A Holocaust survivor and his guilt : The Death of the Adversary

Hans Keilson's "The Death of the Adversary" is an impressive if befuddling novel - a very unusual Holocaust novel in that, as mentioned in previous posts, Keilson never uses the words Hitler, Nazi, or Jew, though it's obvious what he's writing about - his secretiveness about the subject matter gives the book a Kafkaesque, spooky feeling - as if the words themselves were curses or talismans - and it also gives the book a sense of realism, in that the frame of the story suggests we're reading a manuscript written in secret and hidden - as in fact it was, perhaps - Keilson apparently wrote the novel while in hiding during the war. All that said - it's very frustrating that the narrator remains so passive, naive, and self-loathing. The novel continually builds toward some kind of confrontation, which never takes place. The narrator goes through a series of encounters, each more horrific and haunting - scorned at the playground, shunned by his best friend, then (as a young man) spending an evening with some supposed friends hearing their detailed account of the desecration of a Jewish cemetery. At the end, he actually watches Hitler pass in a motorcade. Not only does he never act - which of us would be brave enough to do that? - but he continues to philosophize about Hitler, he needed Jews as an enemy to define himself, Jews need an enemy to survive - and so on. However: at the same time, he learns that his parents have had to flee their home, his father taken away and obviously killed, and it slowly, painfully, dawns on him that Hitler means what he says and more. This is a truly tragic novel in that sense - an apologist who learns the truth too late and must live with the guilt.