The Slave

The Slave was amazing. And its pretty clear to me why Singer chose to call it that.
You see, many times throughout the book Jacob is so beautiful, so happy, so alive. Often times, reading about him rising in the morning to wash his hands and thank God, I felt drawn back to times in my life, among the mountains, sleeping in crumbly shelters, rising to see "God's hand shown clearly in the red fire of the sun rise," and I feel that haunting sens of the ascetic's connection to the divine. Living with so little, with the mind so fixed upon the concept of goodness, the will of the world, the soul of the world.
But his attachment to tradition, the way he cant pray without washing his hands, the way he makes Rachel wash herself in the river when it is snowing out in the mountains (modern science: menstrual blood is not that fowl and shouldn't stop you from having fun).
His greatest slavery is the one that does him no good. It is his slavery to what the community thinks. Though the Jewish community is portrayed as a wholesome one, it is also full of depravity, so who cares what they think? Yet, from the time Jacob is ransomed he starts making the wrong choices, starting out with leaving Wanda all alone with no explanation.
This is the true sense that Jacob enslaves himself, because he lets tradition and hypocrites defile and distract him from the most important thing, his love, the same thing that animates his holy life, because all that he links to sensuality for obvious reasons.
The mythical parts in this book are truly amazing. Singer speaks of ways in which characters just 'know', not 'think' that there are werewolves on the side of the road, they 'know' that there are hobgoblins, witches and elflock tying demons. In this way the power of the human mind is shown to bring reality to that which is mythical. They have real effects. The mythic element stays like this, sublimated to the plot and not really effecting it greatly until the end.
In the end, the mythic, or romantic force, comes to a head. Jacob's body is felicitously buried right where Sarah's body was interred -the God of Jacob has shown his hand in the world, and shows that their love was ordained, justified and held sacred by the all mighty, who judges all things correctly.
And in this case, he certainly dose.
At least, that's what I think.