Summary
Jacob checks the Kirschbaums' door before going to work the next day, finding it locked. On the way to work, he sees a crowd in front of Kowalski’s building. The people in the crowd are looking at an open window—either Kowalski’s or his neighbor’s—with a piece of rope fastened to the transom. Jacob runs to Kowalski’s apartment and sees two people there. They had seen Kowalski hanging and cut him down. Jacob removes the rope, shuts the window, and closes the curtain. He sits with Kowalski’s body, realizing that the confession about the radio caused his suicide. The narrator tells us that when Jacob later told him this story, Jacob blamed himself, but that the narrator had interrupted Jacob and said it was not his fault. Jacob gets up to leave Kowalski’s apartment. When he does, he opens the curtain and the door. Jacob goes home, deciding not to end his radio reports after all.
The narrator says the story has two endings: one for Jacob and everyone else, and one for the narrator. The narrator’s ending, he says, is more satisfying. He says he wrestled with which ending to tell and decided to tell both, beginning with “the ending that never happened.”
Chapter 39
In this ending, the ending that never happened, Kowalski does not commit suicide because Jacob does not confess. Instead, they chat that night about less significant things. Jacob spends the next couple of days trying to come up with a lie to end the radio altogether. He announces it was stolen, causing people to become suspicious of each other. A committee forms to comb through the buildings. They find one person who possessed an illegal radio and either never listened to it or knew Jacob was lying and kept quiet. They kill that person and give the radio to Jacob, and Jacob is forced to continue his reports. But this does not happen in the “actual ending” nor in the narrator’s ending.
Instead, in the narrator’s ending, Jacob simply cuts off all contact with the Jews of the ghetto. Eventually, Mischa warns him that people are planning to steal his radio. In response, Jacob forbids Lina to be in his room when he’s not there and stops hiding the key. But even Kowalski, Mischa, and the narrator are turning on Jacob for his silence at this point. While no break-in occurs, the widespread contempt gets to Jacob. He becomes gloomy with Lina. One day, Jacob goes to Mischa’s apartment to ask Mischa and Rosa if they could take care of Lina for a bit while he is feeling unwell. Mischa hesitates, but Rosa agrees. Mischa walks Jacob out and asks for an update regarding the Russians’ advance. Jacob says Pry has been taken, but the Russian progress was halted after that.
Jacob moves Lina the next day, telling her the new situation is temporary. In the narrator’s imagination, Jacob considers his situation for a while before cutting the stars off his jacket; he then puts the jacket on. He takes pliers and walks outside after curfew. Jacob sneaks to the boundary of the ghetto at the old vegetable market. When a cloud covers the moon, Jacob starts to run toward the fence. Here, the narrator stops to offer reasons for Jacob’s sudden flight: he may have lost hope of liberation, he may be fleeing from the persecution of his own people, or he may plan to return the following night with information to feed through his radio. While lying on the ground at the fence deciding whether to cut a second wire, Jacob is shot by a sentry’s submachine gun. The narrator imagines that this is the night when the Russians arrive to liberate the city. After the Russians free them, some Jews, leaving the ghetto through the old vegetable market, encounter Jacob’s body and recognize him. They talk about why he would have been trying to escape if he had a radio. Then they leave. This is the end of the narrator’s ending.
Chapter 40
Now, however, the narrator will tell the true ending to the story. Kowalski is dead, and Jacob continues to live for a time. He does not give up Lina or try to escape, and he keeps providing updates from the radio. The day after Kowalski’s suicide, Jacob walks past Kowalski’s building and thinks about his friend, despite his attempt not to do so. He hears a conversation about Kowalski’s suicide. At the freight yard, Jacob and the other workers find that the gate is locked. Jacob reads a notice saying that all people are supposed to assemble in the square at thirteen hundred hours with luggage, and their rooms should be clean and left unlocked. The crowd of workers wait for Jacob to say something, but he is silent. A sentry disperses the crowd.
Chapter 41
Jacob returns home to find Lina missing from her attic. He begins to pack her things. As Jacob is packing, Lina returns home, telling Jacob that she had become thirsty and gone to the water pump. They go down to Jacob’s room and encounter Horowitz, one of Jacob’s neighbors, on the stairs. That Horowitz has also packed a suitcase shows Jacob that the notice from the freight yard must apply to the whole ghetto. Jacob begins packing his own things in a rucksack. At this point, Lina asks Jacob why they have packed their things, and Jacob responds that they are going on a trip to somewhere about as far away as Africa. Lina runs upstairs and gets her book about Africa.
Chapter 42
The Jews have been loaded into boxcars and are now moving. The space is cramped and dark; the people do not speak. Jacob is standing by one of the openings in the boxcar, and the narrator is next to him. Lina can be seen between Jacob’s legs. She asks Jacob if the fairy tale is true, and Jacob says that it is true. Lina says that Siegfried and Rafael did not believe it. Jacob corrects Lina’s memory of the story, saying the princess in the story wanted a cloud, not a piece of cotton. This confuses Lina, who asks, “aren’t clouds made of cotton?” Jacob says he will explain later. Then, the narrator sits with Lina and begins to explain clouds and the water cycle. Lina spends some time taking this all in.
Jacob offers to let the narrator look out of the opening, and the narrator accepts. He watches through the opening, noting the trees above all else. He reflects on the trees, telling the reader that “A tree was responsible for my not becoming a violinist, and under a tree I became a real man.” He says Hannah was lost to him under a tree, and an ordinance tried to deprive him of trees for all time. Jacob asks if the narrator wants to sleep, but he says no, and that wants to keep looking through the opening.
Analysis
Kowalski's suicide is the climax of the novel, as Jacob is at last forced to fully come to terms with the consequences of his lying. The issue, however, is that it is the confession, not the lie itself, that immediately caused Kowalski to commit suicide. Thus, Jacob is trapped in his lie and the hope it has given to the ghetto. He is forced to keep the lie going, knowing that false hope is the only thing keeping many of the ghetto's residents going. In the novel's ongoing moral debate, this moment is a clear point in favor of the idea that lying and creating false hope is wrong.
Yet, the narrator goes on to provide multiple endings for the text, including an ending that is entirely fabricated. In the fictitious ending, the ghetto is liberated just after Jacob is murdered while trying to escape. This is the more satisfying ending. In the real ending, all the residents of the ghetto are deported to concentration camps. The narrator survives, but most of the other Jews are killed. Providing a false ending to the novel seems to suggest that there is nothing wrong with believing in lies. However, the fact that the narrator also provides the real ending weakens this theory. It is clear that we are supposed to know the truth, too. The moral ambiguity is left largely unresolved by this decision.
Jacob the Liar's ending is by far the darkest section of the novel in tone and mood. Becker's stylistic choice is likely intended to represent or reflect the loss of hope experienced by the characters of the ghetto. This hope falls away when Jacob is unable to say anything to the other workers at the freight yard gate when they are sent home. The narrator describes the workers as realizing in this moment that "there is nothing more to hope for here." Correspondingly, the tone and mood grow darker in this section, and many of the comic elements of the text fall away.
The reappearance of the princess and the cloud allegory in the context of the mass deportation serves as an indictment of belief when no such thing is warranted. It is clear that believing in Jacob's lies no longer serves any purpose or carries any value. This idea is strengthened by the narrator explaining the water cycle to Lina while they are in the boxcar. By exposing Lina to "reality" in this way, the narrator is cutting through the lies and false beliefs, preparing Lina for what awaits her.
The final image in the novel is the narrator staring at trees through an opening in the boxcar. For the narrator, trees represent freedom, especially because they were prohibited in the ghetto. As such, this ending can be read in a couple of ways. First, it can be seen as the narrator saying goodbye to his freedom while on the path to certain death. Second, it can be understood as foreshadowing the narrator's later freedom. Both interpretations of this scene are supported by the text, and, in fact, both can be true at the same time. The narrator prepares for the end of his life, while the reader (and, later, the narrator himself) knows that the trees really symbolize eventual freedom. At this moment, there is no need to believe in lies. As the narrator says, "We are heading for wherever we are heading."
