The Devil's Arithmetic

“Tired or not, you’re going with us, young lady. Grandpa Will and Grandma Belle are expecting the entire family, and that means you, too.”

Hannah’s mom conveys her annoyance with her daughter. She calls Hannah “young lady” out of frustration. She also emphasizes the importance of family and community, things that will also become dear to Hannah.

“Glad to be doing something she knew she was good at, Hannah began a gruesome tale about the walking dead, borrowing most of the characters, plot, and sound effects from a movie she’d seen on television the night before.”

This quote reveals Hannah’s talent for storytelling. It foreshadows the violence she experiences firsthand when going back in time to the Holocaust. These lines capture her in a moment of affection with her brother, whom she is trying to entertain.

“Across the screen marched old photos of Nazi concentration camp victims, corpses stacked like cordwood, and dead-eyed survivors.”

Yolen uses imagery to convey the horror of the concentration camps. She uses simile—where something is compared to something else using “like” or “as”—to show how Nazis dehumanized concentration camp prisoners and turned them into things or wood—“corpses stacked like cordwood.”

“[W]hy does he bother with it? It’s all in the past. There aren’t any concentration camps now. Why bring it up? It’s embarrassing. I don’t want any of my friends to meet him. What if he shouts at them or does something else crazy?”

Hannah reveals her annoyance at Grandpa Will’s behavior and her lack of empathy. She’s more concerned about how he might embarrass her than his trauma. The prose mixes rhetorical questions with declarative sentences to vary the rhythm of the prose.

“During the endless seder dinner and the even more endless explanations from the Haggadah, Hannah frequently glanced out the window.”

The third-person narration puts the reader in Hannah’s head. Hannah’s reflections are hyperbolic or exaggerated—the dinner and dialogue are “endless.” Her looking out the window shows her strong wish to be elsewhere. The Haggadah alludes to the Jewish book read during the first night of Passover.

“She remembered her mother and her father and her brother Aaron with his big blue eyes and great smile. She remembered her house with the junglegym in the backyard and the seventeen stuffed dogs on her bed. She remembered her best friend Rosemary, who’d had braces the year before she did and had showed her how to eat jelly beans with them on, even though you weren’t supposed to.”

Yolen uses repetition to emphasize the power of Hannah’s memories of her life in New Rochelle, beginning each of the above lines with “She remembered.” Hannah’s memories underscore her privilege and create a sharp juxtaposition between 1942 Poland and modern New York.

“So in Lublin the hospitals tell you about these things. Then I do not think much of hospitals. And I think even less of Lublin.”

Hannah believes she knows what a wedding night involves because of General Hospital. Gitl thinks Hannah is talking about a hospital in Lublin, and the misunderstanding produces humor.

“She told the girls about Yentl and then about Conan the Barbarian with equal vigor; about Star Wars, which confused them; and Fiddler on the Roof, which did not. She told them the plot of Little Women in ten minutes, a miracle of compression, especially since her book report had been seven typed pages.”

Yolen uses repetition—“She told them”—to highlight the number of stories Hannah tells the girls and to underscore Hannah’s role as storyteller and entertainer. The long sentence creates a breathless, frenetic tone. The village girls want more stories; they’re enchanted.

“In the middle of the brown landscape, like a dark stain, were three black old-fashioned cars and twelve army trucks strung out behind.”

Yolen juxtaposes the tranquil village with the vicious Nazis. She uses a simile; by comparing the Nazis to a “dark stain,” she shows their lethality and how they are a blight on history.

“And as for running—where would we run to? God is everywhere. There will always be Nazis among us. No, my child, do not tremble before mere men. It is God before whom we must tremble. Only God.”

Rabbi Boruch reinforces an unceasing faith in God by repeating God three times. Here, Nazis became a symbol for persecution. The Jewish people continually suffer oppression, and they shouldn’t run it.

“The gas ovens I mean are no fairy tale.”

The wedding party thinks Hannah is telling another made-up story when she tries to warn them about the Nazis. She uses an impassioned tone to persuade them that she’s telling the truth.

“It was worse than the worst subway jam she’d ever been in, shopping with her Aunt Eva in the city.”

Hannah compares the cattle cars with what she knows—the New York city subways—to illustrate the vile, crowded conditions. The quote features dramatic words like “worst” and “ever” to reinforce the awful atmosphere. In this case, Hannah is not exaggerating.

“If we do not laugh, we will cry. Crying will only make us hotter and sweatier. We Jews like to joke about death because what you laugh at and make familiar can no longer frighten you. Besides, Chayaleh, what else is there to do?”

Gitl showcases her determination and her humor. She won’t let the Nazis extinguish her spirit or make her afraid. She’ll continue to laugh. The “we” reinforces her sense of community and togetherness with other Jewish individuals.

“I will be brave. I am the only one who knows about the ovens, but I will be brave. I will not take away their hope, which is all they have.”

With a resolute tone, Hannah commits to creating hope for the other survivors. She repeats “I will be brave,” as a way to will herself not to dwell on what she knows and the deadliness of her situation.

“You are a name, not a number. Never forget that name, whatever they tell you here. You will always be Chaya—life—to me. You are my brother’s child. You are my blood.”

Gitl uses repetition to remind Hannah that she is a person and not a barcode. She says “you” four times to emphasize the importance of Hannah’s humanity. Hannah is a “you,” not an “it.”

“We all have such stories. It is a brutal arithmetic. But I—I am alive. You are alive. As long as we breathe, we can see and hear. As long as we can remember, all those gone before are alive inside us.”

Rivka alludes to the novel’s title with the phrase “brutal arithmetic.” She repeats “alive” three times to stress how important it is to recognize life and the present. She also alludes to the dead with the phrase “all those gone before.” By remembering, one confers immortality on the remembered.

“But one does not ask why here.”

Rivka conveys the mindlessness of the camps with this declarative sentence. The concentration camp isn’t a place for inquiries or critical thought, but of survival.

“Keep your thanks. And hand it on.”

Rivka’s brisk tone demonstrates her unsentimental nature. It also shows her sense of community and obligation. Hannah doesn’t need to thank her for getting her the job in the kitchen. Instead, she should help someone else the way Rivka helped her.

“A person is not killed here, but chosen. They are not cremated in the ovens, they are processed. There are no corpses, only pieces of drek, only shmattes, rags.”

Rivka explains how the Nazi’s diction conceals the brutal reality of the camps: The Nazis are mass murdering Jewish people. The prisoners adopt their diction to not upset the Nazis and, possibly, to distance themselves from constant death and give themselves some hope.

“And she knew that each day she remained alive, she remained alive. One plus one plus one. The Devil’s arithmetic, Gitl called it.”

Yolen repeats “remained alive” to underscore the effort it takes to stay alive in the concentration camps. The quote explicitly includes the novel’s title, which is a metaphor. “The Devil’s Arithmetic” involves counting the days a person stays alive in the satanic camps.

“We are all monsters, because we are letting it happen.”

Hannah uses hyperbole to express her exasperation at the lack of resistance from herself and the other Jewish prisoners. She collapses the difference between predator and victim, saying that the prisoners are monstrous for being complicit and not fighting back.

“I see I have been too easy on you. I have made you into my pets. That is what they call you, you know: Breuer’s dirty little pets.”

Breuer’s condescending tone reflects the Nazis’ sense of superiority, and demonstrates how the Nazis degraded and dehumanized Jewish individuals. To him and other Nazis, the Jewish prisoners are not human, but “dirty,” “little,” and “pets.”

“It was as if all nature ignored what went on in the camp. There were brilliant sunsets and soft breezes. Around the commandant’s house, bright flowers were teased by the wind.”

Yolen uses imagery to juxtapose the beauty of nature with the horrors of the camp. She also uses personification. Nature ignores the ghastly genocide as if it’s a person with the capacity to look the other way.