Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism | Malamud, Bernard - Edward A. Abramson (essay date 1993)

Edward A. Abramson (essay date 1993)

SOURCE: Abramson, Edward A. “The Assistant.” In Bernard Malamud Revisited, pp. 25-42. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1993.

[In the following essay, Abramson discusses major themes and motifs in The Assistant, particularly asceticism and imprisonment, and the contrast between Judaic ethics and American materialism.]

THE NATURE OF JEWISHNESS

Although it is only Malamud's second novel, The Assistant moves far beyond The Natural in skillfulness and, unlike the earlier novel, contains a strong Jewish theme. Throughout the tale, he uses the image of the Jew and the ethics of Judaism as a standard of behavior. As we have seen, however, his approach to Jewishness is not a parochial one, in that he casts it as a type of secular humanism, a moral code that all good people try to follow. The main characters, Frank Alpine and Morris Bober, carry the weight of the novel. Frank...

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