I always loved speaking French...

First of all, it made me quite pleased that I could understand most of the French that was utilized by Kazin in the third chapter of A Walker in the City. It definitely brought me back to my high school days when I was struggling so hard to learn that darn language. I took five consecutive years of French, and I was willing to bet that I would not remember any of it come college. Apparently, I have been proven wrong. I thought that a particularly poignant passage in the text included Mrs. Solovey's feelings on speaking a second language:

"Do you not think it is tiresome to speak the same language all the time? Their language! To feel that you are in a kind of prison, where the words you speak every day are like the walls of your cell? To know with every word that you are the same, and no other, and that it is difficult to escape? But when I speak French to you I have the sensation that for a moment I have left, and I am happy" (Page 127).

Talk about deep! I really love the way this passage sounds, and I enjoy reading it out loud, because I feel like so much feeling can be conveyed in just a few short sentences. There are few conversations that take place in Kazin's autobiography, so this one between Alfred and Mrs. Solovey must mean something. Obviously, Mrs. Solovey, Alfred's "Anna," is making a statement on the English language. She feels as if she has assimilated too much into American culture. She has lost her sense of identity and feels lonely because of it. She literally believes that every times she opens her mouth to speak, she has lost a piece of herself, because English is not her native language. Speaking French frees her from "the prison," in a way, because not all Americans can speak that language. Not all Americans can understand it. She feels happy, because she has something in her possession (the ability to speak another language) that not all English-speaking Americans have.

I wonder if she feels this same sense of freedom when she speaks Hebrew...