An Exploration Of The Family Moskat From Ethical Literary Criticism

Isaac Bashevis Singer(1904-1991), born in Poland, was a famous Jewish-American writer. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978 and became the second Jewish Nobel Laureate for “his impassioned narrative art which, with roots in a Polish-Jewish cultural tradition, brings universal human conditions to life”. The Family Moskat was the first novel published both in English and its original Yiddish in 1950. The novel sprawls through the years from 1911 to 1939 and presents the real life of the Jewish people. Singer not only explores the ethical predicament faced by Jewish community in the early 1900 s, but highlights the core value of ethic in Jewish society as well. The literary text focuses on Jewish young man, Asa, who turns out to be a failure in the attempt to stick to Spinoza?s reasonable ethical orders instead of his original traditional Jewish ethics. When keeping Spinoza?s ethical thoughts, he breaks ethical orders continually, ending up with his confused belief in God, the broken marriage and tragic fate of death.After its publication in 1950, the work has gained extensive attention of readers and critics from abroad and home, but few people interpret this work from the perspective of Ethical Literary Criticism. Taking the approach of the Ethical Literary Criticism, the thesis analyzes The Family Moskat systematically from the ethical awareness, ethical predicament and ethical environment and interprets the ethical motivation for his trapping into ethical confusion resulting from his selection of reasonable ethical orders. Based on the ethical environment triggering Asa?s ethical selection, the thesis tries to decode a set of ethical complexes and demonstrate Asa?s tragic fate is an epitome of the Jewish people who fail to reconstruct new ethical values in that period.The thesis consists of five chapters.The first one introduces the author, the work and gives an overview of the novel briefly, and then presents the main contents of Ethical Literary Criticism. It will be pointed out that the studying significance lies in the ethical connotations in The Family Moskat from Ethical Literary Criticism.The chapter two focuses on Asa?s ethical consciousness. It presents the Jewish traditional ethical values since his childhood and the idea of reason brought by Hasakalah firstly, and then reveals Asa chooses Spinoza?s ethical thoughts instead of the traditional ethics as the guide of his life under the influence of rationalism and free will.The third part presents Asa?s ethical predicament caused by his new ethical values. Instead of the Scriptural Commandments, ethical orders advocated by Spinoza lead him to keep the relationship with God and the relationship with family. It turns out to be a failure with his confusion with God, the broken marriage and indifference to family to follow the ethical selection. It is the displacement of his ethical identity that makes Asa caught into the ethical confusion and predicament without salvation.The fourth part concentrates on ethical environment and explores the relationship between space and his ethical selection. The ethical context of Asa? ethical selection is constructed by Tereshpol Minor and Warsaw, while study room becomes his shelter from the ethical chaos both in his hometown and modern society.The chapter five is the conclusion. Presenting Asa?s tragic fate in the work, Singer reveals the motivation leading to his selection of ethical awareness and ethical identity. The ethical predicament Asa faced with results from not only the acceptation of rational idea and free will, but also the involving of his living space forcedly into the modern secular society. It is demonstrated that the traditional ethical orders conformed with isolated place could not be applied to urban space and the new ethical orders has not established for the Jewish people with modernity, while Spinoza?s ethical thoughts is an illusion for them by showing Asa?s loss of his identity and embarrassment in Warsaw. By this ethical tragedy, Singer strengthens the power of ethic and warns that one violating any ethical orders and sticking to the old values without any adaption to ethical environment is supposed to be punished and suffered a lot in the process of moral civilization.