Loss, Frustration And Return-Transmutation Of Jewishness In The Fixer From The Perspective Of Diaspora Criticism

The Fixer is one of Bernard Malamud‘s prominent works and wins for the author both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for literature. It mainly depicts how Yakov Bob, a Jew, deals with the plight he encounters in his cronus.This thesis is intended to interpret the novel from the diasporic criticism based on the protagonist Yakov‘s experiences by analyzing its text in detail. As one of diasporas, Yakov experiences the paradoxical feeling when he attempts to make a choice between two different cultures. Yakov expects to integrate into the dominant society by abandoning his cultural roots, only to find that he becomes a marginalized person, experiencing loss, frustration and embarrassment. Yakov realizes the importance of seeking cultural roots after a series of suffering. As a Jew in diaspora, Yakov has his cultural identity changed from a total root-loser to a root-seeker after experiencing the miserable limbo state.By analyzing Yakov‘s experiences in Russia, the thesis argues that people in diaspora are easily trapped into cultural dilemma and their lives always involve a sense of rootlessness and alienation. There is no standard answer to the question which culture is better, but it can be confirmed that total abandonment of one‘s own cultural roots is infeasible for diasporas. As classical diasporas, Jews‘ predicament can be extended to the whole diaspora subjects. The novel portraits Jews‘ efforts to seek their roots, which entails the writer‘s imaginary solution to deal with identity predicament of diaspora subjects.