
The United States government was likewise successful in destroying the Left’s sense of group safety. Numerous people were blacklisted or arrested, but there did not seem to be any cohesive resistance. Worse, the government persuaded many Communists to inform on and testify against fellow Party members.
In The Book of Daniel, Selig Mindish, although a government informer, is also arrested and imprisoned for atomic espionage. In a sense, the Min- dishes and Isaacsons are co-victims. Upon meeting Linda, Daniel im- mediately feels a bond: “I recognize in you the same look I see in the mir- ror. It’s like a community’’ (287). Linda, in stating that she and Daniel had borne the brunt of the Isaacson trial, suggests that she feels a closeness to him. However, nothing can diminish the damning nature of Mindish’s testi- mony in Daniel’s mind. Linda, in turn, believes the Isaacsons were guilty and furthermore were contemptible people who exploited her father on many occasions. The thread of communion between Linda and Daniel can- not overcome familial hatred.
The resultant sense of isolation is particularly difficult for Daniel because, as someone who was tragically orphaned, he needs special caring. Yet often when Daniel does receive affection, he suspects that it is “counterfeit nurturance”-nurturance given out of guilt or obligation rather than genuine love (Lifton 193). Daniel is suspicious of the Lewins’ motives for adopting him and contemptuous of their optimistic belief that they and the Isaacson children can be a normal family. Similarly, he suspects his wife Phyllis does many things (smokes marijuana, goes to bed
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on the first date) on principle. Thus he assumes she married him because he is from a notorious family. He is unable to accept her efforts to support him, as she tries to do when she offers to let Susan live with them and recuperate.
Daniel is alienated from his wife by his belief that no one but Susan and, in a somewhat different way, the Mindishes have suffered as he. So Daniel feels survivor exclusiveness, a belief that “those who have survived, been through the experience, are radically different from those who have not” (Lifton 524). This sense perhaps discourages him from wanting to form relationships, for the gap between himself and others seems too great.I2
It is particularly difficult for outsiders to empathize with the survivor’s plight if the survivor himself is emotionally deadened like Daniel. Often Daniel intellectualizes, offering theories about the causes of his parents’ ex- ecution rather than agonizing over their deaths. He himself must constantly struggle to comprehend their pain, as he does when he stands in the men’s room trying to imagine Susan slashing her wrists. His emotions, not im- agination, fail; he cannot allow himself to experience Susan’s pain. Likewise, he describes his parents’ execution in great detail, but in an objec- tive, unemotional account. The first sentence of this episode is: “First they led in my father” (312); the last is: “Later he (the executioner) said the first dose had not been enough to kill my mother Rochelle Isaacson” (315).
To a great extent, Daniel’s inability to express emotion is caused by a sur- vivor’s characteristic fear of deep pain. For example, many concentration camp survivors experienced what is termed psychic closing off.l3 This emo- tional shutdown enabled them to get through their experiences: Most people could not feel the impact of mass executions or torture without breaking down. However, it was not easy for these survivors to re-activate their emo- tions. In particular, it was difficult for many to show affection, for they were deeply afraid of loving someone after having seen so many loved ones killed. Daniel has similar fears.
Sometimes his fear makes his behavior bizarre. On what had seemed to be a pleasant family outing, Daniel suddenly tosses his baby into the air, and catches him precariously close to the ground, while looking at the terrified “Isaacson face,” which he cannot bear the thought of having to protect. As he is quick to abuse his child, he is quick to beat his wife or threaten Dr. Duberstein when the doctor proposes shock therapy for Susan (although Daniel’s reaction is more understandable in the last case). His behavior in the car after visiting Susan is indicative of his propensity to rage when a sim- ple whim is denied: He first terrifies, then tortures, the young wife who refuses to take off her pants at his request.’“
When Daniel is not actively enraged, he is brooding over memories. Part of his preoccupation is a repressed mourning that many Hiroshima and con- centration camp victims also experienced. Under extreme conditions, many
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loved ones were lost, and there was not the time nor the proper cir- cumstances for mourning. The Isaacson children too have scant oppor- tunities for mourning. During the Death House visits, they feel obligated to relate stories of how well they are doing. When the execution day arrives, Daniel and Susan are not permitted at their parents’ sides to say good-bye. These children could not vent their feelings through a normal mourning process, so they spend their lives trying to resolve repressed emotions.
Even though losing his parents was devastating, Daniel might have had a better foundation for rebuilding had he not also lost belief in the ideals that served as touchstones for his parents. His plight is similar to that of many concentration camp survivors:
We see a picture characterized by the destruction of his (the concentration camp survivor’s) world, the destruction of the basic landmarks in which the world of human beings in our civilization is based, i.e., basic trust in human worth, basic confidence, basic hope. Here, there is no trust, there is no confidence; everything has been shattered to pieces. (Epstein 92)
As a young child, Daniel believed the Communist Party was the people’s party, and when the government’s oppression became clear, the people would rally behind the Party. With his parents’ arrest, he learned that the Party acts in its own self-interest; his parents’ names were quickly erased from the membership rolls.
Daniel copes with his resultant disillusionment by adopting a bitter, angry stance. For his sister Susan, however, such detachment is not possible; she needs to immerse herself in radical politics. Working for revolution is, for her, an attempt to reaffirm moral principles. A desire to re-establish moral principles is at the heart of many attempts at justice, such as the Nuremberg Trials, which did much more than sentence the guilty. They demonstrated something that is extremely important when society has been distorted by great violations of cherished values: Certain crimes cannot and will not be tolerated.
Susan wants to make a similar statement. Since it is impossible to retrieve her parents’ lives, she tries to retrieve the ideals for which they stood and to testify that people will not again endure government oppression. Thus, she wants to establish the Isaacson Foundation for Revolution and to affitiate Daniel with this institution, thus indicating “ . . . unanimity of family feel- ing, a proper assumption of their legacy by the Isaacson children” (92). She is unsuccessful in her attempts to work with the New Left and can find no way to rectify the injustice that was done.
The Isaacson children’s quest for justice is complicated by the absence of obvious heroes and villains in their parents’ trial. Selig Mindish apparently did not lie on the witness stand; he is not a turncoat. If the Isaacsons were betrayed, they were betrayed by political progressives as well as the United
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States government. And the betrayal continues. When Susan says “They’re still fucking us,” she recognizes the New Left is ready to exploit her just as the Old Left exploited the Isaacsons.
The New Left’s scorn for her parents triggers Susan’s breakdown- complete physical and psychic closing off in which she assumes the starfish position. Since the starfish retains one posture and shows no activity or emotion, Daniel correctly assumes there are not many forms of life below it. Susan in this state is similar to the “Musselmanner” in the concentration camps-those described as “walking corpses,’’ seemingly unable to feel or act (Lifton 502).15 Like these victims, Susan senses her entire environment working against her. In a desperate attempt to protect herself, she eradicates her consciousness, stripping herself of all but the vital signs, and finally of these too.
Daniel does not withdraw psychotically or attempt to end his life, but he does discard many feelings (love, commitment to work) associated with a full life.16 As a survivor, Daniel feels he must minimize his life. His relatively easy adjustment to the affluence of the Lewin home makes him uncomfort- able. Understandably, he is attracted to the deliberate poverty of Sternlicht’s life, and perhaps for this reason lets Sternlicht insult him. At the anti-war rally, he seems to feel obligated to endure physical injury and incarceration. Although Daniel is not a true radical or a hippie, he cannot allow himself to enter the middle class. He owes a debt of suffering.
Neither can Daniel allow himself to fall into middle-class complacency. Being a survivor involves living with the knowledge that one has escaped death and may not again be so’lucky (Lifton 481). It is necessary to live in preparation for renewed assault. The Isaacsons conveyed such wariness to their children even before their arrests: Repeatedly, Paul and Rochelle warned that the persecution of the working classes was “still going on.” Years after his parents’ death, Daniel is still not free to enjoy the relatively carefree life of the average citizen. His safety has been threatened, and he probably fears it will be threatened again.
As my numerous examples have shown, The Book of Daniel explores, with a psychological versimilitude surpassing that in most other novels, the persistent conflicts of survivors. The especially acute characterization of Daniel as one with a survivor syndrome is an answer to the biblical depic- tion of the prophet Daniel who emerged unscathed from the lions’ den. More important, it is a rebuttal to American optimism about the fleeting nature of political oppression in this country. According to The Book of Daniel, the McCarthy Era not only destroyed innocent people, but also left the victims’ children with permanent psychological scars.
Two of the three children of the Isaacson Trial are unable to resolve their conflicts: Susan dies; Linda Mindish remains insulated from her past; and Daniel, through his investigation of his parents’ case, is able to achieve
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reintegration and thus work through some personal problems. By the end of the novel, he has stopped abusing his wife and child and is even able to cry at his sister’s funeral.
While minimal personal resolution might be possible, political resolution appears not to be. There seems to be no way for the American populace to learn the lessons of history. As The Book of Daniel ends, the students at Columbia are rebelling, intent on reforming American society. Yet without the voices of those who understand the nature of American oppression, revolutionary movements are likely to be ineffectual. And the last words of the novel tell us Daniel’s survivor mission will go unfulfilled: “ . . . Go thy way Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed till the end of time” (319).
RUTGERS UNIVERSITY
NOTES
1. Paul Levine, “The Conspiracy of History: E. L. Doctorow’s The Book of Daniel,” E.L. Doctorow; Essays and Conversations, ed. Richard Trenner (Princeton, New Jersey: On- tario Review Press, 1983): 186; and E. L. Doctorow (London and New York: Methuen, 1985): 47-48. Also see David Emblidge, “Marching Backwards Into the Future: Progress as Illusion in Doctorow’s Novels,” Southwest Review 62 (Autumn 1977): 397-409 for a discussion of Daniel’s attempt to resolve his parents’ deaths through historical reinterpretation.
2. Barbara L. Estrin, “Surviving McCarthyism: E. L. Doctorow’s The Book of Daniel,” in Trenner: 1%.
3. Robert Jay Lifton, Death in Lye: Survivors of Hiroshima (New York: Random House, 1967): 479.
4. In this paper, “survivor” will mean a survivor of political oppression or atrocities. 5 . Robert Goldston, The American Nightmare: Joseph McCarthy and the Politics of Hate
(New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1973): 143. 6. The furor caused by the 1983 publication of Ronald Radosh’s The Rosenberg File attests
to the ongoing controversy surrounding the case. 7. Einstein and Urey doubted that David Greenglass, who did not even have an
undergraduate degree, had the technical sophistication to memorize and transmit the informa- tion necessary to construct an atom bomb.
8. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 5th ed. (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Jovanovich, 1973): 427.
9. Bruno Bettleheim, Surviving and Other Essays (New York: Random House, 1972): 96. 10. E. L. Doctorow, The Book of Daniel (New York: Random House, 1971). References in
this paper are to the New American Library edition (New York, 1972): 261. 11. In a study of Hiroshima survivors, it was observed that the subjects suffered a persistent
identification with the dead (Lifton 201). This identification caused alienation from the present world. The people and places in the survivors’ current world were unimportant; survivors were almost totally controlled by their memories of the deceased.
12. There are survivors who feel it is possible for outsiders to understand somewhat their survival, but not through the mind alone. Some Hiroshima survivors believed that people must immerse their emotions into the bombing in order to understand it (Lifton 303). Similarly, the son of a concentration camp survivor said: “Unless we start examining the Holocaust with our emotions, all we will pass on to future generations is the numbers.” Helen Epstein, Children of the Holocaust, 2nd ed. (New York: Bantam Books, 1980): 294.
13. Epstein, 92.
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14. Again, Daniel’s rage is typical of many victims. Studies have found that many former concentration camp victims were easily enraged or excessively demanding and aggressive. See Henry Krystal and William G. Niederland, Internment in Concentration Camps and Its Effects (New York: Springer-Varlay, 1975): 25.
15. A prevalence of catatonia and severe melancholic depression has been found among many concentration camp survivors. Bettleheim has gone so far as to compare the maladies of many survivors to those of childhood schizophrenics. Both groups, he states, were totally over- powered and endangered by their environments (“Schizophrenia,” in Surviving, 115).
16. Similarly, an inability to make commitments and to feel joy was observed in many con- centration camp and Hiroshima survivors. Lifton sees these traits as part of a “survival pact”: The survivors agree to live at a devitalized level in return for the right to live at all (507).
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