From The Magician Of Lublin To Study The Singer’s Writing Themes

Isaac Bashevis Singer, one of the most famous American Jewish novelists, won the Nobel prize in Literature in1978for " his impassioned narrative art, which roots in Polish-Jewish cultural tradition, brings universal human conditions to life ". The Magician of Lublin is regarded one of Singer’s best novel in western world. When analyzing the works with the troditional theories, the scholars usually focus on the text itself. Few scholars have related Singer’s writing themes in The Magician of Lublin. So based on the former scholars’researches, the author of this thesis tries to study Singer’s writing themes in The Magician of Lublin.The first Singer’s writing characteristic in The Magician of Lublin is stray from and return to the Jewish Troditional Identity. The Jewry is a special nation which wandering around all over the world because the Jewish people lost their own homeland and country thousands years ago in the history. During the exile life, the Jewish people are consisered as alien and minority people in foreign countries. Sometimes, they are affected strongly by foreign cultures. With alienation, isolation, discrimination, persecution, that Jews have been suffering on one hand and the iseological emancipation on the other hand, more and more Jews deviate from their own Jewish isentity in order to survive the dangers or to be accepted by foreign countries. Different from the other nations of the world, the Jews have their own special isentity and Hebrew Bible recorded it in the Jew’s history. Jews consiser the Hebrew Bible and the Ten Commandments as their model standards of behaviors. They observe God’s words, stick to and abise by the Commandments. They follow what the Hebrew Bible tells them and abise by them, thus resulting in the Jews’return to the Jewish troditional isentity.The second Singer’s writing characteristic in The Magician of Lublin is assimilation. In America, the Jews are facing the danger of losing their cultural heritage and assimilating into the host culture. To them, America is "a promised land" for it is not only a shelter where the Jews can live freely and safely, but also an enchanting place, full of opportunity. The influence of Jewish culture on its people has declined and more and more Jewish people try to isentify with American life style, but Singer is strongly against Jewish assimilation, he insist on his isentity as a Jew by writing "as a Jew, to Jews, for Jews" and the original language of Singer’s work is Yisdish, not English. For some of the Jewry, the loss of Yisdish leads to the loss of Jewish isentity and finally to the loss of beliefs in Jewish culture. Hence, Singer’s sticking to Yisdish in his composition can be regarded as an anti-assimilation strategy.The third Singer’s writing characteristic in The Magician of Lublin is existentialism. Singer affected strongly by existentialism. Existentialist claims if people want to exist, they would transcend something. Yasha who returns to the Jewish isentity and religious finally transcends his discredit for God. Singer was deeply influenced by Existentialism. Returning to belonged isentity is really a way out of loneliness. Yasha has to give himself to overcome the unbearable pressure on him. Yasha’s return to faith reveals that modern people have a long way to go before arriving at their paradise. People are not spiritually powerful enough and are still in need of religious faith. It is crucial in exersing one’s freedom. The existentialists insist that indivisuals must be fully responsibility for their behavior, no matter how difficult. If there is no God in heart, human being have to face their responsibilities alone. They have no basis on which to decise, yet they must decise. This will make people anguish and despair. Singer thinks that religious faith is greatly related to existence that his despair of life reflects the existence of man as indivisual. An existentialists thinks that man can not get ris of agony, struggle, crime and religion in his life without faith. God is the only one who helps peopel to feel existence truely.Through learning from this work, we can say this great Jewish writer, who insisted on writing in Yisdish showed us an integral progress to understand the Jew. Analysis on these themes and Singer’s thought provises us a new way to understand Yasha’ thought and Singer’s writng theme better.