A Historical Approach To Michael Gold's Jews Without Money

In American literary history, the 1930's is called the"Red Decade."With the Great Depression as the economic backdrop, American people were submerged in the mood of indignation as well as in trends of Radicalism. Never before were writers and literature so closely related to politics. During this period, American socialist movement reached its peak for the comprehensive reason of domestic economy, politics, population and international environments. Proletarian class entered the spot light of the literary fields and made their own voice heard.However, McCarthism, the extension of Cold War mentality and the difference in ideology engrave prejudice on the western scholars for a long period of time, and they constantly denounce the left-wing literary works as"political propaganda."Michael Gold's Jews Without Money is one of the representative works of left-wing literature, a semi-autobiography created with Gold's own life experience. The novel's style was then imitated and followed by other left writers, thus creating one special literary style. Social situations in the 1930's recalled the writers to care about groups rather than individuals, to find root cause of all the social problems and to recommend feasible solutions. In Jews Without Money, Gold uses special narrative style, line depiction and broad views to extend a panorama of lower class people in Lower East Area of New York and reveals the root cause for social problems– capitalism's exploitation; he uses comparison to make a striking contrast between the apathiness of the rich and the mutual help among the poor; animal images are applied to symbolize the hardship of the people at the social bottom; through characters, Gold advocates revolution. Though Gold is a radicalist, he still criticizes several problems within the proletarian group, such as lack of class awareness, unrealistic dreams of becoming rich over night and inner disparities caused by religious and ethnical elements. The historical realism in this novel can better promote left-wing culture and ideology.Placed within the frame work of the historical backgrounds and added by a relatively comprehensive analysis of economy, politics, population, races, religions and the international environment of that time as well as the biographical facts of the writer, this thesis attempts to interpret this canonical work for American left-wing literature. This thesis refutes two typical misjudgments towards this work: western critics denounce this novel as"political propaganda"for it is closely associated to the historical period of radicalism; radicalists at that time excluded this work from left-wing literature for not being radical enough. By means of analyzing this work, more historical details and truth of the society will be revealed and fairer and more balanced evaluation would be given to this representative work of the left-wing literature.