Montreal

Montreal is the setting of Alvin Roth’s prolonged hospital recovery and the city from which he returns to Newark after losing part of his leg in the war. For the Roth family, it carries two meanings at once: the place where Alvin must rebuild his ability to walk, and a possible Canadian refuge as the political climate in the United States grows more threatening.

A Possible Refuge

While working at Hahne’s, Bess Roth quietly saves her paychecks in a Montreal bank account. She tells her family that her wages will help meet the larger household bills, but her private purpose is to keep money available in case they must flee and begin again in Canada. Montreal thus enters the family’s life not only as a destination associated with Alvin’s hospitalization, but as part of a practical plan for escape.

That possibility acquires a sharper personal dimension when Herman Roth drives north to visit Alvin in the army hospital. The journey is 350 miles each way, and Herman has only Friday off: he drives through the day to see Alvin on Saturday, then drives back through Sunday so he can attend his Monday morning staff meeting. A flat tire delays him on the way north; two more trouble him on the return. To make the meeting, he bypasses his family and drives straight from the highway downtown.

Hospital Recovery

Herman returns exhausted, having gone more than a day without sleep and longer without a proper wash. He tells the family that Alvin looks almost like a corpse and weighs around a hundred pounds. Alvin refuses the food put before him and, in Herman’s account, seems to want only to lie in bed, gaunt and grim. The description makes Montreal the site of a crisis that is at once physical and emotional: Alvin has survived his injury, but his father fears that he has lost the will to live.

Herman tries to reach him by recalling the strength of Alvin’s parents and the hardship his mother endured after her husband died. He cannot tell whether the appeal has taken hold. Seated beside Alvin among the other sick young men, Herman breaks off and begins to cry. It is the first time Philip Roth has seen his father weep, making the hospital visit a turning point in the family’s experience of Alvin’s injury as well as a measure of Herman’s fear for him.

The recovery is long and demanding. Alvin first gives up the wheelchair, then the crutches; Canadian army nurses train him to walk without assistance on his artificial limb. When he is discharged in January 1942, he receives a monthly disability pension of 125 dollars from the Canadian government and 300 dollars in separation pay. As a handicapped veteran and former foreign volunteer, he can also receive further benefits if he remains in Canada, where volunteers who wish to stay are granted citizenship upon discharge.

Departure and Return

Alvin chooses to return to the United States. Nearly a year after Lindbergh takes office, he travels from Montreal to Newark on an overnight train, accompanied by a Canadian Red Cross nurse. He is missing half of one of the legs he had left with. The trip closes the hospital chapter but does not restore the family to its earlier life: Alvin comes home with a permanent injury, and the people waiting for him have spent months confronting the possibility that he might not recover.

The train is late, and at Penn Station the family waits together for its arrival. Herman reads a right-wing New York tabloid, then throws it away in disgust at the continuing public admiration for Lindbergh. His anger places the homecoming inside the political conflict that has followed Alvin’s absence. When the train finally enters the station, Bess tells the children to greet their cousin and welcome him home. Montreal remains behind as the place of treatment and possible refuge; the return makes the family’s reunion, and the changed America to which Alvin returns, the next uncertain stage.