The Analysis Of The Suffering Theme In Malamud's Short Stories

Bernard Malamud is widely regarded as one of the most famous contemporary Jewish writer. During his writing career that has spanned as long as five decades, he has created eight novels and fifty-five short fictions. In his short fictions, the vagrant life situations of the American Jews are fully displayed. Without the sense of security and belonging, disorders of self-consciousness and spiritual confusion resulting from the ruin of traditional values, none of these would not show human's powerlessness. It is also the underlying problem of spirituality crisis in modern western society. Loneliness, depression, humiliation and anxiety are the general sentiment in modern society.This paper consists of six parts. The introduction involves the unshakable position Malamud occupies in the American literary history, his writing features and the recent research on his literary works at home and abroad. It also discusses the suffering theme in his short fictions based on the theory of cultural identity. The first part analyzes the formation of the suffering theme from two aspects, religious factor and social factor. In part two, through the analysis of his four short stories, The Jewbird, The Lady of the Lake, The Magic Barrel and The First Seven Years, this paper concludes various suffering forms endured by the characters in the stories. The third part points out the characters' attitude towards sufferings. They represent their whole nation and their national spirits. When facing sufferings, they are willing to sacrifice, to keep moral purity and never to give up. The forth part concerns the enlightenment of suffering. The suffering theme awakes us to the thought of "all men are Jews", which is the universality of suffering. And it also awakes us the thought that rebirth or self-sublimation can be gained by suffering, which is the importance of sufferings. At last, the suffering theme is deepened and summarized in the conclusion.