A Study Of Bernard Malamud’s The Assistant From The Perspective Of Mikhail Bakhtin’s Dialogism

Bernard Malamud is a prestigious contemporary Jewish-American novelist who has published eight novels and three collections of short stories.He is awarded two National Book Awards and one Pulitzer Prize.The Assistant is usually regarded as his most representative masterpiece.This novel tells the story of a dodgy bum who assists in a grocery store,is influenced by the kind Jewish grocer,and eventually gains a new life as an honest man.The novel was published in 1957 and has attracted worldwide critics’ attention since then.However,most of the former studies focus on the Jewishness,suffering and growth theme,and mythic archetypes embodied in the novel.Few studies have tried to interpret it in terms of Bakhtin’s dialogism.In his fiction,Malamud calls for the freedom and equality of all human beings,which coincides with Bakhtin’s philosophy.Therefore,based on the existing researches,this thesis intends to explore the dialogicality of the novel in the light of Bakhtin’s dialogue theory.The Assistant is studied mainly from three perspectives: the spirit of dialogue and carnival,micro-dialogue and macro-dialogue.The introduction provides a brief account of Bernard Malamud and The Assistant,the literature review and the theoretical framework.The main body of the thesis consists of three chapters.Chapter One focuses on the general characteristics of The Assistant in light of Bakhtin’s philosophy of dialogue and carnivalization.Malamud gives the novel the free and fair spirit of dialogue and the carnival atmosphere,thus creating a world in which many subjects can participate in the dialogue equally.The spirit of dialogue is present in the civilian’s life portrayed in the novel,so that different subjects,such as Jews and non-Jews,Poles and Italians,can coexist and interact in a complementary manner.Chapter Two explores the micro-dialogue of the novel.Firstly,through analyzing the dialogic language between characters,the underlying meaning of the text and the diversity of Malamud’s fictional language are revealed.Secondly,by investigating the interior dialogue of the characters in detail,this chapter discusses how Malamud displays their ideological contradictions and complex psychological states.Chapter Three dwells on the macrodialogue of the novel.In Bakhtin’s dialogue theory,dialogue refers not just to real-life conversations but also to a kind of dialogical relationship,i.e.,the event of interaction between fully valid consciousnesses.Malamud’s method of deconstructing the monologic context while reflecting the dialogic nature of human thought is to build dialogical relationships between various characters and the dialogue between the text and the other.Malamud has his insights about Jews and even humanity as a whole.Through his unique writing skill,he endows the novel with a dialogic nature.The meaning of this well-structured novel is profound,and the novel is diversified in the narrative.And he vividly illustrates the characters’ rich inner worlds and living conditions.He also constructs the novel into a relatively open textual space,provoking the interruption and dialogue of various thoughts and consciousnesses.If the novel is approached from Bakhtin’s dialogue theory,which reveals its dialogue characteristics,we can better touch Malamud’s vision.He hopes that the universality of mankind and ethnic equality can exist.In brief,Malamud uses dialogue to effectively help humans in modern society understand the universe and overcome spiritual estrangement.