60 pages • 2 hours read
Karen HesseLetters from Rifka
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2009A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
Pushkin
Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (1799-1837) is widely revered as the national poet of Russia, a profound influence on modern Russian literature, and the creator of enduring works of world literature. A common Russian expression, “Pushkin is our everything,” references the poet’s national importance. Thus, when Rifka takes a volume of Pushkin’s poetry with her as she and her family flee Russia, she also symbolically takes the nation with her. She writes to Tovah, “When I read your Pushkin, I remember those cows, and the girls’ singing,” memories of Russia (34).
Since Rifka has a conflicted relationship with Russia, however, Pushkin also encapsulates Rifka’s and her family’s mixed feelings about leaving home. She and her family flee Russia to escape persecution; all things Russian represent to them this bitter past, in contrast to the hope of their American future. Rifka notes that her mother, for instance, “did not like [Tovah] teaching me Pushkin in Berdichev” (39).
Pushkin is symbolically and literally connected to Rifka’s efforts to write throughout Letters from Rifka, given that she composes her letters to Tovah in a book of Pushkin’s poetry given to her by Tovah. She treasures the book for its connection to her past, but also because of the meaning that his poetry holds in her life. By including excerpts from Pushkin’s poetry at the beginning of each letter, Hesse suggests that Rifka finds correspondences between her life and the poems. For instance, the final letter, in which Rifka is finally permitted to enter America, includes an excerpt from a Pushkin poem on freedom. Over time, Pushkin’s words encourage Rifka to write her own poetry, helping her not only reconcile her identity as “both Jewish and Russian. And […] also more,” but also find and express her own independence (117).
Hair
Throughout Letters from Rifka, Rifka’s hair is a motif closely connected to her chances of escape and freedom. Early in the novel, Rifka’s hair is depicted as beautiful, something that makes her unique; “People have often stopped in wonder at my blonde curls,” she writes (7). The beauty of her hair is shown in contrast to the Polish peasant she meets on the train, who has “[s]trands of hair clustered in oily clumps” amid “big round sores” (37).
Rifka’s hair is not only beautiful, but also a key to her family’s escape. Because her hair is blonde and curly, Rifka passes as non-Jewish. Thus, she can oversee her family’s belongings and distract soldiers searching the train while her family hides, awaiting the opportunity to leave. Rifka’s independence and personal strength grow over the course of the novel, but her level-headedness during this early episode shows her potential.
Given the significance of Rifka’s hair, the loss of it due to ringworm is devastating. Rifka remarks on how her hair loss changes her physical appearance, noting, “My hair is gone. All gone. I am as bald as the rabbi of Berdichev. I cover my baldness with a kerchief, but still I look very ugly” (55). Yet she does not dwell on appearances; far more important to her (and to her family) is the fact that the ringworm and the lack of hair endanger her entry to the United States. Rifka is told that she may not be able to enter the US because without hair, according to immigration officials, she may not be able to marry, and will thus be a social liability. Rifka refuses this point of view, boldly telling the immigration officials, “if I wish to marry, I will do so with hair or without hair” (138). In the end, Rifka’s independence convinces the officials to admit her, though everyone is also pleased to discover that her hair is growing back, symbolizing restoration as Rifka rejoins her family in her new home.
Candlesticks
As Rifka’s family packs hurriedly before fleeing Berdichev, they only have time to take essentials. However, her mother does pack one treasured possession—a pair of brass candlesticks. Over the course of Letters from Rifka, these symbolize what the family has lost, and what they hope to regain.
Aboard the train platform as the rest of her family hides in boxcars, Rifka sits with a sack containing the candlesticks. As she watches a soldier search, she knows that “If he finds Mama’s candlesticks in my rucksack, it is all over for my entire family” (11). However, the candlesticks are stolen shortly afterward, and the loss is deeply felt; Rifka even dreams about the candlesticks, describing a vision in which “Hands, dozens of hands, reached out of the darkness to take them from me,” which causes her to scratch herself bloody in her sleep (25). Through this nightmare, the reader sees the candlesticks’ psychological magnitude. The candlesticks represent the family’s lost home, and their theft represents the pain and mistreatment the family endures as they journey, including illness, extortion, separation, and discrimination.
Rifka focuses on acquiring new candlesticks for her mother, which shows a developing selflessness. In addition, acquiring new candlesticks symbolizes the restoration of what they lost, the reunion of their family, and the beginning of a new life in America. Thus, Rifka is proud to have saved the money for Saul to buy their mother new candlesticks, and he waits until Rifka can give them to their mother herself. In the novel’s final letter, Rifka writes, “[A]t home is a pair of brass candlesticks […] just like the ones Mama used to own” (144). For the first time since leaving Berdichev, Rifka can call a place “home,” and the candlesticks symbolize this homecoming.
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