American Jews' Exile And Root-Seeking In The Tenants

Bernard Malamud(1914-1986),a famous American Jewish writer after the Second World War,is acclaimed as the writer with strong Jewishness since most of his works are based on the Jew that reflects their existential predicament.The Tenants is one of them.It shows that men are trapped in exile caused by hybrid ethnic identity and cultures,hence they have to struggle in root-seeking.From the perspective of the theory of exile and root-seeking in post-colonialism,the paper attempts to analyze Lesser and Irene's identity dilemma.It firstly expounds American Jews' awakening of their identity crisis.On the one hand,being a white,Lesser treats the black,Willie and Mary as the others.Although both Willie and he are writers,he behaves as a master.As for the black female,Mary,he regards her as sexual objectification.On the other hand,he becomes the other under the condition of being alienated by WASP in modern America where the antisemitism has never ceased.Besides,the circumcision,a symbol of Jewish identity,is discriminated by WASP.The hybridity of the self and the other confuses him.Hence Lesser is lost.Next,Lesser is aware of the fact that his ethnic group is exiled no matter in history or in modern America.As a Jewish writer,he is one of them,which is embodied in his disjunction between art and life with his self divided.Showing no concerns to life or others,he traps himself in writing since he considers that home is where his book is.Gradually,he feels depressed and empty,struggling to balance art and life,consequently exiles.As for Jewish female,Irene suffers from marginalization.No matter to Willie or to Lesser,she is a tool to enhance their ego or to compete with each other with no voice in male-dominated society into which she cannot integrate.Therefore,she is in rootlessness in modem America.At last,being in exile,Lesser and Irene struggle to reconstruct their identities to be rooted in modern America.Lesser strives to complete himself through finishing his book,but the date of which has been uncertain;Irene is anxious to build a family with a man to integrate into mainstream society,but besides,living in the hybrid culture,they desire to establish cultural reconciliation with love,tolerance and mercy.Through analyzing Lesse and Irene's identity in The Tenants,the paper attempts to express the Jew's exile and root-seeking in modern Armerica,which reflects the dilemma and contradiction of modern people under the conflicts of multi-ethnic culture,and thus shows Malamud's humanitarianism.