86 pages • 2 hours read
Esther HautzigThe Endless Steppe
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | YA | Published in 1968A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
The author, Esther Hautzig, introduces the context and characters in the book. The narrative begins when Esther is 10 years old, in June 1941, in the Polish city of Vilna. Esther lives in a large home with her extended Rudomin family and loves her peaceful life and predictable routines. This life was first interrupted by war in 1939, when Hitler invaded Poland. Esther recalls how her father—her beloved Tata—was drafted into the army and presumed to be dead; her mother insisted that he was still alive and would return. To everyone’s shock, he did. In 1940, the Russians took Vilna and confiscated the family business. Esther’s world “remained intact” and, on that June morning, she “had not the slightest premonition that it was about to end” (6).
Early that morning, Esther is reading a novel in her bed when she is interrupted by her mother. Her mother, Raya, tells her that “something is happening” (7)—Russians are at her grandfather’s apartment, and her father has left to investigate. Raya gives her a matchbox and instructs her to take it to Raya’s mother’s house. Esther delivers the box to her maternal grandmother, who opens it to find it filled with Raya’s jewelry.
Esther bids her grandmother farewell, and the goodbye feels final. She returns home to her mother; the doorbell is ringing, and Raya answers it to see her husband, Samuel, and two Russian soldiers. The soldiers accuse Esther and her parents of being “capitalists and therefore enemies of the people,” explaining that they will be “sent to another part of our great and mighty country” (12). Esther and her mother are ordered to pack. Esther wants to bring a photo album, but her mother explains that it might prompt questions about the people in it. When Raya’s brother comes to the door, Raya pretends that he is a stranger.
Esther and her parents board a truck filled with other people, including Esther’s paternal grandparents. They arrive at a train station, and one of the soldiers assigns the group to different train cars. When Esther’s grandfather, Solomon, is assigned to a different train than the rest of the family, Esther’s grandmother screams in grief.
Chapter 2 Summary
Esther, her grandmother, and her parents are loaded into a cattle car with other prisoners. Samuel directs the group, assigning upper and lower bunks according to age. Peering out of a hole in the cattle car, Esther takes in her final view of Vilna and remembers her great-grandmother Reisa, who presented the city to her “as if it were a family heirloom” (24). As they leave the area, people in the car begin to weep.
Esther falls asleep. When she wakes, Samuel assures her that he will try to find out where they are at the next stop. Esther is horrified that there is no toilet and realizes that she is hungry. A peasant offers her food, but Raya urges Esther to refuse. Later, a soldier brings them soup, but Esther is so repulsed that she cannot eat it.
As time passes, the people in the car sleep and lose track of the days. The soldiers refuse to answer questions about location and destination, but several weeks into the trip, Samuel points out the Ural Mountains. Esther becomes feverish and itches with lice. Finally, the train stops and the passengers are told to disembark. They have arrived in the village of “Rubtsovsk in the Altai Territory of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic of the great and mighty Soviet Union” (34).
Chapter 3 Summary
Esther emerges from the train and, like everyone else, struggles to adjust to the bright daylight after weeks inside the car. The passengers are ordered to march in the heat to the frontier village of Rubtsovsk; upon arriving, they arrange themselves in family groups and wait.
A man named Popravka introduces himself to the group, assigning some passengers to go with him to a gypsum mine and others to work on a collective farm. He assigns Esther and her parents to the mine and Grandmother to the farm; Grandmother convinces him to send her to the mine as well, “[assuring] him that she had the strength of a dozen young women” (40). Boarding the truck to the mine, Raya is excited to see Mrs. Marshak, a friend from Vilna. Mrs. Marshak’s five-year-old son, Boris, instantly bonds to Samuel.
Esther admires “the flatness of this land” and asks her father about it (41). To Esther’s shock, Samuel tells her that they are on the steppes of Siberia. Esther remembers all that she knows about Siberia and regrets that she “neglected to pray to God to save us from a gypsum mine in Siberia” (42).
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
This section introduces the historical context, key characters, and narrative voice. The historical context is made clear in the second sentence of the book—the Polish city of Vilna in June 1941. Although they are in the midst of World War II and the war has already directly affected Esther’s family, Esther herself has been insulated from the war and has led a comfortable, predictable life. As she describes her upbringing, the repetition used—“my city,” “my world,” “my people” (2-3)—reinforces the predictability of her life as well as her sense of belonging. However, in this section news of the war still trickles down to young Esther; in the cattle car, Samuel learns that the Germans have invaded Russia. The Russian political landscape is another key feature of the historical context. Esther and her family are identified as capitalists, making them enemies of the Communist state.
Key characters are likewise introduced in this section. Esther’s close-knit upper-class Jewish family is described; many of these family members will be left behind, but Esther’s parents and her grandmother will be main characters throughout the book. Esther lovingly describes both her mother and her father, with a particular affection for her father. It is clear that manners, self-control, and pride are important values in Esther’s family, values that will be put to the test during their exile. The description of their life in Vilna is important; it gives readers a contrast to their life in Siberia.
The most important character introduced is Esther herself. Esther’s narrative voice is clearly her adult voice; several times, she steps away from the immediate story to give details from a future perspective. For example, she writes: “Later we learned of reports that more than a million Poles had been deported as ‘class enemies’” (23). Although Esther’s narration is from an adult perspective, she includes the thoughts she had as a child. For example, when Esther and her parents are accused of being capitalists, Esther wonders: “What’s a capitalist?” (12). These thoughts develop her character as a 10-year-old and also undermine the political divisions that have been created between groups of people.
Although the story of The Endless Steppe is a serious and painful one, Esther’s narrative voice is often lighthearted and humorous. For example, when Esther tells her maternal grandmother that soldiers came to their home and Samuel went to see them in his pajamas, Esther recalls: “‘In his pajamas?’ she asked, as if this were the most terrifying fact of all” (9).
This section also immediately sets off the plot. The Endless Steppe begins and ends with Esther’s experience of exile. The very first line of the book reads: “The morning it happened—the end of my lovely world—I did not water the lilac bush outside my father’s study” (1). In the pages to follow, Esther gives a brief summary of her life up until that point but quickly returns to the morning of her exile. By the end of the first chapter, Esther is boarding a cattle car headed for Siberia. The author has structured the book to immediately begin the focal narrative—her story of exile—and this quick pace may particularly capture the attention of her young audience.
