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Personal Relationships In Chaim Potok's The Chosen

Decent Essays

Friendship

Friendships exist in different ways: best friends, close friends, friends who have just met, and even bad friends. Depending on how someone gets along with someone else, their friendship can strengthen or they can drift apart and never become great friends. Of course, in some instances, one has no choice but to be friends with someone else, but that does not need to be a bad thing. For example, nobody really has the choice but to love their family and have a certain level of friendship between themselves. Throughout Chaim Potok’s novel, The Chosen, many different friendships develop and grow. Reuven Malter often displays one factor of the two person relationships in these friendships. Potok put Reuven through many challenges and situations throughout the story that caused him to make different friends. His relationship with his baseball players, with his hospital friends, and Danny Saunders all exemplify different levels of the friendships in Reuven’s life. …show more content…

While Reuven Malter’s team prepares for the game, many of his friends are observed. Davey Cantor, Sidney Goldberg, Schwartzie are all different players on the team. They all demonstrate a certain level of closeness between each other. Throughout the game, they encourage and joke around with each other. In chapter one, Davey Cantor and Reuven talk discuss the other team: “ ‘They’re murderers.’ ‘Oh, come one Davey.’ ‘You’ll see,’ Davey Cantor said looking at me gloomily. ‘I just did.’ ‘You didn’t see anything.’ ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Elijah the prophet comes in to pitch for them in tight spots’” (chapter 1) They know how to handle each other and take care of each other. When the ball hit Reuven and he fell, Sidney Goldberg helped him to his feet, and when he was hit in the head with the ball, his team fled to race over him. Reuven had close friends on his baseball team who he cared for, and who cared for

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