Jewish Cultural Motifs In Bernard Malamud's The Assistant

Bernard Malamud (1914-1986) is universally acknowledged as one of the most remarkable American Jewish writers in the 20th century. As his second novel, The Assistant had been taken by critics as a classic of modern American literature. This thesis intends to review this masterpiece from the angle of culture by analyzing three main Jewish cultural motifs involved, namely the conflict and love intertwined father-son motif, the eternal suffering motif, and the identity motif that the Jews have never given up. Meanwhile, the study aims to reveal that as a humanist, Malamud's appropriate portrayal of the impoverished situations of American Jewish immigrants also expresses his sympathies and concerns with the star-crossed and harrowing Jewish nation, or to be exact, all similar dispersed groups like the Jews along with his wishes to arouse universal identity recognition and religious tolerance for minorities of such.