She is full of the “Divine light”, and thought her experiences in her life try to break her; her incredible love seems to flow out endlessly. “Sometimes Hoda had so many feelings all going in her at the same time that she felt as though she would burst, and all those feelings that were churning around that way inside of her would come splattering out in all directions” (113) She falls into prostitution almost without knowing it. Prostitution could be seen as a breaking of the spirit, but she does it to stay alive and to keep her family together; a family unit ‘broken’ by the death of her mother.
Hoda is the divine dichotomy. A princess and a whore, she is everything and nothing. Because of Hoda’s incomplete education, her idea of how babies are made is a little off, but only lends itself to the ‘broken vessel’ theme. She rationalizes that men have to squirt in enough of their own ‘pieces’ to create a whole baby, and by not sleeping with the same ones all the time she will not have a baby. Her fat hides her condition from even herself, and one night her vessel is ‘broken’ almost entirely. The baby is described as a lump, as she believes it is the pieces of all the men she has slept with.
She leaves it at the orphanage with a cryptic note. “TAKE GOOD CARE. A PRINCE IN DISGUISE CAN MAKE A PIECE OF A PRINCE, TO SAVE THE JEWS. HE’S PAID FOR” (219) ‘piece of a prince’ could be construed as ‘prince of peace’, who would indeed be a savior of the Jews. The child’s name given at the orphanage is David Ben Zion, King David. His unknown origins could be a form of Immaculate Conception. He too, like his mother and grandparents is a bit flawed, Hoda tied the umbilical cord in a funny way which gives him such a strange belly button he is nicknamed Pipick.
Hoda does not see Pipick again until one day, many years later; he comes to her as a customer. Once she realizes who he is, she makes another decision which threatens to break her vessel. She must sleep with her son to save him. If she does not, she could reveal his origins and disgrace him. Hoda commits the greatest taboo in order to save her son. Hoda is finally saves in the end when she marries Lazar, alluding to the Lazarus of the bible who rises from the dead. By this time in her life, Hoda has an incredible need for love, and it is matched by this man who has crawled from the grave of his village to live again.
The novel ends with man and woman untied, both flawed vessels themselves like Danile and Rahel. Crackpot is a novel of opposites, life and death, broken vessels being both full and spilling empty. In the final words of the novel, the prostitute Hoda finally sleeps with someone who isn’t a john. She has a dream that is incredibly disjointed and obscure in its direct meaning, but that is the nature of the “muddy waters in the brimming pot” (427). The novel ends with a vessel reference, not broken, but brimming with life.
