The Solidarity In Bernard Malamud's The Assistant

Bernard Malamud (1914-1986) is one of the famous Jewish writers in contemporary America. The Assistant, as one of the"All-Time 100 Best Novels since 1923"in Time magazine, is the cornerstone on which he rests his reputation. His experiences in Brooklyn, his involvement in the lives of Jews and other ethnic groups, and the Great Depression he got through are all reflected in it. Suffering and moral progress are always regarded as the themes of this novel.Since published in 1957, The Assistant has been studied by different critics from varied aspects home and abroad. The main concerns of the study are about the suffering and moral regeneration, the Jewishness, the father-son relationship, the psychoanalysis, cultural studies, etc.. However, looking through most of the criticisms, the author of this thesis finds that there are few critics who study solidarity in it in the light of the idea of solidarity put forward by Richard Rorty. As an American Jewish writer, Malamud shows great concern about the life of Jewish immigrants: their suffering and various difficulties in America. He is bent on using his novel to call for human solidarity to solve the Jewish immigrants'problems. So, this thesis is devoted to analyzing the solidarity in The Assistant by Malamud so as to uncover Malamud's hope for human solidarity.This thesis consists of five chapters in addition to the introduction and the conclusion. The introduction briefly introduces Bernard Malamud's life and his works. It also presents the status quo of studies on The Assistant and the intention of this thesis.Chapter One gives a general introduction to Richard Rorty, the representative of American Neopragmatism, and explains his idea of solidarity, mainly from his book, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. For Rorty, solidarity is created through sharing common fear, moral imagination, extension of"we", and reading literary works. Both the introduction and the first chapter pave the way for the interpretations of the following four chapters. Chapter Two analyzes how the protagonist Frank redefines solidarity in The Assistant. Jews are the representatives of Diaspora, in which they suffered a lot. Like their ancestors, the Jewish characters in the novel also suffer. Through experiencing the Jews'suffering, Frank makes moral advancement from a helper to an assistant to a grocer, during which he expands the definition of"we"to include"others", the Jews. To some degree, he fulfills the task of redefining the solidarity.Based on Chapter Two, Chapter Three centers on the exploration of the solidarity between Frank and"others", including mainly Morris, Helen and Ida, which is also the process of how Frank as an outsider identifies with the Jewish family members after feeling their sufferings.Chapter Four expounds the solidarity among family and community members. Confronted with the"common danger"—the hard life they live in America, family members unite together. Faced with the"common danger"—the disaster or death, the community work in unity and help one another.Chapter Five is devoted to interpreting Malamud's hope of human solidarity."Everyone is a Jew"is employed by him as a metaphor to refer to all human beings. Bernard Malamud as a liberal novelist speaks for the Jews as victims and increases our sensitivity to sufferings to achieve the goal of human solidarity.In the last part, the author of this thesis points out that through The Assistant, Bernard Malamud manifests his hope of human solidarity, which is to a great extent identical with Rorty's idea of human solidarity. As an oppressed group, the Jewish immigrants in this novel suffer a lot. Malamud tries to seek for a paradise devoid of discrimination and suffering, which is the solidarity of all human beings. Only by imaginatively identifying with"others", can we reach human solidarity. By means of solidarity, the problems Jewish immigrants confronted with might be hopefully solved.