The Fiftieth Gate

Pages 240-260 (Chapters 38,39,40 and 41) CHAPTER 38 Gate 38 focuses on dreams. Baker recalls Yossel screaming at night and his mother telling him that his father was just dreaming linking to the fact that his memory will never forget what he has been through, even at night his dreams haunt him. Baker shares his own dream which is symbolic of his journey through memory. The story incorporates an unhappy ending, in contrast to the ending of Holocaust victims. Genia argues that she used to read the same story to him when he was a child and that it was her story, but Baker disagrees and tells her that its a different dream

CHAPTER 39 Genias recollections of her mother are combined with stanzas of a poem El Hatsippor or To a Bird by Hayim Bialik, about pain, sorrow, loss and ageing. The anguish of losing her mother is evident in her remembrance of the funeral and her behaviour when the family visits the grave on their trip to Berlin. a mourner, the same frightened child who once peered into the depths of this grave Seeing his mother so distraught, Baker is reminded of a childhood photograph of his mother. He describes the photo in much detail, building up a picture of Genia as a lone survivor of a string of difficult circumstances. In analysing the photograph, Baker explores the idea that it transcends time stating there is nothing in the faces of the assembled that reveals that these are survivors. The photo preserves their original identity and allows Baker to understand how individual events and memories have shaped his mothers personality over time. Two months after the photograph Raisl died in a truck accident saving Genia. Baker expresses the ironic nature of her death in that she survive(d) everything only to fall victim to a mans drunkenness aligning his pain over the grandmother he never knew.

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