Perseverance In The Jewish Tradition: A Study Of Cynthia Ozick's Novels

Cynthia Ozick is a Jewish-American novelist, a short-story writer, an essayist, as well as a literary critic. This thesis has made a detailed analysis of Ozick's four novels, which include The Cannibal Galaxy, The Messiah of Stockholm, Heir to the Glimmering World, and The Puttermesser Papers, to seek for her intention of literary creation. From these works we can find out that Ozick attempts to express her emphasis on Judaism, Jewish cultural awareness, and Jewish historical consciousness based on the Holocaust. In this thesis we discuss those problems concerning idolatry, Jewish identity, and belief in redemption and Paradise presented by Ozick in her novels. She aims to instruct diaspora Jews how to keep Jewish and avoid being assimilated in modern society. She either criticizes those who violate the Jewish law, or appraises those who insist on cherishing Jewish culture and those who never lose historical consciousness. All these sufficiently prove that Ozick is didactic and never quits highlighting Jewish morality, thus the Jewish identity. For her, Jewishness is equal to the Jewish tradition. Jewishness is something formed in Jewish history, a history of four thousand years. Nothing new can be said to be Jewish. In these four novels Judaism, Jewish cultural awareness and historical consciousness individually or jointly determine those protagonists' Jewish identity. Though not exclusive, they are undoubtedly decisive elements of the Jewish tradition. It is obvious that Ozick intends to deliver such an idea that Jewishness is deeply rooted in the Jewish tradition. Ozick again and again attacks acculturation and assimilation, which shows that she is a novelist of the Jewish tradition.