The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

“‘People notice only what you tell them to notice,’ he said. ‘And then only if you remind them.’”

Bernard Kornblum is offering a piece of advice to the young Josef Kavalier: The essence of magic is misdirection. The technique of misdirection is used throughout the novel, and Joe keeps this advice in mind as he works in the comic book industry, seeking ways to entertain and convey important moral truths at the same time.

“Every golem in the history of the world, from Rabbi Hanina’s delectable goat to the river-clay Frankenstein of Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, was summoned into existence through language, through murmuring, recital, and kabbalistic chitchat—was, literally, talked into life.”

This quote is an homage from the narrator to the power of the spoken and written word, which has obvious connotations to the novel but also to comic books and the superheroes/golems contained therein. The narrator draws a connection between the ancient Jewish tradition of the Golem and the modern, pop-cultural tradition of the superhero. Both suggest The Healing Power of Art.

“And then the man reminded Max, with a serious but suave and practiced air, that freedom was a debt that could be repaid only by purchasing the freedom of others.”

This is from the origin story of the Escapist. It introduces the idea wherein one must purchase the freedom of another, and then that person must free someone else in return. This is a key theme throughout the novel, especially as Joe struggles to repay the debt he feels he owes to all those who did not escape the Holocaust.

“It was then that Max, who had never before in all his time considered the matter, realized that all men, regardless of their estate, were in possession of shining immortal souls.”

This passage elaborates on the previous one, indicating that not only does freedom require purchasing the freedom of another, but also that all people deserve freedom and redemption. This is relevant when considering Carl Ebling and a lesson Joe learns in Antarctica.

“Joe’s work also articulated the simple joy of unfettered movement, of the able body, in a way that captured the yearnings of not only his crippled cousin but of an entire generation of weaklings, stumblebums, and playground goats.”

This quote addresses the topic of physical limitations and the appeal of the nearly unlimited abilities and powers of comic book heroes to those who can only wish to do anything remotely similar. The sentence introduces an idea that will become apparent later on in the novel: the comic book’s ability to allow its reader to escape from their worries and cares for a while—an ability that is hailed as a good thing toward the end.

“But Joe was perhaps the first to feel the shame of glorifying, in the name of democracy and freedom, the vengeful brutality of a very strong man.”

This quote is part of a mirroring effect provided by the episode involving Carl, showing how superhero glorification has, at its core, similarities with the very things that those heroes are purportedly combating. Here Joe is contemplating what exactly his artistic brutality is accomplishing, for he despises Hitler (a strongman), and this reflection will later help him leave the fight against the Germans behind.

“In his life as a businessman, Love had seen plenty of boy geniuses left deserted amid the bleached bones and cacti of their dreams.”

Herbert Love has just announced his idea to produce a radio program involving the Escapist. Love’s observation foreshadows the troubles that lie ahead for Sam and Joe while echoing what George Deasey has experienced and mentioned. It is also a pejorative declaration of the ill effects that business has on art: The creators will be taken advantage of in the name of profit.

“Take care—there is no force more powerful than that of an unbridled imagination.”

The Moth Queen says this to Judy in the origin story for Luna Moth. Luna’s special power is that she can conjure up anything she wants with the strength of her imagination. This ability is an exaggeration and amplification of not only Rosa, on whom Luna Moth is based, but also Sam and Joe and any child reading the comic.

“Every golden age is as much a matter of disregard as of felicity.”

This sentence is pertinent not only for Joe but for the United States prior to its entrance into World War II. Because Joe is seeing success from his work in comics and has fallen in love with Rosa, it is easy for him to forget about how his family might be suffering in Prague and what is happening, in general, in Europe. Similarly, the United States is trying to ignore what is happening overseas and concentrate solely on domestic affairs. Events catch up to both the country and Joe, however. It isn’t a coincidence that Joe joins the navy after the attack on Pearl Harbor. America’s and Joe’s destinies are intertwined, revealing the complex relationship between Society and the Individual Conscience.

“The true magic of this broken world lay in the ability of the things it contained to vanish, to become so thoroughly lost, that they might never have existed in the first place.”

This quote appears after Carl Ebling has bombed the bar mitzvah and after Joe has lost his mother’s last letter, which he never read. This sentence uses magic as a metaphor for the human ability to forget things, even terrible things, from the past. In order for Joe to be able to move on with his life, something at this point in the novel he hasn’t done yet, he is going to have to learn to let go of the past.

“One of the sturdiest precepts of the study of human delusion is that every golden age is either past or in the offing. The months preceding the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor offer a rare exception to this axiom.”

The implication is that the months just before the attack on Pearl Harbor were a true golden age, not one invented through nostalgia or a false optimism about the future. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Joe faces the gravity of reality as this golden age fell away.

“It was more, much more, than any movie really needed to be. In this one crucial regard—its inextricable braiding of image and narrative—Citizen Kane was like a comic book.”

Joe and Sam have just seen the premiere of one of Orson Welles’s most monumental films. Not only does the film represent a turning point in the way Joe and Sam will make comic books (and how comics in general will evolve), but the narrator juxtaposes the two art forms and displays the similarities between the two.

“Nothing that had ever happened to him, not the shooting of Oyster, or the piteous muttering expiration of John Wesley Shannenhouse, or the death of his father, or internment of his mother and grandfather, not even the drowning of his beloved brother, had ever broken his heart quite as terribly as the realization, when he was halfway to the rimed zinc hatch of the German station, that he was hauling a corpse behind him.”

Joe has finally killed a German, but it didn’t happen as he had foreseen. In fact, the killing appears to have been more accidental than deliberate. Joe learns not only that has revenge cost him a great deal but also that it has brought him greater pain than anything else he has yet experienced. Rather than healing him, the death of Klaus Mecklenburg makes everything worse.

“‘Only love,’ the old magician had said, ‘could pick a nested pair of steel Bramah locks.’” 

According to Bernard Kornblum, Houdini’s wife saved her husband’s career by providing him with the keys to the double-Bramah lock. Whether or not this story is true is irrelevant, because it foreshadows the fact that Rosa and Tommy’s love will ultimately save Joe.

“It was the autobiography of a man who could not face himself, an elaborate system of evasion and lies unredeemed by the artistic virtue of self-betrayal.”

The narrator conveys, in one sentence, the synopsis of Sam’s unfinished novel, American Disillusionment. The sentence summarizes not only the novel but also Sam’s personal sentiments on his own life. Sam knows and admits through his novel that he has been avoiding the truth, betraying his true self, and for that, he has suffered. He is a man at odds with himself.

“God is a madman. He lost his mind, like, a billion years ago. Just before He, you know. Created the universe.”

Sam is working on a science fiction story, but the idea that God is a madman reflects the beliefs of not only Sam but also Rosa and Joe, all of them having experienced awful things. Joe and Sam are both Jewish and have been raised with the idea that there is a God. However, because of what happens to the Jewish population of Europe, and specifically to his family and his brother, Joe finds belief in God to be impossible. Sam struggles with his orientation. It’s possible that the things Sam sees around him make him want to give voice to his frustration and create an irrational god who must be bound for things to be put right.

“Comic books had sustained his sanity during his time on the psychiatric ward at Gitmo.”

Joe’s history with comic books as an escape from a harsh reality is painted in a good light. Joe reflects on the positivity of mental and emotional escape from an unalterable and negative reality and the redeeming and saving qualities that this form of escapism entails. All of this comes with the backdrop of the upcoming Senate hearings about the possible harmful effects of comic books on their readership, especially young boys.

“He had escaped, in his life, from ropes, chains, boxes, bags, and crates, from handcuffs and shackles, from countries and regimes, from the arms of a woman who loved him, from crashed airplanes and an opiate addiction and from an entire frozen continent intent on causing his death. The escape from reality was, he felt—especially right after the war—a worthy challenge.”

The narrator explains why Joe didn’t return to Sam and Rosa. After all he had been through, Joe wanted to forget everything that happened and to escape from his reality and from his past—and doing so was the most difficult escape he had ever attempted.

“That was magic—not the apparent magic of the silk-hatted card-palmer, or the bold, brute trickery of the escape artist, but the genuine magic of art.”

Joe is recollecting the time he spent in the psychiatric ward in Gitmo and how being able to simply sit under a tree and read comic books gave him serenity when he needed it so badly. Joe has realized that art has an invaluable worth to society and to individuals and that one part of that worth is the ability it gives people to step away from their problems and take time out to heal.

“With the stroke of the pen, he would be able to hand Sammy, according to the ancient mysteries of the League, a golden key, to pass along the gift of liberation that he had received and that had, until now, gone unpaid.”

Joe realizes that he has a chance to do something good for Sam, and he believes that by perhaps purchasing Empire Comics he can free Sam from the unhappiness that surrounds him. Joe has always been aware of the need to free someone because he himself received a chance at freedom, but until this point, his focus has always been on freeing his family members in Europe. Joe’s focus is now changing more to the people around him, and he is finally realizing everything that Sam has done for him.

“Joe recognized it right away, with the ease and unsurprise of someone in a dream. He had been traveling inside of it, in his dreams, since the autumn of 1939. His traveling companion, his other brother, had survived the war.”

This is a significant passage regarding Joe’s homecoming. As Joe states, he had been traveling inside of the Golem in his dreams; this statement signifies that Joe had taken on the traits of the Golem and thus everything that the Golem represented. With the return of the physical Golem, and its subsequent dissolution, Joe too has returned home; the destruction of the Golem represents Joe’s ability to finally make peace with the past. Joe can finally move on.

“Then he remembered how Kornblum, that night, had quoted some paradoxical wisdom about golems, something in Hebrew to the effect that it was the Golem’s unnatural soul that had given it weight; unburdened of it, the earthen Golem was light as air.”

Joe doesn’t believe in an afterlife, but he believes in hope. The souls of Joe’s friends and family have come home and reside in the earth of the Golem of Prague.

“‘I have been in the secrets business a long time now, Clay,’ Deasey said. ‘Take it from me, a secret is a heavy kind of chain.’”

Deasey puts Sam’s entire situation and his unhappiness in a nutshell. It’s not the work, the money, the suburbs, or his marriage to Rosa (though all of those play a small role). What makes Sam truly unhappy is that he has been trying to deny his orientation. Not until he opens up about who he is and what he wants can he be happy and free.