The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz

MacPherson takes his time coming home from work that day. He intends to go to the store and get a box of chocolates for his wife, Jennie. But he is sidetracked by the sight of the tavern across the street. He has a drink and then one more, all the while replaying the interaction with Duddy Kravitz in his mind. While he feels he was right to accuse Duddy of his crimes, MacPherson realizes that the fallout will be considerable, with lots of misbehavior and pranks in the coming days. MacPherson resolves to use nonviolent punishment to handle the issues as they arrive. Adhering to this resolve to not use corporal punishment is of the utmost importance to him, not so much out of any feeling toward the students but out of a need to be true to an essential core belief.

When he arrives home, MacPherson discovers that he has company. Herbert and Clara, two of his old friends from his time at McGill University, have popped in to see him. They are in town for a convention, both executives of major corporations. During their short visit, MacPherson imagines what Clara will say to their other mutual McGill alum friends. He feels certain that he will be discovered as a failure with an invalid wife.

After they leave, MacPherson heads to bed, too tired to get caught up on grading. Jennie has difficulty sleeping through the night, coughing and complaining of pains in her chest, and he spends the long evening trying his best to comfort her.

Duddy comes home from school with the intention of greeting and spending time with his older brother, Lennie, but Lennie is far from pleased about the interruption Duddy’s presence causes. Lennie is in medical school and deeply immersed in studying for an exam. He asks Duddy first to be quiet, then to go away. After a quick pang of guilt, Lennie invites Duddy to accompany him and his friends to the movies over the weekend, though even while asking, Lennie knows he’ll later regret being in Duddy’s presence in public. Pleased to be invited, Duddy agrees and exits the family apartment willingly to go to a musical event hosted by the youngest teacher at the school, Mr. Cox.

The other boys don’t quite accept Mr. Cox or treat him with respect, but they enjoy being in his home and eating the free refreshments he provides students with while playing music for them. Duddy is even willing to put up with Mr. Cox haranguing him about his use of swear words so long as he can eye up Jane Cox, the young teacher’s wife, and try to make out the color of the bra she’s wearing. This evening, however, Jane Cox manages to intimidate Duddy when she catches him alone in their home library and asks if he is searching their books for sex scenes. Mortified, he exits the premises as quickly as possible.

Not sure where else to go, Duddy decides to try to catch up with his father, who he locates at Eddy’s Cigar and Soda, across from the Triangle Taxi Stand. Duddy has a drink with his father, Max, and his fellow taxi driver friends. Duddy is introduced to a new taxi driver, MacDonald. Max presents Duddy as “a dope” like him and Lennie as the smart one. Josette, a prostitute, also sits, drinking and talking with the men. When Max gets a sudden phone call, he tells Duddy he needs to go back home immediately. Josette applies fresh makeup, and Duddy puts two and two together, watching his father and the prostitute hurry to get ready to drive off. Duddy names his father as a pimp, and Max hits Duddy hard enough to leave red fingerprints on his face. Duddy runs off.

At work, MacPherson is questioned by another teacher, Mr. Coldwell, as to why he won’t simply mete out copious amounts of corporal punishment to force Duddy to obey. MacPherson stands his ground again, though quietly, insisting that he’s retained his views this long so he plans to continue with them until the end of his career. After Mr. Coldwell walks off, Mr. Cox tells MacPherson that he agrees with him and also considers himself a dedicated pacifist. MacPherson discourages him against committing to this ideal and walks off, feeling dejected and exhausted.

Later, MacPherson takes an unexpected phone call that he at first believes to be a prank. The call turns out to be from his old university friend Clara, who invites him to a social gathering after work. Somewhat reluctantly, MacPherson attends, though he feels out of place among McGill alums who have gone on to more profitable high-profile careers. Herbert and Clara fuss over him, though, introducing him as a man of noble ideals who got into teaching to change the world rather than pursuing a more lucrative field.

One drink turns into one too many, and MacPherson doesn’t arrive home until three a.m. Shortly after turning the key in the lock and opening the front door, he notices his wife, Jennie, slumped over on the floor, the phone receiver in her hand. MacPherson checks to make sure she is still alive and calls an ambulance.

When MacPherson shows up for work the next day, he is a different person. He is visibly irate and not trying to control his rage. He is also plainly drunk. In anger he yells at his students, calling them “you Jews,” and Duddy responds by calling him a Nazi fascist.

When Duddy acts out in class again, MacPherson gives in and beats him on the wrists with a leather strap. Having never hit a student before, he does a poor job of it. Duddy emerges as the victor in the exchange, feeling as if he’s made MacPherson compromises his values. In reality, MacPherson’s turn to violence is in response to his wife’s death and his feelings of emptiness and hopelessness. The chapter ends with him feeding pages of the history textbook into his roaring fireplace.

While the school cadets march outside in the snow, Duddy and his friends sing loud, rude songs to heckle them. Indoors, at a local hospital, MacPherson comes to after blacking out in the classroom. He regains his senses while the kindly, soft-spoken Leonard Bush, the school principal, is standing over him. Bush’s job requires near constant contact with problems and complaints, and more and more often they’ve involved the once mild-mannered and dependable MacPherson. It is decided that MacPherson needs to take a leave of absence, which Bush hopes will help him recover from his loss and tone down his drinking.

This chapter details the history of Duddy’s family, most specifically his grandfather, Simcha Kravitz. Simcha left the ghetto of Lodz, Poland, to come to Canada where he worked hard to establish a modest but successful shoe repair shop. Despite the inhospitable soil, Simcha tended a small vegetable garden and managed to earn the respect of community members, Jews and Gentiles alike. His wife is a dour and unpleasant person who treats him with hostility even in public. He doesn’t complain about his private life ever, though, and keeps his sorrows strictly to himself.

Simcha dotes upon his elder son, Benjy, and revels in Benjy’s successes. Benjy does well in school, finds a job, and marries Ida, a remarkably beautiful woman who Simcha also comes to dote on. In time it becomes clear to the community at large that Ida is cheating on Benjy, but Benjy is too blind to see it. Benjy’s situation pains the now old man who warns his grandson, Duddy, not to follow in his footsteps or in the path of his uncle Benjy or his good-for-nothing father, Max. Land, Simcha tells Duddy, is everything. A man should have land.

Though Duddy is marked from a young age as a troublemaker, teaching kids how to cheat and shoplift, his peers in parochial school are still drawn to him. He forms a gang called the Warriors and targets weaker, more vulnerable kids such as Milty Halipirin. The gang toys with Milty, saying he can join if he drinks a disgusting concoction as a hazing ritual, then reneges on their promise once Milty drinks the blend of chicken fat, cologne, and other ingredients. Duddy is the youngest student suspended at the school, and his father, Max, is often contacted about his behavior. 

Duddy tries various money-making schemes while he is still young, most of them duplicitous or illegal. He sells stamp-collecting kits for an inflated value. He gets his hands on dirty comic books and attempts to make a profit off them. He pilfers used hockey sticks at professional games and sells them for whatever he can get. He doesn’t do an honest day’s work until he is told to go take a job at his uncle Benjy’s dress factory.

At the factory, Duddy is the only young man in the sewing room. He eyes the young women he works around, assessing the likelihood of his having a tryst with one of them. He ends up getting caught in the bathroom in a compromising state with Adele, the youngest female employee, and is called into his uncle’s office. There, Uncle Benjy tells Duddy just how little he respects and trusts him. He knows that Duddy is fooling around on the job and suspects him of stealing as well. Benjy says that he’d like to fire Duddy but will not because it would hurt Simcha. But Benjy wants to make it clear to Duddy that he is watching him.

Though Benjy has no affection or respect for Duddy, he adores Lennie. He views Lennie as the son he never had because he and Ida cannot have kids. All of Lennie’s academic achievements delight him, and both Simcha and Benjy are embarrassed by how proud Max is when Duddy manages to graduate from high school, as if that were a tremendous feat.

After high school, Duddy goes off to wait tables in an upscale hotel in a resort area. Though some of the other boys who lodge and work there seem fond of him, he is decidedly the most economically disadvantaged of the wait staff and faces harassment from one boy in particular, Irwin. Irwin makes life miserable for Duddy, humiliating him in front of the college boy waiters on a regular basis.

Eventually Duddy seeks out other company. He meets and befriends a local Jewish comic named Cuckoo, who gives Duddy the chance to play small parts in his skits. Cuckoo and Duddy devise various get-rich-quick schemes. Duddy imagines creating a newspaper or starting his own sales firm but realizes he has no seed money or networking contacts. He tries to solicit advice from the businesspeople at the hotel but doesn’t get anywhere.

In addition to trying to find his place among the more well-heeled young men, Duddy is also figuring out his relationship to women, of both working and higher social classes. He has a few dalliances with a chambermaid, Yvette, but feels generally confused and self-conscious around young women. He listens to other men boasting of their sexual conquests and wonders what the right tactic to take with a woman he really likes is.

Soon enough he has to answer this question inwardly because he is unexpectedly asked out by Linda, the attractive, intelligent, and worldly daughter of the hotel owner. Linda, also a college student, usually dates Irwin, so it seems to many that maybe Duddy is being set up to be made a fool of. Duddy, however, is so shocked and thrilled he goes out with Linda, buying her round after round of expensive cocktails. She laughs at his dancing and at his conversation, which is forced and fails to impress. While they are at their second drinking establishment of the night, Linda runs into college friends whom she invites to sit and drink with her and Duddy. She and one of the friends leave for almost an hour, and when Linda returns, her dress is rumpled and there are leaves in her hair. She is kinder to Duddy after that, less mocking, and even offers to stack him in some future business venture.

With encouragement from Linda, Duddy agrees to participate in a Russian roulette gambling session with some of the other waiters. Some of the patrons staying in the hotel also attend the impromptu gambling event. Duddy arrives with high spirits. Though he lied to Linda, saying he was an old pro at roulette, he is still hopeful that he can earn some money to propel himself out of his present life and into something more prosperous, more like Linda’s.

Irwin supplies the roulette wheel, however, which has Duddy suspicious. He is pressured not to break his promise to participate, so he goes through with the gambling. All told, he loses over three hundred dollars, the entirety of his savings from working all summer. Deeply anguished, Duddy runs outside and pulls at his hair and sobs. He stays outdoors, too sickened to go back in, for such a long time that many in the hotel who knew of the gambling get suspicious. They search down by the lake where Duddy is in fact lying on the ground, feeling sick to his stomach, and when he isn’t found, it is assumed that he must’ve drowned himself. Hotel guests pledge never to return after the horrible tragedy they believe has occurred. Rubin, the hotel owner, yells at Linda and Irwin, who he accuses of setting Duddy up to fail. According to Linda, the wheel is real but “has certain tendencies. Irwin knew them” (81). Duddy lays in the grass in hiding and chuckles at the talk of his imagined suicide. He runs down the road to another nearby hotel and encounter Yvette, the chambermaid. He kisses her and makes plans to see her again soon. Then he strolls back into the hotel, resigns from his job, and tells Linda to go to hell.

Yvette and Duddy go on a date to a hidden lake that she knows about, one that Duddy has never seen before. After a picnic, they go skinny-dipping and have sex. Afterward, Duddy comes up with lavish plans for a hotel and children’s camp that he wants to build on this site. He will buy the land and the lake, he tells Yvette. She doesn’t laugh at him but instead encourages him and even dotes on him. She tells Duddy he seems feverish and should probably get back home to bed. Before he does, he stops to see Cuckoo and tell him of this new plan to acquire the lake and land to start his own hotel. Cuckoo shares this with Linda and also mentions Duddy’s relationship with Yvette. Linda is surprisingly jealous.