Overcoming Adversity In Elie Wiesel's The Pinch

The roles of the Jews as outsiders within a larger community are ever present no matter the century. In the prologue of the mystical book called “The Pinch”, the first Jew made his arrival in Memphis in 1541. His name was Rodrigo Da Luna, a Marrano. Stern briefly mentions this Marrano, who is in no part of the story line other than being the first Jew in the area. This simple mention of a Marrano, also represents a part of Jewish history at a time when Jews faced persecution and were practicing their religion in secret in the face of adversity. Class references Rodrigo came to the Americas with the Spanish conquistador Fernando De Soto. As the conquistadores pushed further inside the continent, Rodrigo contemplated setting up shop and practicing his trade along the Chickasaw bluffs. He was a tailor by a trade and judged the bluffs ideal for civilized habitation. He thought like a true businessman and looked at the indigenous Indians as potential future clients. However once the barges were completed that would carry him across the Mississippi river, he conceded to go along with the explorers delving deeper into

the wilderness and to an obscure death. (Stern 39)
The traveling peddler is next introduced, another personification of the Jewish journey into America. The political situation in Russia had motivated many Russian Jews to change scenery, and in 1878 Pinchas Pinsker migrated to a yellow fever stricken Memphis. He had he quickly learned the art of haggling in the lower east side of New York. As he learned English, he slowly worked his way out of the ghetto and enjoyed selling goods out of his cart. He had heard that Jews in the south or revered as people of the book (Stern 143). Pinchas was still unfamiliar with the expression Yellow Jack, as he came upon the city during the yellow fever epidemic. He was soon to succumb to the disease on top of all of his belongings and money being stolen. The point the author makes here is how Pinchas began from absolute scratch. He was on death’s door, literally in a coffin, with the absolutely no belongings, when he is slowly nursed to health by his bashert or soul mate. She was an Irish lass named Katie, and had a very appealing bedside manner.
Katie had a fate awaiting her as well. She was to be married to the local bar owner in an arrangement that will forgive her father’s and her two brothers debts at the bar. As a dutiful daughter with no better options she acquiesces to this arrangement. Her love grows for her pet project, but she is betrothed to another. Pinchas secretly recovers and keeps his wits about him. He formulates a plan to marry the girl as his dying wish, and upon their nuptials makes a swift recovery. In this case it was cleverness that helped the characters overcome their fates.
When Katies dies, and Pinchas becomes determined to bring her spirit back to him. Pinchas goes against his fears and descends after Katie into the underworld or the spirit world with the Rabbi’s help. Since a free spirit would be reluctant to return to its body, Pinchas has to work hard at keeping her with him everyday. It was not a quick fix. This time it appears his tenacity keeps Katie within his grip a little longer.
While The Pinch stood outside of time, Pinchas and Katie had a son Tyrone. This was another instance of not their accepting fate. They had been branded by the community an inter-racial couple, and it was duly noted with no children. Pinchas lamented that it was as if their childlessness was a consequence of their taboo union. Tyrone was a different from other children in the mystical Pinch, since he was the only child that was growing up during that period. He was very unique, conceived while his mother spirit was outside of her body. Tyrone was distant from both worlds and was considered fragile. The community seemed unsure how to categorize him or put any undue expectations on him. He ended up being drafted into the military, and he came back a broken madman. He was the illustrator for the mystical book “The Pinch” and never stopped drawing. Some of his images were deeply disturbing and of course confusing if you had not read “The Pinch”. His illustrations portrayed things happening in The Pinch across several timelines all at once. In ways he was like his cousin Muni, who was driven by an unknown force to perpetually write about the Pinch, but in Tyrone’s case it was draw.
Pinchas’ nephew Muni must overcome his fate in Russia. Given a long term sentence in a Siberian mine, he is barely surviving when Pinchas’ money arrives sewn inside of a coat. Muni plays the long game to plot his escape. Against all odds, and others’ escape failures, he escapes. He is barely able to survive the winter, but then he is rescued by a local tribe of outcasts living in yurts. The outcasts were an odd collection of people because of their skin conditions and disfigurements, but they were still a society. They nursed Muni back to health, and he seemed to be conditionally invited into their society. It seemed conditional upon relations with a certain female. His rejection of said female precipitated his departure. His struggle for survival continues in subzero temperatures. He is on the brink of death once more, until he meets a fisherman, a very peculiar loner who saves him again. Muni eventually makes it back to civilization, then his way to the Americas, and becomes Pinchas’ ward in The Pinch.
During Muni’s acclimation back into society, while finding his place in the small Jewish community, he begins to admire a tight rope walking girl in the neighborhood named Jenny. A drive slowly stirs within Muni, and he no longer appreciates being the subordinate. Jenny was an orphan. Her parents had drowned in a steamboat accident, and she was the ward of the Rosens. Described as an awkward girl with a limp, sinewy and slight, she was a waitress with no bright future to speak of. She was very klutzy except when she practiced walking on the tightrope she had roped in her backyard. She had high aspirations to hone the skill and found a new sense of self when she was above. Known to the community as a barely educated orphan, her independent streak marked her as an outsider. It did not appear that any one have any high expectations of her. She and Muni had been transplanted in which gave them both an outsider status in their small community.
As the story unfolds Jenny’s journey is key. Her tenacity and humble nature gain her respect in the community, and her relationship with Muni is condoned. Our main characters from the early part of the century, Muni and Jennie, have just consummated their love in the tree and Muni surmises that their unholy union may have played a part in the rift. Jenny’s journey is never easy; once she falls off the tightrope in her backyard and breaks her leg. It feels for a moment as if her dream of joining the circus has passed, in addition to her feelings for Muni that could ground her in the Pinch. However she is determined. Even when The Pinch is upside down and outside of time, she continues to practice on the rope and even stilts. Upon a suggestion that she regrets, Muni begins to document and write about everything that is happening in The Pinch. Since that is outside of time, his task is daunting. He becomes neglectful of Jenny and is working around the clock. Muni begins to wither away, while Jenny realizes that she is carrying his baby and that he is unfit to be a father. She has a back alley abortion and joins the circus. This was yet another story of decisions made to change the course of one’s destiny. Jenny followed her dream of joining the circus; moreover she enjoys substantial success and special attention as a featured act. She realizes this traveling riverboat circus is just another clan of outsiders not unlike the Pinch. The circus performers live outside of the larger society, and were not always welcome. The female Hercules took Jenny under her protective wing, but Jenny was never fully integrated into the circus community. Jenny’s steady admirer teaches her to read with an air of sophistication and she is an apt pupil. Abruptly, Jenny’s teacher dies and the riverboat explodes. Jenny returns to the Pinch, only to find the same fate facing her friend Asbestos in the Pinch.
Jenny had a special relationship with Asbestos, a homeless elderly man, former slave, and blind fiddle player; he was the object of Jenny’s charity. Asbestos had begun his life as a slave, and had been beaten and blinded by his former owner, but he would not resign himself to his position in life. Even while blind, he took his own freedom multiple times. By the time of his death he was well known as a prolific blues player. He was also known for readings others’ painful scars and setting them to music. He knew his way around in the underground sewer system and could pass easily between Beale Street and The Pinch. Although he was regarded as a charity case in Jenny’s community, Asbestos enjoyed notoriety and a high status on Beale Street. His freedom was amplified when The Pinch stood outside of time, and he was able to go between the two worlds with ease. By the time of his death by Ku Klux Klan lynching, he was also well known to have helped others gain their freedom.
On the day of Asbestos’s death the Pinch moves back into the timeline that the rest of the world is having, and it’s mystical qualities disappear. Jenny and Muni return to their relationship and become man and wife. They due their best to raise Tyrone as their own, even though he’s doesn’t fully belong in the “real” world. Tyrone’s Jewish friend from the war, Avrom, shows up in The Pinch. His curiosity was piqued by Tyrone’s mystical tales of The Pinch. He acquires Muni’s manuscript and Tyrone’s illustrations then spends five years organizing the book while he sets up shop as a bookstore owner. He has the book bound and entitled “The Pinch: a History a Novel”. That is as far as Avrom’s ambition takes him. He becomes agoraphobic and spends the rest of his days in the back of the bookstore in the Pinch.
Enter Lenny, his protégé who according to the book, will take over the bookstore and get The Pinch published. It appears that Lenny has gotten by through life by making very little effort and is working in the bookstore to bide his time until he is drafted. He is practically a squatter, and deals drugs on the side; otherwise he would have no social life to mention. Lenny appears throughout the book at the wrong place at the wrong time. He manages to find himself during an errand in the middle of a civil rights union strike. He is among the crowd when glass begins to break, heads crack and tear gas rolls. Lenny meets Rachel, a high class college girl who is studying Jewish folklore. She is engaged to Dennis, but Lenny cannot resist having deep feelings for her. She somehow finds time to have an intimate relationship with Lenny when she finds out about the book, “The Pinch”. Lenny has unrealistic aspirations for a long-term relationship.
When his landlord goes to jail, Lenny temporarily stays with Rachel and the terms of their relationship become clearly defined as temporary. He ends up in the hospital during Dr. Martin Luther King’s march with a severe head injury inflicted by the police and a brick wall. Rachel shows up with Dennis at the hospital and announces that she and her fiancé Dennis have set the date. Lenny’s parents also visit him in the hospital mainly to let him know that he received his draft papers. Lenny then seeks out Avram, the bookstore owner, who is also hospitalized but finds that he’s already died. Lenny is at rock bottom. Lenny feels like he was in a helpless freefall. No home, no parental safety net, no employer, no girlfriend, and he has a memory problem.
Once out of the hospital, Lenny returns to the bookstore since the bookstore was the closest thing to home. He receives a call that explains that before his death, Avram made plans to pass the bookstore to Lenny. Suddenly, the book store fell like a mausoleum. Lenny opened “The Pinch” and was lost again in time. He reads the book and again begins experiencing things around the store outside of time. This is where Stern’s book seems to have two endings: one in which Lenny resigns himself to a life running the bookstore and the other one where he torches the bookstore and goes for the girl. It appears his default position or fate would be in the bookstore, where he could become engrossed in the book for the rest of his life. Alternately, faced with that prospect, he lights his draft papers on fire, and the flames spread to the book and the bookstore. He sets out for the unknown.
Outside of the Pinch within the bigger story, the African American of characters also go along with the theme of self-determination and must overcome or face adversity.

Asbestos was able to change his fate or at least postpone it. In the meantime, he enjoyed freedom which was something he was not born with, he had to attain it. The sanitation workers are on strike in Memphis in 1968, and they are doing what they can to stand up for their rights. They had gained national attention and earned support from outsiders for their cause. Dr. Martin Luther King arrives on the scene as well urging for the civil rights for blacks. Lenny’s friend Elder is in a band that performs in a beatnik club. He is as anti-establishment as they come. Lenny encounters Elder leading a vehement group at the Dr. King march. In his efforts, Elder dies fighting a police

officer.
There was one main character that seemed to accept her fate, but only after a temporary diversion. Rachel did not liberate herself from her “prone to tempers” finance Dennis. She did enjoy exploring the seedy side of Memphis and hanging out with Lenny for a time. It was probably her upbringing and standard of living which would not let her consent to a life with Lenny. Instead, she accomplished changing someone else’s destiny. Rachel visited Tyrone repeatedly in the insane asylum. She intervened and was able to rally support for his change of residence to a home outside of Overton Park. It wasn’t until Rachel’s intervention that Tyrone was able to communicate with others. Tyrone was receptive and at ease in the setting where she relocated him.
The role of alienator and antagonizer is typically played by the one in power. In Russia, it is the Russian government and in the United States it is members of the mainstream “white” society. Immediately, Dennis resorts to violence in the first chapter. Katie’s Irish brothers and father also are of the violent persuasion ready to inflict torture upon Pinchas given the opportunity. The police treat Lenny inhumanely; even the ambulance workers facilitate his “accident”. When the Ku Klux Klan shows up in the Pinch the second time, Asbestos ends up dead.
The expectations of society, offspring, parents, and community ring true whether it’s the 1890s or the 1960s. Traditions are not forgotten although they may not be followed at times. One gets the sense of the roles, how they ebb and flow, and play off of each other. It is this basis which causes several characters to overcome or break free of what seems to be written in their individual characters, cultural expectations, or their very destiny.