The Storyteller

“Even the most beautiful things can be toxic. Monkshood, lily of the valley—they’re both in the Monet garden you like so much at the top of the Holy Stairs, but I wouldn’t go near them if I weren’t wearing gloves.”

This quote foreshadows Sage’s eventual method of poisoning Josef with monkshood taken from the Monet garden. Mary’s warning that beautiful things can be toxic hints to the reader that appearances can’t always be trusted, foreshadowing the reveal that kindly old Josef is a former Nazi.

“In the picture, I see a man, much younger than Josef—with the same widow’s peak, the same hooked nose, a ghosting of his features. He is dressed in the uniform of an SS guard, and he is smiling.”

This moment flips the heartwarming friendship between Sage and Josef on its head and sets the novel's primary plot in motion. In an instant, everything readers took for granted about Josef’s character is shaken and conventional ideas of good and bad are disrupted. Sage will spend the entirety of the novel trying to understand how the smiling Nazi could be the same man she befriended at grief group, before the final reveal that they are not the same person.

“‘When I got here, to America, this is when my life began,’” my grandmother says. “‘Everything before…well, that happened to a different person.’”

Minka attempts to reinvent herself as a new person after moving to America, hoping to leave behind the trauma of losing her entire family in the Holocaust. She essentially invents a new version of herself to help her cope, a testament to the power of storytelling in creating a chosen identity.

“Repentance might bring peace to the killer, but what about the ones who’ve been killed? I may not consider myself a Jew, but do I still have responsibility to the relatives of mine who were religious, and were murdered for it?”

Although Sage is not a practicing Jew, she has to consider her allegiance to the Jewish family members she lost during the Holocaust. The question of whether guilt and remorse have value to anyone besides the guilty party is one she ponders often throughout the novel and is a key element of her final decision not to forgive Josef.

“Inside each of us is a monster; inside each of us is a saint. The real question is which one we nurture the most, which one will smite the other.”

Josef summarizes Picoult’s take on the nature of good and evil. Through the characters of Josef and Sage, she makes the case that no one is born good or bad. Instead, everyone has the capacity to act out of kindness or to harm others. There is no inborn nature that determines who becomes a certain kind of person; that is determined by the sum of a person's actions and choices.

“For just a moment, when Josef let his own death mask slip, I could see the man he used to be: the one buried beneath the kindly exterior for so many decades, like a root growing slow beneath pavement, still capable of cracking concrete.”

After Josef yells at Sage during a grief group meeting, she believes that she has caught a glimpse of his true immoral nature. She’s mistaken, as Josef was never the monster that Sage thinks she sees, but this moment shows how hard it is for her to accept the convoluted nature of human morality. She wants to sort him into the familiar categories of good or evil, when the truth is somewhere in between.

“You believe what you like, Sage, but I know the reason I am still alive. Like Ahasuerus—every day I am here is another day to relive my mistakes.”

Ahasuerus is a mythical figure. Also known as “The Wandering Jew,” he is cursed to wander the earth until the Second Coming as a punishment for mocking Jesus before the crucifixion. Ironically, Josef uses the figure of a tormented Jew to describe his torment over his past as a Nazi. He feels that he is doomed to miserable immortality unless Sage helps him die—her assistance would be like the Second Coming for Ahasuerus, finally freeing a tortured man from his suffering.

“‘It is amazing, what you can make yourself believe, when you have to,’ Josef says. ‘If you keep telling yourself you are a certain kind of person, eventually you will become that person.’”

Josef is referencing the way he was indoctrinated into the Nazi ideology, but this quote also connects to the way he convinces himself he is a monster like Reiner by assuming his brother’s identity as his own. More broadly, it applies to all of the stories that various characters tell themselves throughout the novel, from Sage telling herself she is a bad person to Minka telling herself that her Auschwitz experience happened to a different person. Each of them makes themselves believe an alternate narrative, whether to spare themselves from guilt or to escape traumatic memories, but in contrast to Josef’s final sentence, none of them can fully bury reality behind their fictions.

“With each word that passes my lips, I feel less heavy. It is as if I am giving him sentences made of stones, and the more I relay, the more of the burden he is carrying.”

This quote is an example of the power of storytelling within the novel. Sage feels freed by telling the details of Josef’s confession to Leo. Sharing an upsetting experience lessens its burden on her. The idea of telling a story as a way to unburden the self will reoccur when Minka tells her Holocaust story to Leo. Although it is hard for her to dredge up the buried memories, it is this very act that allows her to finally let go of her long-held trauma and pass away peacefully.

“You don’t make peace with only with God. You make it with people. Sin isn’t global. It’s personal. If you do wrong to someone, the only way to fix that is to go to that same person and do right by him. Which is why murder, to a Jew, is unforgivable.”

Leo’s morals are guided by his Jewish faith, which helps him find answers to some of the hardest questions of the human condition. His take on the concept of forgiveness means that Sage does not have the right to forgive Josef because she is not the direct victim of his wrongdoings. Sage eventually comes to agree with this view, which motivates her decision to help Josef die. Ironically, Sage’s decision to poison Josef would be an unforgivable act in Leo’s eyes if he ever found out.

“‘Basia?’ I whispered. ‘How did you convince the chairman?’ ‘Just like you told me.’ A tear slipped down her cheek to land on the sheets between us. ‘I got down on my knees.’”

When Basia appeals to Chaim Rumkowski to spare her husband’s life, he forces her to perform oral sex on him. As the chairman of the ghetto, Rumkowski is supposed to look out for his fellow Jews, but instead he abuses his position and still lets Rubin die. Rumkowski shows us that corruption and evil have no set religion or nationality. All humans have the potential to act cruelly when given power over others.

“Something told me that if Herr Fassbinder had been able to take all ten thousand people on that list into his little Fabrik, he would have.”

Herr Fassbinder is the foil to Chaim Rumkowski. He is a German man who employs as many young Jewish children and mothers as he can in his workshop, sparing them from deportation. In a society full of people who seem to allow the Holocaust to happen around them, Herr Fassbinder acts decisively against the Reich. His selflessness reminds Minka that not all Germans agree with the twisted ideology of the SS.

“‘Your father is not the only person to ever love you,’ Aleks confessed. ‘And you cannot blame Casimir for his death.’ He turned away so that his face was in shadow. ‘Because I am the one who killed him.’”

Aleks’ confession to Ania mirrors Josef’s confession to Sage. Both trusted figures become villains in a moment of betrayal, and Ania and Sage are left to decide whether they can still maintain relationships with men who have been by turns kind and murderous.

“I could not see the officer’s face anymore, but I knew who it was. As he walked away from me, his right hand was still twitching.”

This moment seems to connect Minka and Josef’s storylines as they meet on opposite sides of the Auschwitz power structure. Later, it’s revealed that the cruel officer with the right-hand twitch was Josef’s brother, but at the moment this observation occurs it seems to confirm that Josef was the evil man he has told Sage he is, a persona that seems incompatible with the older version of Josef.

“Secretly, when the SS officer in charge of Kanada passed by, I thought of him as Herr Dybbuk. A human man too weak to force out the evil that had taken up residence in him.”

Minka characterizes Franz as possessed by an evil stronger than himself, a metaphor for Franz’s inability to challenge the Reich even though he knows it’s wrong. Despite his role in the operation of Auschwitz, Minka thinks of him as essentially human. Franz’s actions remind the reader that oppressive systems rely not only on hateful people but on the bystanders who are scared to speak out against them.

“I had not thought about this, but it was true. There was no black and white. Someone who had been good her entire life could, in fact, do something evil. Ania was just as capable of committing murder, under the right circumstances, as any monster.”

Ania’s decision to kill Aleks foreshadows Sage killing Josef. Both characters have essentially been good for their entire lives—they are not violent or cruel and show no desire to cause others harm, but their respective reactions to Aleks and Josef prove that they are human and therefore fallible. Irrespective of their pasts, both have the potential to commit acts of violence.

“In the four months I had worked for the Hauptscharführer, he had never laid a hand on me. Now, he did. He cupped his hand around my cheek, so gently that it brought tears to my eyes. His thumb stroked my skin the way one would touch a lover, and he met my gaze. Then he hit me so hard that he broke my jaw.”

After Reiner kills Darija and indicates that he will kill Minka as well, Franz beats Minka up to prevent his brother from shooting her. Franz displays a strange mixture of violence and tenderness by stroking her face before beating her. This gesture indicates his remorse and also introduces the idea of brutality as mercy, which will reoccur when Sage fulfills Joseph’s request to be killed.

“‘I’m sorry,’ the farmer’s wife choked out, but that was all she said, because her husband gave her a firm shake.”

The anecdote about the farmer’s wife who shelters Minka but ultimately lets her be recaptured provides a glimpse into the moral decisions faced by Germans who did not agree with the Reich. Throughout the novel Sage wonders how ordinary German citizens could have allowed the Holocaust to happen. This moment provides some insight into her question. The farmer’s wife clearly wants to help Minka—she risks her safety to keep Minka hidden and treats her with tenderness. But considering the time period, her husband likely has ultimate authority over her and she cannot go against his decision to turn Minka in without risking her marriage and her safety. Once again, Picoult makes the point that choices aren’t made in a vacuum but steered by one’s social and political environment and personal relationships.

“But if you seek forgiveness, doesn’t that automatically mean you cannot be a monster? By definition, doesn’t that desperation make you human again?”

Despite what she knows about his past, Sage still feels drawn toward forgiving Josef. No matter what he has done, she has the urge to lessen the suffering of another human. Unlike Leo, she now sees Josef as existing somewhere in between the two extremes of human nature, indicating that her view of morality has evolved since the start of the novel.

“Maybe she didn’t die upset. Maybe she let go, Sage, because she finally felt like everything was going to be okay.”

In the wake of Minka’s death, Sage feels guilty, worried that the stress of forcing her to relive her experiences during the Holocaust caused her death. Leo offers up an alternate theory: telling the story she kept hidden for so long finally freed Minka from her anguish and let her pass with peace of mind. Just as repressing her story was necessary for Minka to move on from her past, telling it openly was necessary for her to truly free herself of her suppressed grief and be at peace.

“I’m not sure what he’s seeing when he looks at me, but I want to be that girl. And my scars? I still see them, when I look in a mirror. But the first thing I notice is my smile.”

This quote shows how Sage’s self-image has changed over the course of the novel. At the start of the narrative she felt that she was defined by her scar, rendered grotesque-looking and unlovable. It was the only thing she noticed about her face, symbolizing how completely consumed she was by her past. As she begins to let go of her past and gain her identity back, she is able to see the features her scar used to obscure.

“He doesn’t deserve your love. But he does deserve your forgiveness, because otherwise he will grow like a weed in your heart until it’s choked and overrun. The only person who suffers, when you squirrel away all that hate, is you.”

This quote is spoken by Mary after Sage asks her for advice on Josef’s situation. Mary suggests that to deny forgiveness continues a cycle of hatred and bitterness, whereas forgiving releases a person from hatred and frees their heart. According to Mary’s view, by denying Josef forgiveness, Sage allows him to continue holding power in her life.

“To show compassion would elevate me from the monster he was. To show revenge would prove I’m no better. In the end, by using both, I can only hope they will cancel each other out. ‘Josef,’ I say, leaning over him and speaking loudly, so that I know he hears me. ‘I will never, ever forgive you.’”

Sage ultimately decides against forgiving Josef. She feels that it isn’t her place to pardon him on behalf of his victims and knows that Josef can’t forgive himself. However, she shows compassion even as she tells him she can’t forgive him. Her split between kindness and ruthlessness is the closest she can come to accepting the complexity of his character.