The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Ruth Ebling watches as a line of cars pull up to the house of James Haworth Love, where she is a housekeeper. All of the men accompanying Love appear confident, though one stands out; Ruth notices “the little Jew at once” (402). Sam could never have known, and would never find out, what went wrong that day, that Ruth Ebling’s hostility toward Jews was:

being fueled not merely by the usual black compound of her brother’s logical, omnivorous harangues and the silent precepts of her employer’s social class. She was also burning a clear, volatile quart of shame blended with unrefined rage (403).

Carl Ebling pleaded guilty to his charges and was sentenced by a judge with the Jewish name of Cohn to 12 years imprisonment. Ruth had never fully agreed with Carl’s views on Hitler, but she saw nobility in her brother’s devotion to freeing America from “Morgenthau and the rest of his cabal” (403). However, it seems to Ruth painfully obvious that Carl needed to be in a psychiatric facility and not Sing. All of this, coupled with her new-found animosity toward her employer, Mr. Love—who she felt was behaving shamelessly by being vocally opposed to Charles Lindbergh, to the America Firsters, and the German American Bund, and also allowing, for the first time ever, Jews in Pawtaw—has caused her to rebel.