Alvin

Alvin, Philip’s cousin, moves from wartime sacrifice and dependence on the Roth family toward a prosperous but morally compromised life in the gambling business. His lost leg remains a lasting fact of his life, but it does not define him alone: the novel also follows his anger at the family that once cared for him, his attraction to money and status, and the uneasy intimacy he eventually finds with Minna Schapp. His return to the Roth home briefly promises peace; instead, it exposes how far he and Herman Roth have come to disagree about what the family owes to the Jewish community around it.

Background and Earlier Bond

Herman had twice taken Alvin into the family home when others would not have him. That history made Herman more than an uncle: he had acted as Alvin’s guardian and mentor, trying to redirect a young man whose choices seemed to be leading him toward trouble. Alvin’s later service with the commandos, and the loss of his leg, gave that relationship a new weight. Philip understands the sacrifice as tied to the family’s and community’s concerns, though Alvin later presents it as something he did because Herman sent him to fight.

The bond also matters to Philip. When the prospect of his family moving in with the Wishnows seems unbearable, he imagines taking the twenty dollars he has hidden in a shoe, traveling from Pennsylvania Station to Philadelphia, and living with Alvin instead. He intends to look after Alvin’s stump. The plan is a child’s attempt to escape a family crisis, but its destination is significant: Alvin remains someone Philip associates with care and refuge, even as the adults’ relationship with him has deteriorated.

Work, Injury, and Reinvention

After leaving Herman’s household, Alvin is caught up in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s scrutiny of the Roth family. Uncle Monty later recalls that he had dismissed Alvin because of the attention surrounding the young man’s earlier service abroad. The same surveillance then turns toward Herman after Herman quits his job at Metropolitan Life Insurance Company rather than participate in a government program. Alvin’s departure from the family’s orbit is therefore connected not only to his own choices but also to the political pressure surrounding the Roths.

By the time he returns in 1942, Alvin is working in the illegal game-machine business, trucking and setting up machines with the help of strong-arm associates. His prospective father-in-law, William F. Schapp II, offers a route out of that work and into restaurant ownership in Atlantic City. Schapp’s rise from a low-level gambling operator to a wealthy and socially established businessman makes the offer both an opportunity and an introduction to a world where money can convert a disreputable past into public respectability.

Alvin has adopted the speech and display of that world. He uses an ostentatious new vocabulary about money and admires Allie Stolz, a Newark boxing contender, for his apparent readiness to spend. The narrator sees Alvin’s fixation on Stolz’s pursuit of a championship as a measure of how thoroughly his attention has shifted from the public danger facing Jews to personal success and celebrity. His new prospects are real, but the change also sharpens the contrast with the young man whose earlier actions had been understood as a sacrifice for others.

Return and Conflict with Herman

Alvin comes back to North Jersey with Minna, his fiancée, saying that he wants to thank Herman and Bess for taking him in, make peace, see Philip and Sandy, and introduce the woman he plans to marry. Philip responds to the visit by retrieving Alvin’s Canadian medal and pinning it to his undershirt for the first time since Alvin left for Philadelphia. The gesture shows how strongly the family’s memory of Alvin’s service persists, even while he has built a new identity away from them.

The timing makes reconciliation difficult. The dinner takes place amid fear after an anti-Semitic bombing in Cincinnati and reports of attacks on Jewish-owned businesses elsewhere; Herman repeatedly leaves the table to listen to the radio for news after Walter Winchell’s funeral. Alvin, by contrast, talks about his new prospects and Allie Stolz. To Philip, the gap between the two men’s concerns marks a profound abandonment of the moral code that had once seemed to justify Alvin’s sacrifice.

Herman challenges Alvin over his expensive clothes, business ambitions, and indifference to the danger facing Jews. Alvin answers by insisting that he had already given up his leg for the family and its cause, and resents being treated as though his new life amounted to nothing. His anger is not simply a defense of money or status: he casts himself as the injured party, someone whose sacrifice has been appropriated by the very uncle now judging him. The dispute brings their old relationship into the open—Herman still sees a young man to be reformed, while Alvin rejects the authority of the guardian whose guidance once mattered to him.

The argument turns into a physical fight in the family living room. Alvin’s artificial leg breaks, Herman is seriously injured, and the room is damaged in the struggle. Mr. Cucuzza intervenes, mistaking the scene at first for an attack on the household. Alvin’s return, which had been announced as an effort to make peace, ends in a rupture that neither his medal nor his stated gratitude can prevent. His final gesture toward Herman makes the break unmistakable.

Minna and the Life That Follows

Minna initially appears to Philip as a quiet and nervous fiancée, but the later account gives their relationship a different depth. The narrator recognizes that Alvin’s willingness to confide in her, and her acceptance of him, mattered more than the impressive business arrangement that brought them together. Alvin’s disability is part of their ordinary life: when his artificial leg causes recurring problems, Minna insists that he stop using it until it is repaired. In this respect she is able to care for him in a way he resists from others.

After William F. Schapp II dies in 1960, Minna’s brother takes over the slot-machine business while Alvin acquires restaurants. Alvin also pursues a more expansive social life, but Minna continues to attend to the practical effects of his disability. When he must go without his prosthesis for periods of recovery, she drives him to the public beach and watches from beneath an umbrella while he plays in the surf. The scene places his vulnerability alongside his humor and independence: he turns his condition into a joke for the tourists, while Minna remains close enough to help when needed.

Narrative Role and Significance

Alvin’s trajectory is shaped by reversals. The young man whose wartime service and lost leg bind him to the Roth family later resents the moral claims that family makes on him. He seeks independence through business, money, and status, yet his body continues to require care, and his old ties remain difficult to escape. The novel does not reduce him either to a betrayed veteran or to a selfish opportunist; it shows the conflict between his remembered sacrifice and the life he now wants to claim.

His visit also brings the family’s private tensions into contact with the wider political crisis. Herman’s insistence on discussing the danger to Jews clashes with Alvin’s effort to celebrate his new prospects, while Philip’s childhood memories preserve both the tenderness of wanting to care for Alvin and the shock of the family fight. Alvin thus becomes a measure of what political fear and personal ambition do to kinship: the same history that once drew him into Herman’s care becomes the ground on which he rejects Herman’s judgment.