The Pawnbroker (Masterplots II: American Fiction Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Edward Lewis Wallant
- First Published: 1961
- Type of Plot: Psychological realism
- Time of Work: The 1950’s
- Setting: New York City and surroundings
- Principal Characters: Sol Nazerman, Jesus Ortiz, Marilyn Birchfield, Bertha, Tessie Rubin, Mendel, Goberman, Murillio
- Genres: Long fiction, Psychological fiction
- Subjects: Guilt, Emotions, Human behavior, Survivalism, Holocaust, Jewish, Pawnbroking or pawnbrokers
The Novel
The Pawnbroker is a stunning work that details the psychic journey of a tortured Holocaust survivor. A third-person omniscient narrator introduces and describes characters and circumstances that reinforce the main character’s rage as well as those who help release him from it.
The novel’s protagonist, forty-five-year-old Sol Nazerman, was a professor at the University of Cracow in Poland. Arrested by the Nazis for being Jewish, he was physically and emotionally tortured in an extermination camp where his wife and children died. At the beginning of...
[The entire page is 2252 words long]
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