An Analysis Of David’s Identity Transformation In Call It Sleep From The Perspective Of Initiation Story

Henry Roth(1906-1955), is a Jewish-American writer. Of all the works Roth accomplished in his life, Call It Sleep, published in 1934, at the bottom of the Great Depression, is acclaimed as a quintessential representative of Jewish-American literature, but later dramatically falls into a long time silence of 30 years. However, the work is not properly welcomed until its reissue in 1964, which wins Roth an immortal reputation. As a typical initiation story, Call It Sleep subtly interweaves Jewish immigrants and American society with the overwhelming defiant between the very young David and the world surrounding him. This work principally exposes the theme of a Jewish immigrant child, David’s initiation in America and his suffering and struggling in the course of his identity transformation exploration.The current thesis attempts to examine the theme of the protagonist’s identity transformation in this novel from the perspective of initiation story. Adopting the perspective of Initiation Story, the author of this thesis chiefly analyzes the initiation protagonist’s identity transformation in his initiation progress. More importantly, this thesis centers its discussion on the crucial influences on David’s identity transformation, the stiff exploration of David’s identity transformation and the realization of David’s identity transformation as the consequence of his initiation.In the Preface, the author briefly introduces Henry Roth and the plot of Call It Sleep, reviews the relevant studies on this novel from both domestic and foreign countries and concisely presents the main idea and the innovative point of this thesis.Chapter One presents the theoretical basis of this essay which briefly introduces the origin, the development and three main elements of initiation story, including initiation characters, initiation theme, initiation pattern.Chapter Two interprets the crucial influences on David’s identity transformation. This part intends to lay much emphasis on the study of the major causes for the protagonist’s initiation, which contains negative initiation mentor’s influences, natural initiation mentor’s influences and positive initiation mentor’s influences. In the process of protagonist’s initiation, the initiation mentors play an indispensible role in blocking protagonist’s struggle for development or stimulating the formation of the protagonist’s initiation consciousness and even accelerating the protagonist’s development.Chapter Three is the central part in which the author intensively handles David’s initiation experience and his initiation pattern. Based on the four stages of initiation pattern—innocent, perplex, vagrant and awaking, the author respectively explains David’s innocent Jewish identity, perplexed Jewish-American identity, vagrant Jewish-American identity and awaken American identity to probe into David’s exploration for his identity transformation.Chapter Four uncovers more about the realization of the protagonist’s identity transformation after a train of hardship. Confronted with the crisis of family, society, religion and death, as for an insignificant child, “sleep” is his terminal refuge. Additionally, as the consequence of David’s initiation, his revival to awake with the American identity instead of living as a Jew becomes his ultimate life choice. In despite of his prime choice whether it is right or wrong, David’s decisive struggle to transform can be considered as a major breakthrough of his initiation.At last, it draws a conclusion that this American-Jewish initiation story suggests, to a large degree, the theme of the choice of cultural identity. Corresponded with the perspective of initiation story, the writer analyzes the protagonist’s identity transformation more specifically, logically and systematically. Undergoing the influence of the multicultural situation, it seems that David’s identity transformation manifests his initiation consequence. Nevertheless, on one hand entirely denying his indigenous culture while blindly integrating into the host’s culture implies exhaust and helplessness of Jewish immigrants at that time, on the other hand it still interprets Roth’s standpoint on how to choose the cultural identity properly conveyed on this novel. This essay aims at exploring the theme of the protagonist’s identity transformation to throw lights on comprehending the cultural connotation reflected on the initiation story.