Chapter five begins with Reuven describing the ride home from the hospital and as the chapter continues, he is extremely reflective of his life in the past and this new found perspective that Reuven has acquired since the baseball incident. The author uses this chapter to elaborate on the parts of Reuven’s life which have gone untouched thus far in Book One. Although this chapter serves as a buffer between the hospital and Reuven’s home, it also offers many crucial insights to the developing plot of the rest of the novel. In addition to this purpose, the chapter shows that Reuven is starting to think more about Danny through this new, insightful perspective. Chaim Potok chose to include chapter five into his novel, The Chosen, to reinstate …show more content…
Chapter five is used to relate some occurrences at the hospital to Reuven’s life at home and his newly changed perspective. “I stood there, taking in the sunlight and the sounds, and thinking of the long hospital ward with its wide aisle and its two rows of beds and little Mickey bouncing a ball and trying to find someone who would play catch with him. I wondered if little Mickey had ever seen sunlight come through the windows of a front room apartment,” (Potok 144). Reuven is able to relate his experience at the hospital to his life at his home. Rather than just being thankful that he is home, Reuven actually keeps the lives of his friends at the hospital in mind. He wonders if the little boy has ever been able to experience the things that most children his age should be able to experience, and even feels sympathy for this boy due to the fact that he has spent his whole life at the hospital. This is important to the book because, rather than just going straight home and switching plot lines, the author ties Reuven’s thoughts from the entirety of the book thus far and is able to smoothly change the scene from the hospital setting to the comfort and familiarity of Reuven’s home. This chapter is essential to set up the setting of the later chapters in the remainder of Book