Veiel AP Lit

In Part Six, we bear witness to the reunification of the splintered Kavalier & Clay clan, and watch as the relationships between its members shift as various forms of love become realized. Love is generally known to be among the most potent of human emotions, and many (if not most) people regard it as the single most powerful force in a person's life. This power takes many forms, and often it can be found to be capable of completely overwhelming a person's rational thinking, warping their lives–sometimes in a good way, other times negatively. To put it in an escapist's terms, love could be said to both entrap people and to free them. Though Sammy's love for Tommy is indeed fatherly, his love for Rosa is not romantic–for it never could be. Certainly he loves her, but as a companion and collaborator in the raising of their son and the making of their comics. Ever since that night at the beach home of James Haworth Love, Sammy has been petrified by what may happen to h...

In Part Four, our principal characters all discover, or struggle to discover, some new part of who they are in the world, to each other, and to themselves: a revolution of character driven by the heart. In particular, Sammy wrestles with a particularly difficult aspect of his identity: his homosexuality. In Part Four, we are introduced to a character who carries himself not with "a confidence in his own abilites" but rather "an assuredness of being welcome wherever he went" (309): Tracy Bacon. Despite this quality, Sammy recognizes him to be "lonely" (307). One place in which Bacon becomes welcome is Sammy's heart, though this process is lengthy and fraught with self-doubt on the part of Sammy. After meeting at a rehearsal for the Escapist's radio show in which Bacon voices the titular character, the two go out drinking before meeting Sammy's mom and grandmother for dinner. Towards the night's conclusion Ethel inquires after Bacon's rad...

In Part Three, though Joe and Sammy have achieved victory in their initial battle to make the Escapist into a reality, they find themselves quickly embroiled in conflicts on other fronts.  While he was immensely satisfied by the Nazi-beating of his initial cover drawing, Joe struggles to feel the same way about his subsequent efforts. No matter how many strokes he makes with his pen, he fails to see any meaningful progress made in the fight against Nazism. He declares the Escapist "an impossible champion, ludicrous and above all imaginary ." For himself, he reserves the label of "'Idiot'" (168). On the scale of the entire war, it seems to Joe that his funny-book making is entirely ineffectual. But on a smaller scale, he still maintains hope that he may find a path to the United States for his family. He visits, "Whenever he found himself with an empty morning or a week between issues" (177) various agencies and organizations around New York, earnes...

In Part One, Michael Chabon largely concerned himself with the recounting of the pre-Clay adventures of the Kavalier half of the tandem. Now, in Part Two, we get to see the first examples of this duo in action, beginning with their impassioned pitch to Sheldon Anapol and Jack Ashkenazy. As the negotiations progress we see this passion expressed through Sam's thoughts, who "felt that he was standing on the border of something wonderful, a land where wild cataracts of money and the racing river of his own imagination would, at last, lift his makeshift little raft and carry it out to the boundless freedom of the open sea" (87). Here we get an insight into what exactly the "'very big money'" (71) means to the artistically inclined cousins: freedom. To come up with the idea from which this freedom will be derived, the pair is given one weekend. In search of a stroke of inspiration, the newly formed partnership takes to the streets of New York, rattling throug...