Deviance And Epiphany

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-1991) is recognized as one of the greatest in a long tradition of Yiddish writers as well as one of America's most distinguished writers of the twentieth century.From an Orthodox background, with rabbis on both sides of the family, Singer received a thorough education of religion. Meanwhile, his extensive reading got him much familiar with European authors and philosophers. But it was the philosophy of Spinoza that shook his Jewish orthodoxy. Singer came to form his religious ideas, which run through his short-story writing.Originating in the seventeenth century Poland and residing in the late twentieth century America, Singer's short stories play variations on the overriding theme of man's relationship with God. Most of his characters experience a spiritual voyage of deviance and epiphany, which leads them back to grace. Through his works, Singer endeavored to probe into the spiritual crisis of the modern man and owed the disappointment of the modern man to the lack of religion. His works have been widely read and discussed in both Yiddish and American literatures.Guided by the social-historical approach and based on text analyses, this thesis is a thematic study of Singer's major short stories, with the focus on his religious ideas in these stories. The thesis consists of three chapters besides Introduction and Conclusion.The Introduction is a survey of Singer's major works and relevant literary reviews.Chapter One deals with Singer's religious ideas in his major short stories. In his persist deployment of the concepts of free will and God, Singer tends to shape man's relationship with God in three kinds. Very few choose to lead a life of simple piety in accordance with God's law and merit a seat in paradise. Most characters, the skeptic, complete a spiritual journey of discovery which brings forth a renewed faith in God and come to terms with their salvation. And one more group, in defiance of God's law,deserve the most severe punishments. By choice, Singer's Jew learns the limits of human freedom and God's justice.Chapter Two covers Singer's hybrid heritages from his time and his family, based on which his religious ideas formed. Singer leans heavily on the marriage of his parents and the legacy of a polish-Jewish past. Born into a traditional household dominated by the ecstatic piety of his father, the Hasidic rabbi, yet tempered by the no less pious rationalism of his mother, Singer was deeply influenced by traditional Judaism. His older brother, a more decisive influence, led him to secular life. But his great effort to reconcile "the holy and the secular" resulted in his concepts of free will and God.Chapter Three discusses the significance of Singer's religious ideas. More concerned with individual fate. Singer displays a full picture of a unique people and its unique historical experience. The history of Polish Yiddish-speaking Jews from the pogrom unleashed by Chmielnicki in 1648 to the onslaught of Hitler's Nazis in 1939 was written in the blood of innocents. They found themselves caught between various movements and comfortable in neither. Meanwhile, a paradoxical fear arose: that the destruction of Jewry so nearly accomplished by Nazi persecution would be completed by American tolerance-assimilation. There was a suspicion that Jewish belief could not be sustained in the New World. As an author functioning within and drawing inspiration from the long-vanished history of his own Eastern European Jewry. Singer gives a vivid presentation of the dilemma of Jewish existence and further provides the possible solution.The Conclusion summarizes Singer's achievement as both a Yiddish and American-Jewish writer. In his full exploitation and creative reworking of traditional values. Singer conveys to the reader his prophecy for a hopeful world.