50 pages • 1 hour read
Jane YolenThe Devil's Arithmetic
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1988A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Hannah’s mom picks Hannah up from the house of her best friend, Rosemary. Hannah, who’s almost 13, had jelly beans, Easter candy, and a large dinner, and her mom is upset. It’s Passover, and Hannah and her family are going to Hannah’s grandma and grandpa’s house to eat. Hannah says she didn’t know it was Passover, but her mom is skeptical. Hannah doesn’t want to go. She’s not hungry. Her mom says Passover has a meaning greater than food: Passover is about remembering. Hannah doesn’t want to remember. Her mom says Hannah should remember how much family means to her grandparents. The Nazis killed Grandma Belle’s parents. They killed eight members of Grandpa Will’s family. Hannah admits that she remembers.
Hannah and her family live in New Rochelle, New York, and her grandparents live in the Bronx, a borough in New York City. In the car, Aaron, Hannah’s younger brother, worries about messing up the Four Questions, which are the responsibility of the youngest child to recite on Passover. Hannah says she’ll help him if he stumbles. After tickling him, she tells him a story loosely based on a zombie movie she watched on TV the night before.
At the Bronx apartment, Aunt Rose tells Hannah she’s beautiful. Hannah has braces and hair the color of a mouse. She doesn’t think she’s attractive. Aunt Eva kisses her on her forehead. She’s Hannah’s favorite aunt, and Hannah’s parents named her after a dead friend of Eva’s.
Chapter 2 Summary
In the living room, family members surround Grandpa Will. He yells at the Holocaust images on the TV. Hannah is used to Grandpa Will’s outbursts. She remembers seeing the concentration camp number the Nazis tattooed on his arm. It fascinated her, and, using a pen, she wrote numbers on her own arm. When she showed the numbers to Will, he grabbed her and yelled. The memory bothers her, and so does he. She doesn’t understand his continual disquiet over the concentration camps. She tells her mom she’s scared her friends might meet him and he’ll do something humiliating.
Aunt Eva lights the candles even though it’s Grandma Belle’s house. Aunt Eva isn’t married and doesn’t have children. She’s Grandpa Will’s sister; she lived with her brother and helped care for Hannah’s dad when Belle worked. Eva lights a yahrzeit or a candle for the dead and whispers a prayer. Hannah whispers the prayer too, but when her brother tries to whisper it, she pinches him.
Chapter 3 Summary
The dinner torments Hannah. Grandpa Will reads about the plagues and exodus from biblical Jewish history in an irritating voice. He arranges the Seder in the wrong order. Hannah mentions it’s not right, and Uncle Sam shushes her. Hannah wishes it was tomorrow night when they’ll have another Seder at Grandpa Dan’s house. He’s sweet and doesn’t scream.
Aaron wears a yarmulke, a cap worn mostly by Jewish boys and men, and resembles a mini Grandpa Will. He’s nervous about the Second Question. Hannah tells him not to worry, and he recites it perfectly except for “herb”—he forgot the “h” was silent. Hannah doesn’t like the “herbs”: She wishes she could eat more jelly beans. Without meaning to, she says out loud how unfair her life is. Aunt Eva agrees: It isn’t fair, but fairness isn’t relevant.
After singing “Dayenu,” a song that is part of Passover tradition, they toast, and Hannah, at Will’s urging, gets to drink a glass of watery wine for the toast. Will hides the matzo under his chair like always. Aaron finds it and hides it in a hamper of dirty clothes. No one finds the afikoman, which for some Jewish people represents redemption from pain and for others the Passover sacrifice once offered in Jerusalem, so Aaron wins. He plans to ask his dad for a baseball glove. One time, Hannah got a Barbie doll dress collection.
Hannah starts to feel funny. It’s time to open the apartment door for Elijah, a prophet who symbolizes redemption and hope. Will says Hannah should do it. Hannah thinks the Easter Bunny or Darth Vader is as likely to be at the door as Elijah. When she opens the door, she doesn’t see the familiar apartment building hallway but a field and sky.
Chapter 4 Summary
Hannah is in a strange place recovering from an illness. Homely items replace the nice things from her grandparents’ house. Hannah thinks the wine has something to do with the foreign surroundings. A woman asks if someone is coming, and Hannah thinks the woman is asking about Elijah. The woman jokes with Hannah about Elijah. She speaks Yiddish, and Hannah does too. Before this moment, Hannah wasn’t fluent in Yiddish. It reminds her of a field trip to the United Nations and the simultaneous English translations.
The woman, Gitl, calls Hannah by her Hebrew name, Chaya. She tells Hannah to set the table. It’s a special time. Gitl’s younger brother, Shmuel, is going to get married tomorrow to Fayge. Shmuel arrives and calls Hannah his niece, which makes him her uncle. He smells bad—he works outside—but his cheer is infectious, and Hannah hugs him.
Shmuel and Gitl argue playfully about bathing and whether or not he’s a catch. Hannah is dumbstruck; she doesn’t know how she can be both Hannah and Chaya. Chaya is another person. Chaya’s parents died of cholera, so she now lives with her uncle and his sister.
Shmuel says Gitl could marry Yitzchak, a butcher. Gitl doesn’t want to marry him. He’s a monster and only wants a wife to care for his children, Reuven and Tzipporah. Shmuel thinks Gitl is waiting for Avrom to invite her to the United States, but Gitl claims she wouldn’t go to America and be with Avrom if he sent her thousands of letters.
Gitl and Yitzchak joke about Fayge’s solemn dad, Rabbi Boruch. They eat, and then Gitl puts Hannah to bed. She asks Hannah if she misses her parents, and Hannah nods. Gitl tells her that she and Shmuel are her new family.
Chapters 1-4 Analysis
The jellybeans and Easter candy symbolize Hannah’s cosmopolitan life. She’s Jewish, but her best friend is Catholic, and Hannah has no problem eating Easter candy with her. The Easter candy and the large dinner reveal Hannah’s somewhat privileged character. She’s about to have a big meal for Passover, and eating at Rosemary’s house is short-sighted and inconsiderate.
In the car, Hannah’s negative attitude continues. Yolen uses dialogue to create tension between Hannah and her mom over the Jewish holiday, and the argument evokes The Link Between Memory, Hope, and Personal Experience. Hannah’s mom says Passover is about remembering. Hannah replies: “I’m tired of remembering” (12). Her mom counters: “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” (12). Hannah’s mom’s diction—her words—build the conflict. She calls Hannah “young lady” to demonstrate her disapproval. Her dialogue also loops in the motif of family. Hannah must appear at the Seder and be with hers.
Hannah’s not wanting to remember foreshadows the events later in the novel where she’ll not only remember Jewish history but experience it first-hand. Her feelings about Jewish history here contrast with the end of the novel, where Hannah embraces her remembrance. This is an envelope pattern, where the ending of a work echoes a thematic concern of its beginning. Hannah’s changed relationship with memory also reflects her growth throughout the novel.
The mention of Nazis in these chapters provides foreshadowing. Soon, Hannah will confront Adolf Hitler’s antisemitic and genocidal faction. Words like “Seder” and “Passover” evoke Jewish traditions and reflect a sense of Jewish community. With terms like “Seder” and “Passover,” Yolen uses allusion. She doesn’t explain their meaning all at once. The characters reference them, and as Passover unfolds, the allusions grow clearer, and Yolen provides a better understanding of the holiday and its meaning.
Aaron’s anxiety about reading the Four Questions gives Hannah the chance to reveal her compassionate side; she’ll help her little brother if he messes up. She tickles Aaron to highlight their playful relationship, and the zombie story she tells him evokes the motif of media and provides foreshadowing. Later, Hannah deals with violence, but not the kind from TV movies. Aunt Eva’s “dead friend” hints at what’s to come.
The Holocaust show on TV also links to the motif of media and alludes to the time and place where Hannah will soon find herself. The TV voice says: “Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Chelmno, Dachau” (16), but Yolen doesn’t explain what these names mean. As Hannah winds up in a concentration camp, the show is another example of foreshadowing. The number tattoo on Will’s arm portends how Hannah will get a number tattoo. The TV show provokes Will’s remembrance of the Holocaust, further evoking the novel’s exploration of memory. As he screams at the TV, Hannah remembers how Will yelled at her when, as a younger child, she drew a number tattoo on her arm. Hannah’s fear that Will might embarrass her in front of her friends shows her self-centered side. She’s more concerned about her situation than Will and the horrors he endured.
Yolen emphasizes Hannah’s flippant attitude about the Seder with hyperbole and repetition. Using dramatic language, the third person narrator enters Hannah’s mind and reveals: “During the endless seder dinner and the even more endless explanations from the Haggadah, Hannah frequently glanced out the window” (20). This image suggests that Hannah wishes she was elsewhere, which is ironic because soon she will be in the midst of the Holocaust, which is much worse than the Seder.
Hannah’s petulance continues when she announces: “It isn’t fair” (21). Hannah is suffering, but her suffering is due to her privilege. She’s not in a life-or-death situation. She feels “injustice” because, as she says, “Rosemary gets to eat jelly beans and I get to eat horseradish” (21). Very soon, Hannah will gain a different understanding of injustice and unfairness. The Barbie clothes reinforce Hannah’s comfortable life, and the allusion to the Easter Bunny and Darth Vader, the Star Wars villain, advances Hannah’s cosmopolitan and media-saturated environment.
Yolen uses juxtaposition and imagery to spotlight the differences between 1942 Poland and life in present-day New York. Yolen writes: “[T] he elegant meal, with its many plates, goblets, glasses, and silverware, was gone. Instead, there was a polished table on which a single wooden bowl sat between two ornate silver candlesticks” (28). Yolen continues juxtaposing historical and modern life by comparing Hannah’s sudden ability to speak Yiddish to the simultaneous translations at the United Nations.
Hannah wonders: “How could she be both Hannah and this Chaya whose parents had died of a mysterious disease?” (38). She tries to preserve her modern identity by remembering Rosemary, jellybeans, and her house in New Rochelle. Yet the warm and playful Gitl and Shmuel pull her back to her new identity as Chaya. Gitl informs her: “Shmuel and I—we are your family now” (35).
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