Milkweed - A Review
By Ryan Zimmerman
Grade 7
Chester, New York
When I began reading Jerry Spinelli’s book Milkweed, I couldn’t put it down. I was confused by the fact that even though Misha, the main character, is not an Aryan, he still wants to become a jackboot (Nazi). Later, it began to make sense, because he doesn’t understand who they really are, he is blindly impressed by their power and their glamour. There is another reason Misha is attracted to the jackboots. He feels he is a “nobody” and yearns to be part of a family and to “belong.”
Misha is so eager to have an identity and a heritage that he is happy to believe his friend Uri’s imaginative fable of his gypsy origins. Later, even after several terrifying experiences show him who the jackboots really are, this eagerness makes him want to become one of the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto, which he tries to do by wearing an armband. Clearly, he feels that belonging to a group – even a persecuted one – is the only way to survive.
In a way, Misha is dangerously naïve. On the other hand, his tendency to dream and to view the world through the eyes of a poet allows him to see meaning in his suffering and to rise above the destruction all around him. His ability to do this gives him strength not just to survive but to reach out to others around him, and even to help them.
Milkweed made me think about all the people in the world who go through life thinking that no one cares about the trials they have had to endure. Lonely, aging survivors of the Holocaust. Japanese- Americans interned during World War II. Vietnam veterans like the old man in my neighborhood, who feels that “most folks just don’t understand.” It also made me think of the countless children suffering around the globe today – children growing up in places like Israel / Palestine and Iraq, and children orphaned by last December’s tsunami in Southeast Asia. What does life look like from their perspective?
In Misha’s case, it looks so bleak that he is happy to join a family like the Milgroms, even though they live in utter poverty. Living with them he at least does not have to suffer alone.
Uncle Shepsel, propped on his elbows, was pointing at me saying “Why is he sleeping here? He smells.”
“I regret to inform you,” said Mr. Milgrom, “That you’re not a rose garden yourself these days.”
Uncle Shepsel pounded the floor. “He’s not family.”
Mr. Milgrom looked straight at him. “He is now.”
Here we see that, even in the worst conditions, people have the freedom to choose, to exclude or to include, to brush off or to empathize, to shun or to love.
Milkweed uses the example of Nazi-occupied Poland to show us where certain choices lead. But it also shows us, through Misha’s journey, that even in the worst circumstances, despite the greater costs, the human spirit can prevail.