Pesah

Pesah and the way people treat him is a broad representation of how easy it is for illnesses to be misunderstood. Within the novel’s historic setting, Pesah’s leprosy is widely feared, to the point that Pesah’s best friends and his own father fear being too close to him. While it is true that the illness is extremely infectious, the lack of information people have about it makes finding cures and fair treatments nearly impossible. Azriel points this out to Ziva at the end when he says that leprosy is not what kills someone; the illnesses caused by their weakened immune system do. Pesah’s loneliness and slow decline is a direct result of that lack of understanding.

Ziva

Ziva is the personification of the denial stage of grief. Up until the moment that Pesah accepts his death, Ziva refuses to. She goes to...