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Metaphor
Explanation and Analysis—Millions of Fists:
In Part 5: The Gambler (A Seven-Sided Die), Death describes Max Vandenburg's nightmare about fighting with Hitler. A hyperbolic metaphor emphasizes the intense willpower Max must summon to go on surviving:
In the basement of 33 Himmel Street, Max Vandenburg could feel the fists of an entire nation. One by one they climbed into the ring and beat him down. They made him bleed. They let him suffer. Millions of them—until one last time, when he gathered himself to his feet …
Max is alone in the Hubermanns' basement. He has never come face to face with Hitler, and he certainly has not been punched by millions of fists. However, by exaggerating the physical violence Max endures, Death captures the ongoing agony of his situation. He endures day after day in the cold, dark, lonely basement because "one by one," his "millions" of countrymen have all turned into his would-be murderers, or at the very least heartless bystanders who would rather "let him suffer" than intervene on his behalf. Anti-Semitism is a boxing ring that he cannot escape, where countless opponents line up to hit him while he is down. Their millions of fists have backed him into a corner where there is nowhere else to retreat to. If he is found in this basement, the entire game is up. The basement is not a safe haven, but merely a corner to retreat to in a ring where the fight never stops.
Max might be reasonably expected to lie down in defeat. Many people in his position would feel so hopeless, exhausted, and beaten down that they would never get up again. This is the outcome Hitler hopes for when he brings not only his own strength but also the strength of "an entire nation" down on Max. Max, however, learned how to fist fight in his youth, with Walter Kugler. He knows that the way to win is to keep getting up no matter what. The exaggerated boxing metaphor allows Death to show that Max's survival in the basement takes active, Herculean effort. He gets up, again and again, every time he wakes from his nightmare and realizes that he still has all the odds in the world stacked against him.
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