The Storyteller

An important question asked by The Storyteller is how much control an individual has over their actions. The two characters who best exemplify this theme are Sage and Josef. The lives of both characters are affected by factors beyond their control which lead them to act in ways that are contrary to their moral codes. Both characters grapple with whether these actions can be explained and justified. By the end of the novel, Picoult imparts the message that making the morally correct choice is not always as simple as it seems, but that individuals are still responsible for their actions and have to answer to the consequences.

When Josef asks Sage to kill him, she initially refuses to even consider the idea. Killing someone is so far outside of her set of values that the idea is ridiculous. The choice becomes more complicated, however, when Josef reveals that he was a Nazi.

Josef justifies his involvement in the operation of Auschwitz by saying that he was acting on orders, leading Sage to contemplate how many people actively knew that they were committing or aiding in murders, and if the people who were just following orders can be held responsible for the outcomes of their actions. She wonders if she or others would have intervened in their position, knowing that their lives would be at stake if they did.

The lives of Josef and his brother Reiner provide conflicting answers to the question of choice. Both boys were indoctrinated into the Hitler Youth as adolescents, but only Reiner went on to actively seek out involvement in the SS. Josef avoided participating in the persecution of Jews for as long as possible, even burning his SS summons. Yet both brothers end up at Auschwitz in positions of power, Reiner by choice and Josef due to circumstance. Although he is disturbed by his job, Josef knowingly helps to oversee a death camp and does not intervene to stop the mass killings. Resistance from him may have been useless and only resulted in his death, but characters like Rubin and the rebelling prisoners at Auschwitz, who willingly sacrifice their lives to save others, show that no matter how dire the consequences are, one always has the option to choose goodness. In the end, Josef values self-preservation over saving others. It’s a familiar human instinct, but it means that he lives the rest of his life tortured by his lack of action.

The brutal beating Josef administers to Minka after Darija’s death exemplifies the complexity of freedom of choice in The Storyteller. Josef breaks Minka’s jaw and beats her half to death, but his decision is forced by the fact that Reiner will kill Minka if he does not punish her himself. He commits an act of cruelty out of necessity and ultimately spares Minka’s life.

Josef resonates with the Ania story due in part to its take on freedom of choice. Aleks and Casimir, as upióry, must drink the blood of living creatures to survive. They did not choose to become monsters, but they have to obey their biological summons—a set of “orders” like the ones Josef tells himself he is following. However, Picoult posits that there is always the choice to be better than your nature, even if it involves risking your life, such as when Aleks defies his nature by bleeding himself into the village’s bread supply to protect its inhabitants

After hearing the entirety of Josef’s story, Sage decides to kill him. This can be viewed as a free choice, but at the moment of Josef’s death Sage is operating under the false belief that he is Reiner Hartmann, the man who killed her grandmother’s best friend and tried to kill Minka as well. If she had known Josef was actually Franz, she would not have poisoned him. Her actions are manipulated by Josef’s lies. However, she could have chosen to turn him over to authorities rather than kill him. No matter the circumstances, she has committed a murder and will have to live with her choice forever.

Ultimately, The Storyteller imparts the message that that moral choices are not made in a vacuum of one’s values. Each person’s path through life is influenced by outside factors, but we all still have ultimate control over our choices and have to answer for effects of our actions and inactions.

In The Storyteller, Picoult tackles the complexities of forgiveness and justice when someone has committed a truly evil act. When Josef tells Sage that he was a Nazi, he is looking for forgiveness and for salvation from a lifetime of guilt via euthanasia. Throughout the narrative, Sage struggles with the idea of forgiving someone who participated in a genocide that directly affected her own family. The question of whether it is even her place to forgive Josef is raised several times by Leo and Minka, who believe that only the victim of a crime can forgive its perpetrator. In addition to the question of forgiveness, Sage has to consider the repercussions of helping Josef die. Killing Josef could be considered an act of justice for Darija and his countless other victims, or it could be a self-serving act of vengeance. This duality is further complicated by the fact that Josef is a willing victim.

Leo and Sage model two different attitudes toward justice and forgiveness. When it comes to Nazis, Leo does not believe in forgiveness. His faith informs his belief that murder is by nature unforgivable because the victim cannot pardon their murderer. Leo’s idea of justice is for Josef to be legally prosecuted and sentenced, spending his final years in a cell. Although this outcome is in line with the legal definition of justice, Josef is already tortured by his own guilt, so imprisoning him would not make a significant difference to his existing suffering. Sage’s view of Josef’s situation is more complex than Leo’s. She is torn between loyalty to her family and the desire to grant another human being freedom from torment, no matter how awful he might be. She’s also unsure that legal justice will make any difference, as it won’t restore any of his victims to life and will only prolong his own suffering.

Late in the novel, Sage goes to Mary for advice, who tells her that forgiveness is not for the sake of the perpetrator but for the victim. Without granting forgiveness, Sage may grow bitter and consumed by Josef’s actions, just like she was previously consumed by her inability to forgive herself for the car accident. Mary believes that forgiving someone who has harmed you breaks their hold over your life.

Sage ultimately decides that it is not her place to forgive Josef. She fulfills his death wish, which is both a punishment for his actions and an act of kindness to a man who has wanted to be dead for seventy years. Her decision to cradle Josef in his final moments while telling him that she will never forgive him maintains the ambiguity of the act, which lies somewhere between forgiveness and retribution.

Sage views her decision to kill Josef as “biblical justice,” but this perception crumbles when she discovers his real identity. Josef did not commit the murder that finally made Sage decide to help him die, so if her decision was motivated only by the desire for justice for herself and her family then it was wasted. However, Josef truly believed that death was what he deserved, so granting his wish was also an act of clemency.

The question of whether Sage has broken Josef’s hold over her life remains unanswered by the end of the novel, but based on what we know of her character, it’s unlikely that she will let go of her part in his death. Her apology after discovering his real identity calls back to the concept of teshuvah and the idea that in order to earn forgiveness one must be truly sorry. After ending Josef’s life, she inherits the questions that haunted him. The Storyteller shows us that forgiveness and justice are complex ideas that mean different things to different people, and that there is no guidebook to determine who is and isn’t worthy of release from their demons.