Free Fruit For Young Widows Analysis

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Loss in any way is hard on anyone. The quote, “Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all” (Seneca) reflects how much a loss of any kind is hard. Nathan Englander wrote about the hardest subjects: war and concentration camps. Englander himself grew up in a Jewish community. He shows readers how the events of a young child’s life affected him while growing up. The theme of “Free Fruit for Young Widows” is loss and how it changes people. Young Professor Tendler watches his family get killed at a young age. He hid under piles of deceased people and ran when he got the chance. He went back home, but this time, it would not be with his family. He returns home with the family maid Fanushka and her family. Eventually Tendler overhears them as they are plotting to kill him and, in return, kills Fanushka and her family. Tendler had a friend named Shimmy, and they fought in the war together. After the war is over, Shimmy has a fruit stand and gives free fruit to young widows. Shimmy has a son named Etgar, who never understood why his dad gives Tendler free fruit. It is not until Etgar is older when Shimmy passes away, and Etgar realizes Tendler is a widow himself. The first example of loss used by Englander in this story is in paragraph 49. Englander says, “Professor Tendler had already seen so much in life that this was …show more content…
Englander tells us that “Tendler was excepting no surprises, no reunions. He’d seen his mother killed in front of him, his father, his three sisters, his grandparents” (317). Tendler knew when he escaped the concentration camp that his life would never be the same no matter what he did. The loss affects Professor Tendler all throughout his life. Tendler turns his life around by teaching theories at the university. What Tendler saw at the concentration camps changed him into this sort of monster not in a sense of a bad type of monster, but a pitiful