While Vili has neither the multi-generational sweep nor the moral gravitas of Singer’s family sagas, its themes are nonetheless timeless, its struggles archetypal. A father and son grapple with each other, and, in the process, a richly compact narrative emerges: a rebellious son leaves his ancestral home—an unnamed village in Poland—to find adventure among strangers and lose tradition and family along the way. Their respective stories define what is lost and what is gained in the immigrant passage to the new world. The eponymous hero, Volf Rubin—or Willy (Vili) Robin in America—is the rare agon who must share center stage with his antagonist, that is, his more voluble paterfamilias. The sententious Hirsh—modeled on Singer's own painful childhood interactions with the savage brutality of the chief rabbi of Nyesheve—tenaciously holds onto some of the more merciless and "bone- breaking" pronouncements derived from a literalist reading and application of Jewish law. Such is the heavy baggage which, according to Volf, should have been left behind in steerage. Volf's lapsed Judaism is his father’s dystopian nightmare. He much prefers nature and farm animals to any form of classroom. Eventually, he leaves home for the New World, and there a whole new story unfolds—or is it so “new”?
