Symbolism In The Devil's Arithmetic

Many times people take things for granted. For example, we think since food is always provided to us we shouldn’t be thankful for it, or for pure drinking water or even for our freedom. Most of society receive this benefits, and we assume everybody gets them too, unfortunately that is not the case. Not all people can afford these privileges. We may not perceive them as that on the contrary, we think of them as needs, and fortunately for us we can afford to enjoy them. However, in the past this was not the case for most people. Even today people can't afford them. In the Devil’s Arithmetic, Hannah a 13-year-old girl realizes this after a spiritual awakening at the end of the story.

Hannah a normal jewish girl who lived in New Rochelle experiences

She became self centered, she didn't even like her Hebrew name, Chaya which means ”life”, and was given to her in honor of her Aunt’s Eva friend. Through Hannah's perspective this was irrelevant, the fact that she was named after a dead, unimportant person. Luckily Hannah learns to appreciate the Jewish religion changes during a Passover Seder. During a Passover Seder dinner, when is time to open the door to welcome the prophet Elijah, Hannah is transported into a “dream” where she is no longer in New Rochelle, and it is 1942 in Poland. During this experience Hannah, also known as Chaya, is in her aunt’s Eva friend Chaya, the one she was named

When all this started happening Hannah wanted to wake up so that this nightmare would be over. Unfortunately for her, when she opened her eyes she was still in Chaya’s body. When they finally arrived to the concentration camps, Hannah saw all the people suffer because they were being separated from their love ones. Also they weren’t treated nicely, they had to remove their clothes, and all of their belongings. After they would have to get their heads shaved, and shower. Finally they would get assigned, and tattooed a number, which would be their new identity. In order to stay alive, and receive food they would have to work, and follow every instruction they were given without responding back or questioning anything. Chaya soon learned how to survive there thanks to the help of the few family members she had there, her friends, and new girl she met there named RIvka which taught them all the rules they needed to follow to survive in that dreadful place.

As days went by Hannah started to forget about her life in New Rochelle. She started to become more Chaya than Hannah. She forgot the feeling of love, the taste of food, the comfort of having a bed, it all went away. However, she had her friends, and part of her family who helped each other go through those tough times of being