A Study On The Archetypes Of The Book Of Job In The Fixer

Malamud Bernard is one of the famous Jewish American novelists in the American literary world. The characteristics of his works are the unique style, the plain contents, and the Jewish features. The Fixer is one of his master works, which won the American Pulitzer Prize for fiction and American National Book Award. The novel describes that in the era of the anti-Semitic Czarist Russia a poor Jewish youth was wronged for unknown reason and was persecuted, but during his suffering his thoughts achieved sublimation.As a famous American Jewish writer, Malamud is deeply influenced by Holy Bible. The reflection of this influence in The Fixer is the author’s application of the archetypes of The Book of Job. Therefore, this thesis tries to use the famous literary critic Northrop Frye’s archetypal criticism theory to analyze the archetypes in The Fixer.Except the introduction and conclusion, this thesis consists of three chapters. The first chapter analyzes the archetypal characters. The author holds that the archetype of the hero Yakov is correspondent to the suffering Job in The Book of Job, the archetypes of his father-in-law Shmuel, the guard Kogin and the lawyer Ostrovsky are Job’s friends, the archetype of Grubeshov and the Deputy Warden is originated from the devil Satan, as well as the archetype of the Investigating Magistrate Bibikov is Elihu. The second chapter is the analysis of archetypal plots. This chapter points out that the suffering scenario of Yakov is based on the physical and spiritual suffering of Job. The plot that Yakov was helped and accused when he was in deep distress is similar to the description of Job’s being misunderstood by his friends. Besides, Yakov has the same attitude towards faith as Job who has strong belief in God. In the third chapter, the author tries to explore three archetypal themes of The Fixer. First, the theme of suffering reflected in the novel is similar to the theme of “suffering for others” and “suffering of righteous” in The Book of Job. Second, there are typical expression of the theme of death in The Fixer and The Book of Job. The last, the both works have a strong consistency in the theme of revolt.In conclusion, it is pointed out that Malamud’s application of the archetypes of the Book of Job in his novels indicates not only his inheritance of Jewish culture but also the true record of the miserable living conditions of the Jewish people and their tenacious national spirits.