The Jewbird (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Bernard Malamud
- First Published: 1963
- Type of Plot: Fable
- Time of Work: About 1961
- Setting: New York City
- Principal Characters: Harry Cohen, Edie, Morris (Maurie), Schwartz (The Jewbird)
- Genres: Fable, Short fiction
- Subjects: Values, Family or family life, Tradition, Religion, Jews or Jewish life, Anti-Semitism, Judaism
- Locales: New York, NY
The Story
Harry and Edie Cohen, a lower-middle-class Jewish couple, live with their ten-year-old son, Morris (Maurie), in a small top-floor apartment on the Lower East Side of New York City. Cohen, a frozen-foods sales representative, is angry and frustrated by his relative poverty, by his dying mother in the Bronx, and by the general mediocrity of his family and his life.
When the story opens, the Cohen family is sitting down to dinner on a hot August night, their recent attempt at a vacation cut short because Harry's mother had suddenly become ill, forcing them to...
[The entire page is 1528 words long]
