The Magic Barrel | Themes
Identity
Malamud’s Leo Finkle is a character trying to figure out who he really is. Having spent the last six years of his life deep in study for ordination as a rabbi, he is an isolated and passionless man, disconnected from human emotion. When Lily Hirschorn asks him how he came to discover his calling as a rabbi, Leo responds with embarrassment: ‘‘I am not a talented religious person. . . . I think . . . that I came to God, not because I loved him, but because I did not.’’ In other words, Leo hopes that by becoming a rabbi he might learn to love himself and the people...
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