70 pages • 2 hours read
Morris GleitzmanOnce
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2005A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
Carrots
Carrots (or specifically, carrot soup) are Felix’s favorite food. They remind him of living at home with his parents. Because of this, they carry a deep symbolic significance for him, causing him to associate them with the comfort of home and safety. When he finds a whole carrot in his soup at the orphanage at the beginning of the novel, he immediately believes that this is a message that his parents sent him. He thinks this means that they are coming to retrieve him from the orphanage. This belief is a product of his young imagination, not yet exposed to the horrors of Nazi-occupied Poland. However, the carrot is actually given to him in commiseration by the cook at the orphanage, Sister Elwira. It is likely that she had heard of the fate of Poland’s Jewish people and did what she could to make Felix feel better, even though he does not know.
Despite his misrecognition of the meaning of the carrot in his soup, carrots remain an important symbol of comfort for Felix throughout the rest of the novel. The most beautiful, tasty, and nutritious part of a carrot is the root, symbolizing the necessity of growing underground for Jewish youth at the time. A magic carrot features prominently in the stories he tells Zelda and the other children. This carrot can grant wishes, including bringing the protagonist of the story together with his/her parents. When Zelda falls ill and Felix goes to search through abandoned houses for aspirin, he does not return to the printshop right away. Instead, he searches for a carrot among the houses. This delay nearly causes him to be caught by a Nazi soldier. However, it emphasizes the depth of connection he feels to Zelda, despite the fact that he has recently found out that her father was a Polish Nazi. To Felix, Zelda is family. He wants to give her carrot soup, his favorite food, and a dish that represents comfort and family to help her get better.
Wartime Scarcity
Diverting supplies to the military caused rationing and resource scarcity in Nazi-occupied regions of Europe. In Once, this scarcity causes an increase in value of food and medical items. At the beginning of the novel, Felix is astonished to find a whole carrot in his soup. Not only is this his favorite food, it is also an unheard-of luxury. Most of the food that they receive at the orphanage is very watery soup; consequently, Felix is worried about causing a riot. When Barney reveals he paid three turnips for Felix’s boots, Felix is horrified. He thinks “Three turnips is a fortune. We could have made soup for all of us with three turnips” (54). Because of the food scarcity, the short-term value of three turnips is greater than the long-term value of a good pair of boots. Because of rationing, Barney is unable to use anesthetics in his dental practice. Despite this, dental work is in enough demand to keep him relatively safe from the Nazis: He serves both Jews and Nazis. Aspirin, too, is a rare commodity. When Zelda falls ill and is in desperate need of aspirin to reduce her fever, Felix risks his life to find a bottle in an abandoned house in the ghetto. This shows how restrictions placed on the Jewish people of Poland make even basic medical care a rare commodity.
Book Burning
The Nazi party and its sympathizers engaged in the systematic burning of philosophical and literary texts that that they deemed “un-German,” sympathetic to the Jewish people, or too liberal/leftist. Book burning is a form of censorship that is also highly symbolic: It sends a threatening message to those who would resist Nazi ideology.
Because Felix’s parents are booksellers, their fate is largely tied to their occupation. They instilled in Felix a deep love of storytelling and a reverence for books and sent him to the orphanage for protection when Nazi-occupied Poland began to become more hostile to Jewish businesses.
For more than half of the novel, Felix believes the Nazis main goal is to destroy books. When Nazi soldiers first arrive at the orphanage, he witnesses them pillaging the library and burning books in the courtyard. This is his frame of reference for their activities thereafter. Felix’s perception gradually expands: First, he thinks they are just targeting bookshops and booksellers, then Jewish bookshops and sellers, then Jewish readers, and finally just Jewish people.
