Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Immortalists, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Fate vs. Choice
Family and Shared History
Obsession
Death, Meaning, and Legacy
Surviving vs. Living
Magic, Religion, Dance, and Possibility
Summary
Analysis
The four Gold children—Varya (13), Daniel (11), Klara (9), and Simon (7)—walk through their neighborhood in New York City, in July 1969. The children stop in front of an old building on Hester Street, and a young man opens the door and lets them in. The narration flashes back to the week prior. Daniel hears two boys talking about a woman on Hester Street who can tell fortunes. When he reports this to his siblings, Klara perks up, as she has spent the summer teaching herself one of Houdini’s card tricks. Apparently, the fortune teller can also tell when a person will die.
From the outset, the Gold children—particularly Klara and Daniel—are drawn to magic. Daniel is interested in knowing a normally unanswerable mystery: his fate. He displays a childish innocence about this, not seeming to understand how weighty it would be to know when he will die. Klara, too, likes the idea of connecting with someone who shares her interest in magic and mystery.
Themes
The children argue about whether it is possible for the fortune teller to know a person’s date of death. Varya says that she wouldn’t want to know her death date, because the fortune teller might say that she will die at a young age. Daniel replies that he would want to know if this were the case so that he could accomplish everything he wanted to before he died. With this argument, Klara, Simon, and Varya agree to go, especially because this is one of the last summers that they will spend all together—next year they will all disperse to different activities.
As the oldest, Varya recognizes the risk of knowing one’s own death in advance. Daniel, on the other hand, frames it as a risk not to know when he will die, since he wants to have a timeframe for his goals. While Daniel certainly underplays the emotional weight of learning about his own death, his argument here foreshadows the Gold siblings’ need to find meaning in life before their deaths, especially if they know that they are going to die young. Additionally, knowing that they will soon separate, the Gold children’s desire to spend time together underscores the importance of shared experiences in family bonds.
Themes
When the children ask around about the fortune teller, the owner of a local magic shop (Ilya) tells Klara that he’s heard of her. The Hindu family who lives above the Golds call the woman a rashika. The daughter of the family, Ruby Singh, tells Varya that the fortune teller predicted the exact date of her grandmother’s death, which allowed the family to be with her when she died. Ruby says they were glad to have the chance to say goodbye. Varya also asks the men who work at Katz’s deli about the woman, but they say that kids shouldn’t get involved in something like that.
Ruby’s story highlights the potential advantages of knowing one’s death date, because it enabled the people close to her grandmother to adequately prepare for her death. However, the men who work at Katz’s Deli foreshadow how knowing one’s date of death could be very different for children, who have their entire life to consider their fate and live their lives according to that fate.
Themes
The boys that Daniel overheard talking about the fortune teller give him the woman’s address. Varya, Klara, Daniel, and Simon collect their allowances together and hope it will be enough to pay her. Next to Varya’s bed she keeps photos of her family members, and she likes noticing the traits that they all share. Her grandfather, Lev, came to New York in 1905 to escape the pogroms in Russia and he worked in a garment factory. By 1930, he opened his own business, Gold’s Tailor and Dressmaking, in an apartment on Hester Street, which their father Saul now runs.
Lev passing on the family business to Saul introduces the theme of legacy and illustrates how both having children and investing in work allowed Lev to establish a legacy that outlives him, since Saul continues both Lev’s family line and the business that his father worked so hard to build. Varya also highlights the importance of shared history in families, knowing that she is shaped by the genetic traits of her grandfather as well as his choice to immigrate to America.
Themes
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Varya is named for Saul’s mother, and Klara is named for their mother Gertie’s mother. Once, Klara and Varya snuck into Gertie’s bedroom and found old photos of their grandparents. Klara Sr. was pictured in a leotard—in one picture she rode a horse, and in another picture she was suspended from a rope, hanging on only by her teeth. When Gertie isn’t home, Klara looks at the pictures, vowing to live up to her namesake.
Klara’s connection to her grandmother, even though she never knew her, illustrates the pull of shared familial history. Klara is so taken by the woman for whom she is named that she pursues the same line of work and even vows to carry on her grandmother’s legacy of performing death-defying acts.
Themes
The story returns to the building on Hester Street. Varya, Daniel, Klara, and Simon mount the stairs and knock on the fortune teller’s apartment. Behind the door, the woman tells them that they must come in one at a time. Klara goes first. Daniel and Simon nervously follow. None of the children return the same way they came, and Varya is relieved when the fortune teller finally lets her into the apartment. Varya observes various knickknacks, charts, and tarot cards.
The fact that the children grow very nervous when they are forced to separate highlights the sense of comfort and protection that family bonds can afford. Having individual predictions inherently separates them from each other: without their siblings to share their experience, the children become very afraid of what they might hear.
Themes
The fortune teller examines Varya’s palm. Varya can’t remember the last time she touched a stranger; after she returns from school each day, Varya washes her hands until they’re raw. As the woman looks over Varya’s hand, Varya asks what she is looking for. The fortune teller replies that she’s looking for Varya’s character. She cites Heraclitus, “Character is fate.” When Varya says she could change, the woman replies that most people don’t. The fortune teller then announces Varya’s date: January 21st, 2044, which would make her 88. Varya is relieved, but she realizes that the woman is probably a phony. The woman tells her everything is going to work out okay for her, and Varya leaves out the fire escape.
The fortune teller’s citing of an ancient Greek philosopher calls up other ancient Greek texts surrounding fate: plays like Antigone or Oedipus. In those stories, characters who are aware of their fate in advance take dramatic actions to defy that fate but end up adhering to fate nonetheless. In this way, this passage foreshadows how the Golds’ choices throughout their lives will, regardless of their intentions, wind up fulfilling the fortune teller’s prophecies. The fact that Varya already demonstrates her obsessively germophobic nature (washing her hands until they’re raw every day) supports the fortune teller’s theory that character is fate, as this impulse towards cleanliness will allow her to live a long life.
Themes
When Varya reaches the alley, she sees that Klara has been crying. Varya tells Klara not to believe what the fortune teller said to them—that she made it up. Daniel agrees and says that they should leave. Varya notices that Simon still has the money—he forgot to pay the woman. Daniel says that the woman doesn’t deserve their money and angrily starts to walk away. At home, Simon doesn’t eat dinner. Gertie asks why he’s not eating and Saul tells him to eat. Simon cries out that he hates them all.
Even before the other siblings reveal the woman’s predictions for them, Simon, Klara, and Daniel’s reactions make it clear that her predictions have upset them deeply. Even as they try to convince themselves that she simply made up the predictions, knowing their fates changes the way they interact with each other and the choices they will make throughout their lives.
Themes
