A Narrative Of Bondage: A Neo-Psychoanalytic Approach To Call It Sleep

Call It Sleep was once one of the most undeservedly neglected books in American literature. It tells of a young Jewish immigrant, David Schearl, struggling to adapt to the realities of a slum boyhood in New York. It is a profound psychological exploration of David. Most of the existing researches, however, obscure such a holistic image of a worried and struggling Jewish boy under the pressure of a particular cultural environment and thus fail to comprehend its real meaning and significance.Using the theory of neo-psychoanalysis represented by Karen Horney, this study tries to show an unmistakable and despairing structure of neurosis in David. Helplessness, guilt and fear are his habitual ways of life. They constitute, in Horney's term, Basic Anxiety. To find reassurance and security he develops three defense strategies, namely, withdrawal, compliance and aggression, with withdrawal being the leading strategy. These strategies, however, don't free him from Basic Anxiety. On the contrary, they mislead him into the swamp of Basic Conflict. This, in turn, caused in David an evident neurosis, which is interpreted by the author as a symptom of cultural disorder. It starts at home due to the chilling indifference and even threat of the father and the over-protection and recklessness of the mother and roots in a conflicting cultural environment where Jewish taboos of sex, race, and religion are overshadowed by majority cultural norms. Fragile and oversensitive as David is, he can by no means get himself out of the deep trap of cultural disorder and the failure of his coping strategies is gradually materialized as a psychological neurosis, which brings about the end in the "sleep" of the artistic life of David and probably, in the final analysis, Roth's 60-year silence of literary creation. Call It Sleep is essentially a tragedy of Jews, of those who fall prey to hegemonic culture. It is a cultural parable about assimilation and conservation from which every Jew is brought to choose. It is an elegy to those being unfairly treated, being tempted and thus falls. So it is a story of bondage.This dissertation contains five chapters. Chapter One is the introduction part. Chapter Two is devoted to the examination of David's "neurosis" by the agency of the theory adopted, and Chapter Three is employed to demonstrate that culture is to be the true culprit of David's neurosis and David's sleep won't end in his rebirth but in the losing of his vitality and creativity under such a culture. This failure is also projected onto Roth's block. Then comes the conclusion.