53 pages • 1 hour read
Nicole KraussThe History of Love
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2005A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 14-17Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 14 Summary: “One Nice Thing”
Bird’s journal starts on September 28. He says that his therapist, Dr. Vishnubakat, told him to try writing his thoughts and feelings in his journal. First, he writes about how he tried to buy a plane ticket to Israel. Bird left a note explaining his departure to Alma and his mother. He tells them there will be a flood, but he built an ark in the vacant lot so they will be safe. When his mother bought tickets for Alma’s Bat Mitzvah, they were $700, so Bird sold lemonade until he made $741, but when he went to the airport, the cost was $1200. When the attendant at the airport wouldn’t sell him a ticket, he told her he might be the Messiah, and the police came to take him home.
When the rain stops, the police take down Bird’s ark. He is upset because he wrote God’s name on some of the pieces, meaning they can’t be thrown away. When he goes to retrieve them, however, they are already gone. The next day, he visits his only friend, Mr. Goldstein, the janitor at Hebrew School. Bird worries that he disappointed Mr. Goldstein and also God by revealing that he is a lamed vovnik. He feels depressed and decides to start asking himself, “Would a lamed vovnik do this?” before he does anything else.
Misha calls that night, but Alma isn’t home. He tells Bird that he wants to know if Alma found who she was looking for, and Bird wonders what this might mean. The next day, Mr. Goldstein faints and is taken to the hospital. Bird is terrified that it is his fault because he failed at his mission. He decides that if he can help someone, he can reestablish his status as a lamed vovnik, and Mr. Goldstein will get better.
Chapter 15 Summary: “The Last Time I Saw You”
Leo is woken from a dream by Bruno tearing back his sheets and shouting that Leo is in a magazine. Sleepy and doubtful, Leo doesn’t believe his friend. When he opens the magazine, however, he does indeed see his name, and the words are unmistakably from Words for Everything, an excerpt of which is published under Isaac Moritz’s name.
Leo calls the magazine. The attendant tells him that the story is an excerpt from Isaac Moritz’s final novel and is shocked that Leo’s name is the same as the story’s protagonist. Upon hanging up, Leo tries to understand what this means. He wonders if Isaac read his book before he died and if he knew the truth of their relationship. Leo checks the mail in case there is still a letter from Isaac. He finds a different letter, signed by Alma, asking him to meet at Central Park at four o’clock on Saturday. Leo believes the letter is from Alma Mereminski. He thinks she is coming as his angel, meaning it’s time for him to die. He knocks on the radiator to communicate with Bruno, but there is no response.
Chapter 16 Summary: “Would a Lamed Vovnik Do This?”
The story returns to Bird’s journal. He steals Alma’s notebook while she is in the shower and then pretends to be sick so he can stay home from school. He spends the day reading the notebook and finds the list of clues under the title “How to Survive if Your Parachute Fails to Open.” When Bird sees the names Alma Mereminski and Alma Moritz, he thinks maybe his sister has fallen in love and is trying out her boyfriend’s last name. Then he wonders if his mother had been in love with someone else, and Alma is searching for her actual father. If he can help her, Bird believes he will be a true lamed vovnik.
The following day, the phone rings. It’s Bernard Moritz, Isaac’s brother. He found Alma’s note about The History of Love on Isaac’s door. He tells Bird that Isaac found some letters among his mother’s things and became convinced that his birth father was Leopold Gursky, who included chapters of The History of Love in his letters. Bird writes down this name and promises to pass the message on to his sister. He looks up Leo’s address, prints out his mother’s complete translation of The History of Love, and puts it in a brown paper envelope to deliver.
Chapter 17 Summary: “A + L”
Alma also receives a letter to meet at Central Park at four o’clock on Saturday, signed by Leopold Gursky. She is confused, however, because she has never heard the name. She wonders if it might be from Misha, one of the men she met during her search, or if Isaac could have sent it before he died.
Leo arrives at the park first. He doesn’t know how long he sits on the bench, drifting between the present and his memories of the past. He feels as if he has nothing left to do; his life is over, and he will continue waiting forever if necessary. He remembers his hardships during the war, living in forests and drinking out of puddles. He remembers being a child and imagining strongly enough that he saw an elephant that it became real to him. He learned how to make things real, and now, he sometimes cannot tell the difference. He takes out the index card in his pocket that explains what to do with his body if he dies and pins it to his jacket. He keeps waiting.
When Alma arrives, she doesn’t see Leo. She waits for a long time until it starts to get dark and almost everyone is gone. When she gets up to leave, she walks past Leo and reads his index card, which includes his name. At first, Leo is sure that Alma Singer is his Alma, returned to the teenage girl that he loved. Alma is disappointed, thinking he is old and confused. She asks him about The History of Love and Zvi Litvinoff, and Leo asks her if she was also in love with Litvinoff and Bruno. Alma is alarmed and confused, and Leo starts to understand that maybe he is mistaken. He asks a passerby for confirmation that Alma is real and then realizes she is not an angel after all.
Alma asks who Bruno is, and Leo confesses his friend died in 1941 and that he has since developed him as a character and imaginary friend. Alma asks if he was once in love with Alma Mereminski and if Isaac Moritz was his son. Leo can only tap twice on her arm for an answer. He wants to speak to her but cannot find the words. Alma puts her head on his shoulder, then hugs him.
The book ends with “The Death of Leopold Gursky,” the same chapter that closes the fictional The History of Love, saying that the sum of Leo’s life was his love and his writing.
Chapters 14-17 Analysis
Chapter 14 introduces Bird as the fourth narrator. Like Leo and Alma, Bird narrates in the first person, writing in his diary. His voice is more childish, disregarding conventions of grammar and punctuation. Bird has been on his own quest to alter his reality and make it more bearable, imagining and believing that he is a lamed vovnik to deal with the trauma of losing his father. However, Bird also plays a vital role in connecting the other characters. He is responsible for the mysterious package Leo receives with The History of Love, and he connects Alma and Leo at the end of the novel. One of the novel’s central themes is storytelling’s connective power, and Bird helps facilitate these connections. This calls to mind the imagery of the copies of The History of Love as “a flock of two thousand homing pigeons” spreading their way across the world (71). Metaphorically, Bird flies along with the book and helps it find its destination.
When Leo reads Words for Everything in the literary magazine, he is amazed to find his name in print. On the one hand, having his name in the magazine is the ultimate way of validating his existence. On the other hand, his words are attributed to another, and his name refers to a fictional character, suggesting that he isn’t real after all. More important is the question of whether Isaac read Words for Everything before he died. Leo realizes, “[I]t was possible there had been a brief window of time in which Isaac and I both lived, each aware of the other’s existence” (212). This thought brings Leo a great deal of comfort.
In novel’s the final chapter, the text switches quickly between Leo and Alma’s experiences. Alma’s parts come from the days leading up to her meeting with Leo, while Leo’s all take place while he sits on the park bench for an undetermined amount of time. It is the only chapter that blends narrative voices, suggesting the final connection that the book leads up to. Krauss makes ample use of white space in this chapter, sometimes with only a line or two of text on each page. This makes the little text that there is more impactful and heightens the tension at the story’s climax.
This final meeting and the separate narration up until the last moment illustrate the collision of each character’s different reality. Bird thinks he is facilitating a reunion between father and daughter. Leo thinks the love of his life is coming to take him away in death. Alma thinks she will meet someone who can tell her about Zvi Litvinoff and The History of Love. Instead of being disappointed when they discover their mistakes, Alma and Leo unite in a moment of genuine connection. Leo is honest for the first time about the lengths he went to to make his life bearable, including pretending that Bruno didn’t die in the war. Although he again cannot speak, he does finally manage to say Alma’s name, thinking that it gives him “joy to call, because [he] knew that in some small way it was [his] love that named her” (254). He understands that The History of Love impacted the world in some way, even though he lost it. In the end, Leo “felt [his] heart surge” (254), and it isn’t clear if he survives his meeting with Alma or not.
The novel closes with Leo’s self-obituary, the same chapter that ends the fictional The History of Love, blurring the lines between Krauss’s History and Leo’s as the stories loop over one another. Throughout the novel, Krauss makes multiple allusions to various literary works and authors to illustrate the connective power of literature. This last reference unites the two novels and raises the question of which is truly fiction.
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By Nicole Krauss
