Seeking Identity In Diaspora

American Jewish Literature has been showing the strong vitality from the beginning of its uprising. Especially after World War II, it has achieved the most remarkable establishment and gained the deserved reputation. In China, researchers have published several books on American Jewish literature. But in my opinion, there are still shortcomings in researchers'books: though some books are entitled with the"literature", the authors only talk a lot about Jewish history and culture, without careful& detailed reading of the works, in other words, they only comment on the Jewish literature in the external space of literature; Others emphasize some specific writers, and the research tends to be so shallow, for the researchers usually write a lot about the writers' family origins, making the research not the comments on the works, but the biographies of the writers', let alone the comparison between the Jewish writers. Based on the evaluation of the current condition, I select three well-known Jewish writers: Isaac Bashevis, Bernard Malamud, and Philip Roth to be the targeting writers. The research is placed in the Diaspora, the theoretical background, and applies the theory of cultural identity in the post-colonial era to find the sameness and the difference between the three writers'creative writings. As far as the cultural identity is concerned, People often ask such questions as:"Who am I?""Where do I come from?"and"Where will I go?"The cultural identities of minority groups in the U.S. are relatively more complicated. Take the three writers as examples, they could not answer the above questions simply, for they have to make the choices when being asked:"Are you a Jew or an American?""Are you a Jewish writer or an American writer?"etc. Because the Jewish Writers are influenced not only by the Jewish culture but also the American mainstream culture, the conflicts between the cultures urge them to convey the conflicts in their works. With the impact of cultural conflicts, Singer, Malamud and Roth examine the Jewish history, reflect the current society, and put the ideas into their works.It's under such kind of dual cultural conflicts that Singer, Malamud, Roth and other Jewish writers examine the history, view the current surroundings and turn the impacts on the soul into words---describing the ego, writing about identity. And on the subject of cultural identity, their way of artistic expression contains the unique experience of long-time Jewish Diaspora and migration, which is totally different from other nations'. Therefore, the American Jewish writers'awareness of the Diaspora, planted in them from their childhood, and the external environment - the United States'mainstream culture converge into a composition of forces, which become the great driving force for their writing. In the dissertation, I apply the post-colonial theory of identity to the further research of writers'creativity by reading the text in detail, on the basis of examining the history of the Jewish Diaspora and its deriving of the unique cultural, historical and ethnic thoughts. The three writers seek identity by writing, but they show diverse attitudes toward the same question, because of their different Diaspora experience and various social position. The sameness and the difference exist at the same time, which precisely highlight the positive, dynamic creative tendencies of Jewish literature.This dissertation consists of four chapters: Chapter 1,"The Introduction"briefly reviews the history of the Jewish Diaspora, including the history of Jewish Diaspora to the United States as well as the significant achievements of the American Jewish literature during the post-war period. I suggest that the post-war American Jewish writers, especially the above three writers, show obvious sense of identity in their writings. The research on the relevant topics will help upgrade the holistic understanding of the postwar American Jewish literature and be extended to the research on identity of other ethnic literature in the United States.Singer and his novel-creation are the main subjects of the second chapter. As Singer himself had a strong sense of national fate and created Jewish atmosphere everywhere in his texts, the study tries to find and discuss a representative theme from his works, on the basis of "extensive yet in-depth" reading his works with the purpose of viewing his literature creation from multi-angles with all aspects. I find that Singer's concept of cultural identity was embodied in the form of common historical experience, common culture codes and a relative stable common psychological model, which are shared by the members of the same ethnic group. Singer's writing career could be summarized as follows: write as a Jew, write on Jews and write for Jews. Singer's persisting on writing in Yiddish, the Jewish language in the United States where English is of absolute superiority, showed his entrenchment and love of the Jewish culture; Singer showed deep concern about the family chores and explored the poor conditions of humble Jews; Singer explored Jewish intellectuals'crisis of survival in the troubled times; Worrying about the American Jewish's indifference toward the Holocaust, Singer even"let"his characters return to Jerusalem to complete the identity conversion from Jewish to Israelis. It is beyond dispute that when faced with the dual cultural choice between Jewish culture and the American culture, Singer would not hesitate to choose the former.Chapter III focuses on Malamud and his works. Though he was regarded as "the Jewish writer with strongest Jewish sense", Malamud himself didn't "appreciate" the title. He stated that he is " a Jew as well as an American." Malamud's definition of Jewish identity precisely reflected the characteristics of mixed identities in the ethnic diaspora, that is, under the framework of the dual consciousness, the principal of the identity plants the sense of American identity within himself, identifies his Jewish identity and captures the history of Jewish culture. Singer held a "shut-in" attitude to the Jewish identity and "born to be a Jew, work to keep Jewish" was his standard to the Jewish identification. Compared with Singer, Malamud's confirmation to the principal identity, especially to the Jewish identity is relatively broad. Malamud stressed that the identity choice of the principal can be changeable, productive and mobile in the state of the ethnic diaspora.The above feature was particularly showed in Malamud's works: non-Jews could become real Jews by reflecting on themselves and grasp the Jewish essence. In his "The Assistant", Malamud provided us an effective example: Frank, a non-Jew, experiencing the changing process of the relationship between him and Moris, a Jew, at last accepted Moris's thoughts and got reborn as a Jew. Generally speaking, the Jews in Singer's works were always depressed with a detached attitude. In Singer's words, these characters in the Diaspora were"the plants in greenhouses nourished by classical Jewish books to survive."Malamud's vision was relatively wide, he not only chose the conversion of non-Jewish identity as his topic, but also transcended national boundaries, upstreamed to the history, concerned about the current issues, most important of all, Malamud reflected the real situation of the Diaspora Jews outside the United States, and enlightened the Jews how to choose their cultural identity freely in the face of adversity, etc. The ideas were illustrated in"The fixer".Roth and his working carreer is the focus of Chapter four. As the only one who is still alive among the three writers, Roth deserves the honor of the leading Jewish writer for his excellent works coming out ceaselessly and frequently despite of his 75-year-old age.In 1959, Roth became well-known overnight for his "Goodbye, Columbus" and so far, he has published 29 novels. Although the themes of Roth's novels are rich and the subjects are diverse, the thinking of the identity still occupies an important place in his writing career. But Roth is different from Singer and Malamud on this issue. Benefiting from the life in the United States, Roth regards himself as a real American and thinks that the Jews are members of the country. Singer's consciousness of Diaspora was manifested through his endless recalling of the homeland in Eastern Europe; Malamud's was manifested with the attention to the conditions of the same tribal group in other places. For Roth, the situation is totally different——The homeland that Roth has been yearning for is neither the remote Eastern Europe, nor the bitterly cold Russia, his characters have been in the process of searching for the spiritual homeland in wandering. In"Goodbye, Columbus", Roth set Newark--- Jewish community in U.S. as the homeland; In American Pastoral, the hero made America as his home, later found his dream broken there.In my opinion, "Everyman" (2006) can be counted as the final work of Roth on the issue of identity seeking. As we all know, Malamud advocated,"Everybody is a Jew", while Roth seemed to be reminding us"The Jew is also a human being": The Jew is also lascivious and mortally be afraid of death. That is, anybody, regardless of his cultural status, will be on the same way: Searching for the ideal ego. Evaluating Roth's working career, I draw the conclusion that his writing about cultural identity tends to be metaphysical. For Roth, the Diaspora history that Jews had been enslaved, oppressed and humiliated has become blur day after day and the Eastern Europe, heavily loaded with historical wounds, full of cultural marks only belonged to Singer, etc. How about Roth? In"Goodbye, Columbus", the homeland was once in Newark, U.S. In"American Pastoral", the pastoral turned into an elegy: it is a daydream to abandon one's cultural identity to be American. What Roth demonstrated in "Everyman" to the readers is a Jew, but this Jew is also one common person who has no difference from any other ordinary people. Therefore, under this condition, the cultural recognition has changed into the basic identity confirming, during which the influence of the ethnic culture is really miniscule. As the principal establishes his identity in the social relationships with others, therefore, the identity confirming has been sublimated into the searching for the ideal ego in the sociological sense. The last part is the Conclusion. After the systematic researches on the three writers, I get to conclude: the trends of dual cultural identification continuously influence the writers'creating. Diaspora experience of years and the writers'cultural position under the dual cultural, or even multiple cultural surroundings has impact on the writers'literary imagination. Through the deep research and exploration on the common problems of these three writers, we can see that: Jewish writers, as well as Jewish literature has been trying to survive, develop and get identification in a dynamic way. And it is just the dynamic thinking, dynamic writing that make Jewish literature maintain the vitality and occupy an important position in American's literature. American Jewish literature shows the characteristics of ethnic literature with the background of multi-cultures. The research on Jewish writers'"Identity Writing" can provide effective examples of deeply exploring other ethnic writers of the United States and enhance the overall understanding of American literature under the multi-cultural background.