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.
Themes
The Power of Storytelling
Gleitzman dedicated Once to “all the children whose stories have never been told” (6). While Felix is a fictional character, his story serves as a proxy for the hundreds of thousands of Jewish children who were murdered in the Holocaust and were never able to tell their own. As a work of children’s literature, the emphasis Gleitzman puts upon storytelling demonstrates the importance of imagination and creativity. Felix serves as an example of how imagination and creativity foster empathy and kindness to others—the antidote to the fascistic, genocidal worldview of groups like the Nazis.
Felix’s worldview is informed by storytelling. As the child of booksellers, Felix grew up reading books. Richmal Crompton’s William series is particularly influential on Felix’s attitude toward life. According to Felix, the protagonist of Crompton’s books “always tries to do good things, and no matter how much mess and damage he causes, no matter how naughty he ends up being, his mum and dad never leave him” (17). In many ways, this description also fits Felix.
In Once, storytelling allows Felix to reason away the violence and destruction he encounters before he is rescued by Barney, deepening his state of denial. However, storytelling also functions as a defense mechanism, protecting Felix and others from processing pain and trauma. Felix tells himself his parents are alive, and Mother Minka forbids him from telling others what is happening in her orphanage in Poland, effectively limiting the communication of reality. On the march to the city, Felix distracts Zelda from violent scenes. Barney recognizes Felix’s skill as a storyteller and asks him to tell stories to the other children in the print shop cellar. Finally, Felix’s stories literally help Barney’s patients forget about the pain of undergoing dental work without anesthetics. In all of these ways, storytelling is both a method of survival, exhibition, and protection.
Barney’s cellar is beneath an old print shop, symbolizing that Jew’s ability to give voice to their oppression as been eradicated by the Nazis. This will leave a legacy for years to come. When we stop telling the stories of Nazi atrocity, we run the risk of repeating history.
Altruism Among the Persecuted
Once contains many instances of characters behaving altruistically, risking their own lives to help others, despite receiving no personal gain from doing so. In Nazi-occupied Poland, aiding the persecuted Jews could result in punishments up to and including execution. Despite this, many people went out of their way to save those they could. Persecution during the Holocaust also resulted in solidarity among Polish Jews who sought to help their compatriots out with whatever means they could muster. Mother Minka and Barney best demonstrate the theme of altruism in Once.
Mother Minka is a prime example of the use of altruism as a force of resistance against the atrocity of the Holocaust. It is important to note that the Nazis heavily persecuted the Catholic Church in Poland: An estimated 3,000 members of the clergy were killed in concentration camps or out during the German occupation. A friendly customer of Felix’s parents, Mother Minka, agreed to take Felix into her orphanage, despite the risk harboring a Jewish child would pose to a Catholic institution.
Innocence, Naiveté, and Denial
Gleitzman’s audience is consistently reminded of Felix’s young age though his inability to interpret the signs of violence that surround him. However, as the story progresses, the reader is confronted with the fact that Felix is not merely naïve; he is in denial. It is easier for him to accept the truth of the stories that he tells himself than the reality that the Nazis are rounding up Poland’s Jews to murder them in masse, and that his parents have likely suffered this same fate.
At the beginning of Once, Felix is naïve to an almost darkly comical extent. For several chapters, he thinks of the Nazis only in connection to books. First, they are professional librarians, then book burners, then people who hate Jewish booksellers and Jewish books. He even incorporates Adolph Hitler into his prayers due to the fact that the authority figures at the orphanage praise him. Felix is becomes progressively disillusioned to the fantasies he comes up with. When Barney tells him about the existence of the death camps, each piece of evidence he has repressed falls into place in a way he cannot deny. His parents were not taken to the countryside by the Nazis because they were booksellers; they were taken to a death camp. He will likely never see them again. He is an orphan just like the children in Mother Minka and Barney’s care whom he previously pitied.
