[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 is shown to be imbibing “Jewish” values from Morris and with Morris's death, Frank replaces him both in the store and in terms of having become an ethical man. At the end of the novel, Frank has himself circumcised and becomes a Jew, although in the metaphorical manner in which Malamud uses the term, Frank had already become one.

Morris's definition of Judaism is extremely broad. He tells Frank, “What I worry is to follow the Jewish Law. … This means to do what is right, to be honest, to be good. This means to other people. Our life is hard enough. Why should we hurt somebody else?”¹ Frank's rejoinder is telling: “I think other religions have those ideas too …” (TA [The Assistant], 115).

The point is that although Morris may define Jewish law as the Torah, the basic principles that he chooses to live by are universal. Most of the laws of the Torah are universal, but there are many which Morris chooses to ignore that are directed particularly to the children of Israel. By thus removing any stress on the particular in order to highlight the universal, Morris eliminates the specialness of the Jewish people in world history and dilutes their specific contribution to human ethics.

Universality is stressed again at Morris's funeral, where the rabbi's eulogy proclaims Morris's altruism and downplays the importance of Jewish tradition and adherence to specific Jewish laws, such as synagogue attendance and keeping the dietary requirements. The rabbi must include something about Morris's dilatory adherence to the formal aspects of Judaism, but this lack of specific Jewish practices is really not worth considering. Those aspects of Morris's life that apply to all people are presented as being most important.

Allen Guttmann observes that this definition “turns out to be remarkably like Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative: to want for others what you want for yourself. … What Malamud has done is widen the definition of ‘Jew’ to the point of meaninglessness.”² Morris is saintly in a human rather than a strictly Jewish sense: “Morris's Jewish Law is synonymous with Malamud's secular moral code. … Becoming a Jew always refers to a secular, personal, inner struggle. …”³ It is this inner struggle of which Morris teaches Frank the value, Morris himself not seeming to be able to live in any other way.

Morris's Jewishness is starkly contrasted with the values of modern America. Indeed, those values are seen as diametrically opposed to the Jewish-humanistic-traditional values for which Morris stands. Honesty and integrity do not lead to success in America, where the possession of money confers a status beyond material wealth. Thus Julius Karp, Morris's successful liquor store-owning neighbor (one of Saul Bellow's “reality instructors”) feels no compunction in lecturing Morris about worldly things.

Morris says that when Karp's luck changed and prosperity came his way, “he became wise without brains” (TA, 19). Interestingly, though, despite Karp's seeing Morris as inept and unfortunate, there is something about Morris that Karp admires: “For some reason that was not clear to him Karp liked Morris to like him …” (TA, 138). Karp recognizes the moral force behind the failure; Morris is quite possibly the only truly moral man he knows. In his down-at-heel neighborhood, Morris is probably the only man who gives credit to the poor around him, even though many take advantage of his kindness.

Karp breaks his promise and rents a store across the street not to a tailor or shoemaker, but to another grocer. To justify himself he asks Morris, “Who will pay my taxes?” (TA, 15). While Karp is a bit ashamed, it has not stood in the way of business. Even Morris's former partner, Charlie Sobeloff, who cheated Morris out of his share of their business, can tell him he is a dollar short after Morris's first day working for him: the dishonest accusing the honest. Ruth Mandel remarks that “a moral man is an ironic hero simply because he does live by the Law” (Mandel, 262).

The “Law” in America has different meanings. To Nat Pearl the law (not capitalized) offers a way to raise his social class and make money; to Morris, the Law (always capitalized) has to do with morality and ethical conduct.⁴

A central irony in The Assistant lies in the fact that Morris considers himself a failure; that is, he accepts the judgment of Julius Karp, who represents the American ethic that monetary and business success are all that matter, even though Karp himself may be aware of Morris's deeper qualities. The irony moves into paradox when we realize that “Morris' failure is his success” (Cohen, 42). It is because of his inability to succeed in the American business world that Morris is a moral and ethical success. He understands enough to detest Karp's values but wishes that America were the sort of place where morality could lead to practical success. Just before his death, Morris thinks—with Malamud ironically agreeing—“I gave away my life for nothing. It was the thunderous truth” (TA, 205). He is buried “in an enormous cemetery—it went on for miles—in Queens” (TA, 205). Malamud seems to obliterate Morris; even Ida and Helen think that although he was good, he was a failure: “He made himself a victim. He could, with a little more courage, have been more than he was” (TA, 208).

What is Malamud saying here? The novel is a strong condemnation of American values, in that the good and decent people are not honored by society. Not only are they not honored, but society also rewards those who ignore selflessness in favor of selfishness. Malamud's negation of society's values is insidious; in the end, even those who are close to the moral man and who recognize his inherent worth see him as a failure because he must lead a lesser life in material terms. People are unwilling to permit their better selves to come to the fore for fear of the poverty that will result. In such a society, morality is not seen as being worthwhile. American society does not change because of Morris's example, nor does Malamud expect it to. The moral individual must do what is right regardless of its effect. If society considers morality to be synonymous with immaturity, so be it.

Right action is worthwhile as an end in itself, and for its effect on a limited number of individuals. In The Assistant, it is Frank Alpine who most benefits from Morris's example and who carries the metaphoric idea of Jewishness to new areas beyond Morris's definition. Even more than Morris, Frank is the primary protagonist of the novel, hence the title. His attitude toward Jews and Jewishness is a negative one for much of the novel until he realizes that, given his dual nature, one that is attracted both to crime and to the spiritual, he must choose the sacrifice and self-discipline that he sees in Morris and assumes to be due to his Jewishness.

There are early hints of Frank's potential. Just after the robbery, he is described as “not bad looking, except for a nose that had been broken and badly set, unbalancing his face” (TA, 30). His unbalanced face—his incomplete, unsatisfied self—is caused by a badly set nose. This reference to a Jewish identifying mark is clarified halfway through the book, when Helen begins to see Frank as a possible partner, as gentle and wise: “His crooked nose fitted his face and his face fitted him. It stayed on straight” (TA, 120). As Frank apparently becomes responsible and decent (his rape of Helen is still to come), his face ceases to look imbalanced. Indeed, he has changed at this point; the later rape is presented as a starved attempt to achieve a response to his love. At this stage in the story, Helen tries to convince herself that it does not matter that Frank is not Jewish—that love is what is important. Her seeing his crooked nose as fitting and straight implies the broader definition of Jewishness that her father and the rabbi use: a Jewish nose can fit and be straight on a gentile who has certain values.

Another foreshadowing of the role that Morris will take on for Frank and of the significance that Jewishness will have for him occurs early in the story when Morris offers Frank coffee and a roll for helping him with the milk cases: “Jesus, this is good bread” (TA, 33), Frank says. Despite the fact that Frank still places great value on the American dream of wealth, there is a side of him that is deeply attracted to goodness and the nonmaterial world of the spirit. Morris may be his Jesus at this point, a giver of bread and a Christlike figure who suffers for others, and he will become a living St. Francis of Assisi to Frank, someone who will teach him how to reject the moneyed values of America for those of an older culture that stresses love and responsibility for others.

As noted earlier, this older culture is not strictly Jewish. “As he accepts faith, he paradoxically eradicates the barriers between theologies.”⁵ Although Frank is not an observant Roman Catholic, as Morris is not an observant Jew, he interprets Morris's virtue, his sheer ability to endure suffering and yet remain moral, in terms of the Catholic tradition within which he was raised. That Morris detests St. Francis-like poverty is beside the point; it is how he lives under it and the things he is not willing to do to escape it, that make him a saintly figure. Frank thinks that Morris's Jewish tradition must be at the root of his actions, but Malamud makes it clear that any humanistically oriented philosophy can have the same effect. “For Malamud, religion's function is to convey the essentials of the ‘good heart’; he has little sympathy either for the ghetto-minded Jew or the parochial Christian.”⁶

St. Francis and his life represent an unreachable ideal to Frank, as he sees him as having been “born good.” Morris, on the other hand, is flesh and blood; if Morris can come close to the ideal, perhaps Frank can emulate him? In essence, “Morris' saintliness stems from the same sources as Frankie Alpine's worship of St. Francis. … Throughout the novel, the young Italian's conversion to Judaism is indistinguishable from his conversion to the saint of Catholicism” (Richman, 71). In both instances, Frank's conversion is to human responsibility and selflessness; both show a rejection of the values of the American Dream.

Helen Bober is a complicating factor in Frank's understanding of Jewishness. She wants the success promised by the American Dream and attempts to achieve it both through reading “great books” and by trying to ensnare Nat Pearl, who is well on his way to material and social success. This side of Helen's character helps us understand why she does not appreciate her father's saintliness.

However, Malamud does present another side to Helen. Her desire for financial and social success does not prevent her from being critical of Nat and ultimately rejecting him and what he stands for. She is also capable of judging Frank favorably in moral terms, although she still hopes to be able to encourage him to go to college and to achieve material success for her. Her problem is that she does not wish to relinquish anything: “Because she desires simultaneously the American Dream and ‘something more,’ she loses both” (Cohen, 46-47).

To Helen, Jewishness is the religion of her parents, a burden she must consider when deciding whether or not to allow her feelings to flow toward Frank. She never sees it in the metaphoric sense that Morris and Frank do, and she never explains her father's goodness in “Jewish” terms—in terms of the effects of ancient tradition on his understanding of the plight of humanity. Helen rates love and happiness very highly and, ironically, begins to believe that the things that people have in common are more important than those that separate them; that is, she arrives at a judgment of the oneness of humanity through stressing her own individual needs and by eliminating the Torah, whereas her father arrived at this same conclusion through selflessness and an adherence to his particular understanding of the Torah, or the Law.

Ida Bober, Helen's mother, takes a very narrow view of Jewishness; Helen's more broadly “human” definition of individual worth is not convincing to her. Ida reflects the fearful approach to the new world of one who has never been able to become a part of it. Her view of America consists of the little she knows (Jews like Julius and Louis Karp and Sam and Nat Pearl) and the vast amount she does not know and of which she is afraid (Frank and the various non-Jewish customers who occasionally enter the store). She wants Helen to breach the walls of the hostile American fortress, which she was too timid either to conquer herself or to allow Morris to take the necessary risks to succeed in. Her fear has made her a confirmed materialist, and she has taken on the corrupt values of the American world. Thus, she is willing to deceive the prospective buyer Podolsky, and she pushes Helen toward Nat as much for his prospects as for his Jewishness. In the guise of wanting the best for her daughter, Ida denigrates Morris's morality and constantly tries to persuade him to abandon it. Morris wants a better life for Helen, too, but is not willing to abandon his ethics to achieve it, even in the unlikely event that this would work for him. Morris's view of Jewishness as love and responsibility for all humanity is alien to Ida.

In the end it is Frank, Morris's acolyte and substitute son, who will replace his teacher in the store and minister to the needs of the Bober family and the neighborhood. By formally becoming a Jew at the end of the novel, Frank illustrates Malamud's point that “paradoxically, a character may become more Christlike as he becomes more Jewish” (Helterman 1985, 2). Jewish or Christian, it is the heart that counts.

IMPRISONMENT, SUFFERING, AND REDEMPTION

In the course of an interview for the Paris Review, the following exchange took place:

[Interviewer]: Some critics have commented on this prison motif in your work.

[Malamud]: Perhaps I use it as a metaphor for the dilemma of all men: necessity, whose bars we look through and try not to see. Social injustice, apathy, ignorance. The personal prison of entrapment in past experience, guilt, obsession—the somewhat blind or blinded self, in other words. A man has to construct, invent, his freedom. Imagination helps. A truly great man or woman extends it for others in the process of creating his/her own.

(Stern, 54)

To Malamud the exercise of free will is possible but problematic. All human beings are subject to the pressures of circumstance: the inevitable, inescapable aspects of existence. We may try to deny the presence of these “bars,” but only by recognizing them have we any chance of acting effectively. Some limitations are external; others are within ourselves, the baggage we carry from our past that prevents effective action in the present. Thus, to speak of human freedom is somewhat foolhardy. However, the struggle to overcome necessity and the limitations of the self is, as Malamud himself has stated, central to his view of the role of humanity. This struggle can clearly be seen in a number of the characters in The Assistant.

At the beginning of the novel we are told in Malamud's third-person narration, which also provides overtones of a character's thoughts, “In a store you were entombed” (TA, 9). Helen notes that the “living” room is barely used, and Morris concludes that “I slaved my whole life for nothing …” (TA, 26). The store becomes not only a testing ground for Morris's ability to retain his moral behavior but also a training ground for Frank. Morris tells Frank “a store is a prison” (TA, 34), but rather than fleeing, Frank remains. Frank comes to realize that imprisonment is necessary if he is to achieve his moral and spiritual possibilities, particularly if he is to attempt to emulate his hero St. Francis.

The store is Frank's monastery, and his tiny Spartan room, a cell. “As Frank begins to take on the virtues of Bober, the cell becomes a place of monastic illumination. Each act of suffering for Bober and the rest of mankind strips away Frank's worldliness …” (Helterman 1985, 50). Thus physical imprisonment is essential for Frank if he is, paradoxically, to release himself from the imprisoning forces within him. What Frank requires is the very imprisonment against which Morris rails: a set of four walls that through self-discipline Frank refuses to leave. To achieve this discipline, he must accept the fact that he is imprisoned more by his own character flaws than by external walls. As Tony Tanner puts it, one sees in Malamud's writing the ways in which “an imprisoned man can forge a new self in his reaction to the imprisoning forces.”⁷

Forging a new self leads directly to a great deal of suffering, and it is through suffering that Malamud believes human beings may develop morally. Like the ascetic monk St. Francis, Frank must cease being concerned with material wealth or physical comfort. He must suppress his passions and physical desires and substitute for them an outgoing love for the poor, for humanity as a whole. From Morris, Frank learns to link suffering and love: “Morris's feeding by giving credit to the poor becomes a metaphor for taking care of mankind, and his little neighborhood seems to be a community of nations with its Swedes, Norwegians, Poles, Germans, Italians, Irish, and Jews” (Helterman 1985, 51). When, toward the end of the novel and literally at Morris's death, Frank becomes Morris both in the sense of replacing him in the store and in taking on his mantle of morality, it is a sign that he has become a new person. The man who climbs out of the grocer's grave only looks like Frank Alpine; he is really Morris reborn, a new Morris who will complete his mentor's life: “Frank will see to Helen's education, one purpose of which is to give posthumous meaning to the grocer's pathetic life. Thus each life gains meaning by what it gives to the next, and the divine circle of the Law, of doing for others, curves back on the point of its origin: the meaning of Morris Bober's life.”⁸

One problem with Malamud's stress on the value of suffering is that it may be seen as masochistic, thus reducing its moral value. Sidney Richman states that “though they would never admit it and cannot understand it, both Morris and Frank like the store. Such refinement of masochism—and there is no other word for it—is in many ways unprecedented in American literature” (Richman, 50-51). Is Frank's self-punishment really necessary for him to become a moral man? Does Morris have to be a schlimazel to be a saint? While accepting that Morris's ethic permits Frank to place “his suffering in a moral system that gives it value,” Robert Ducharme questions “the ultimate effect of a value system that sanctifies the acceptance of suffering, that exalts victimhood, and makes failure into success” (Ducharme, 63). However admirable Frank's efforts at self-improvement, at forcing out the bad and bringing forth the good in himself, there is a point at which the price he must pay seems too high.

Malamud's basic idea is the same as that of the great Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevski: through suffering one can achieve redemption. For Dostoyevski, however, the suffering is not as clearly chosen as is Frank's, although both authors stress the importance of suffering borne on account of love, this being a most important element if salvation is to be at all possible. It is possible, as Sheldon Grebstein points out, to find the source of Malamud's ethic in the Bible: “Malamud thus follows in the ancient Jewish tradition of the prophets, Amos, Jeremiah, the Second Isaiah, who announce suffering to be the Jew's special destiny, evidence of his unique covenant with God, proof of God's concern in that only those who are loved are chastised, and the means of the Jew's peculiar awareness of his identity. …”⁹

If the suffering depicted in The Assistant is viewed as masochism, it becomes difficult to see it as a means of developing insight into the value of love and selflessness. It becomes even more difficult to see it leading to a type of salvation or redemption. The biblical interpretation places this suffering in a much wider context: that of Judaism, the Jewish people, and Jewish history. In this sense, suffering may provide a meaning of life, placing the Jew in the context of the divine—or the divinely chosen. However, this does not answer Ducharme's criticism of a system that “sanctifies the acceptance of suffering” and “exalts victimhood.” Rather than acceptance, the attitude presented in the novel can be seen instead as one of understanding, as Morris tells Frank, “If you live, you suffer. Some people suffer more, but not because they want” (TA, 116).

Morris does not seek out or enjoy suffering; he simply recognizes the human condition for what it is. Jews may suffer more than some others because they are Jews (the theme of the Jews' place in history being one that Malamud will explore at length in The Fixer). Morris understands, however, that Jews do not possess a monopoly on suffering: it is a part of existence for everyone. The important thing is to take this unfortunate, unavoidable condition of life and turn it into something positive, something of worth to humanity. So, Morris adds, “I suffer for you. … I mean you suffer for me” (TA, 116); that is, we are all in the same situation and must have sympathy and compassion for each other.

It is noteworthy that “Morris is the English equivalent for Moses …” (Freedman, 162). Moses led the Israelites through 40 years of suffering in the wilderness until they, without him, were able to enter the promised land. While the nature of the “promised land” in The Assistant is highly problematic, Frank is certainly better off morally, and possibly physically, at the end of the novel. Morris, Frank's Job-like teacher and guide, takes his son/assistant far enough along the path to righteousness that he can carry on unaided, his own formerly submerged strength of character in control of his less admirable qualities.

The name Morris Bober is very similar to that of Martin Buber, probably the foremost Jewish philosopher of the twentieth century. Malamud wrote to the critic Peter Hays that “he had only a very general acquaintance with Buber's work when he wrote The Assistant and did not intend to identify Morris Bober with the renowned philosopher.”¹⁰ Despite Malamud's comment, it is remarkable how closely the ideas and development of the characters in the novel parallel the philosophy set forth in Buber's famous work, I and Thou.

In the 1970 translation of Buber's book, Walter Kaufmann stresses You rather than Thou as a more accurate rendering of Buber's German word Du. Thou he says is too formal, given Buber's stress upon human relationships.¹¹ In the context of The Assistant, Frank must move from the “I-It” stance that he takes at the beginning of the novel to an “I-You” one. Buber writes: “The basic word I-You can only be spoken with one's whole being. The basic word I-It can never be spoken with one's whole being.”¹² When we first meet him, Frank sees Morris as just a Jew and later sees Helen only in terms of lust. He is not that far removed from Ward Minogue, his partner in robbing Morris. However, there are signs that Frank may have the capability to move to I-You relationships, in that he helps Morris and idolizes St. Francis. Thus, there is hope that in time his “whole being” can be engaged.

Buber writes: “Love is responsibility of an I for a You …” (Buber, 66); “Man becomes an I through a You” (Buber, 80); “Persons appear by entering into relation to other persons” (Buber, 112). The essential quality that Morris possesses is his ability to view and treat others, including those he does not particularly like, not in terms of abstractions or neutrals—“Its”—but as human beings—“Yous.” Through Morris's influence, Frank is able to defeat the negative aspects of his nature and bring the positive ones to the forefront, but until he is able to establish true relationships with others, he cannot be a good man. Once he can see others as “Yous,” he not only achieves human goodness, but he also can approach an understanding of the eternal. In terms of Judaism, man must make the everyday sacred and see the Godhead in his everyday human relations. Buber states that “the relation to a human being is the proper metaphor for the relation to God—as genuine address is here accorded a genuine answer” (Buber, 151). Morris not only relates to people but to God. Through his changed view of others, Frank, too, eventually achieves this relationship.

Helen's role in Frank's redemption, in his becoming a moral individual through responsibility and selflessness and, concomitantly, his achieving a sense of God, is not as important as Morris's, but she has importance nevertheless. Malamud's depiction of their relationship also can be seen in terms of Buber's philosophy: “When a man loves a woman so that her life is present in his own, the You of her eyes allows him to gaze into a ray of the eternal You. But if a man lusts after the ‘ever repeated triumph’—you want to dangle before his lust a phantom of the eternal?” (Buber, 154). From climbing up the air shaft to look at Helen naked in the bathroom, Frank moves toward a feeling of love for her. He does rape her, however, and one may question Malamud's treatment of this as a sign of Frank's starved love and a result of Helen's having wrongly rejected him: “A Malamudian irony: Helen is able to love Frank only until he makes love to her; the fact debauches the illusion” (Baumbach 1963, 454). However, unlike Frank, Helen is depicted as a character who does not really grow in understanding. Frank wonders whether she has learned anything from the great literature she has read. She uses the books as a means of self-improvement but gains no real insight into her life until she is attracted, despite misgivings, by Frank's moral growth, which elicits a response from the better side of her own nature, giving Frank someone for whom to sacrifice.

The rape marks a turning point for Frank after which all the previous events coalesce in a determination finally to take control of his life: “The wrong he had done her was never out of his mind. He hadn't intended wrong but he had done it; now he intended right” (TA, 168). Love replaces lust, and seeing the “eternal You” becomes a possibility.

Living for love makes Frank into an assistant for the third time: “… first to Ward Minogue, then to Morris, and finally to Helen and her mother … (Hays, 230). Although neither Helen nor Ida are particularly worthy of Frank's great sacrifice, that is not the main point. They provide a focus for his moral change, and it is that change that is at the heart of the novel. Moreover, it is the ability to see as “You” those people who are not saintly that shows real moral growth. The suffering that Frank takes willingly upon himself leads directly to whatever redemption Malamud allows. He is plunged to the lowest depths of himself (robbery, rape) before elevation is possible, testing “his actual self against his ideal of himself” (Baumbach 1963, 455).

The question arises as to the price Malamud exacts for Frank's redemption. Philip Roth thinks that the price is too high and the method by which this redemption is achieved unjust: “But oh how punitive is this redemption! We might almost take what happens to the bad goy when he falls into the hands of the good Jews as an act of enraged Old Testament retribution visited upon him by the wrathful Jewish author—if it weren't for the moral pathos and gentle religious coloration. …”¹³ Like Yasha Mazur at the close of Isaac Bashevis Singer's novel The Magician of Lublin, Frank has chosen entombment as being necessary for his redemption; he is as much a prisoner in the store, slaving his life away for Ida and Helen, as Yasha is in his cell. Also, he has himself circumcised, an act of self-punishment to atone for Helen's rape as well as a ritual required for male converts to Judaism. We read that “The pain enraged and inspired him” (TA, 222); Roth stresses the pain, Malamud the inspiration. The inspiration derives from Frank's hard-won ability to discipline his baser instincts, and we have seen how difficult it has been for him to keep them in check. Similarly in The Magician of Lublin, Yasha tells us that the means necessary to control the passions depend on their strength. Thus, rather than viewing the situation as Malamud's Jewish revenge upon non-Jews for, perhaps, the vicissitudes of Jewish history, it would be more useful to examine closely the history of failure that Frank relates throughout the novel. He sees, quite accurately, that the store, “Jewishness,” and the Bobers are his last chance. The alternative for him is the road taken by Ward Minogue. It must also be recalled that Frank's monastic choice is not particularly Jewish, as indeed Yasha Mazur's hermitlike existence is not. Frank chooses within his own Catholic tradition, and it is not by accident that St. Francis, a paradigm of poverty and suffering for the sake of the soul, is his hero.

At the end of the novel Frank does not become an object of pilgrimage, as Yasha does. However, there are signs that he may develop into the moral center of the neighborhood, much as Morris was. He treats the local poor with compassion and, to pass the time in the virtually empty store, reads the Bible and thinks “there are parts of it he could have written himself” (TA, 222). We are left with the image of a man sitting alone in a cell-like store, reading the Bible, and thinking of St. Francis. His redemption is complete.

FORM AND CONTENT

When Malamud was asked-about the source of The Assistant, he answered: “Mostly my father's life as a grocer, though not necessarily my father. Plus three short stories, sort of annealed in a single narrative: ‘The Cost of Living’ and ‘The First Seven Years’—both in The Magic Barrel. And a story I wrote in the forties, ‘The Place Is Different Now …’” (Stern, 53). In addition to these, there are seven tales that foreshadow The Assistant. The stories contain themes that are developed much more thoroughly in The Assistant: poverty as both moral teacher and grinding adversary; insights into the human heart occurring in the most unlikely settings; the importance of moral responsibility and human goodness over materialism; and the ever-present pressure of the past, with its mistakes, unavoidable disasters, and unfulfilled dreams.

Although The Assistant has overtones of naturalism, Malamud does not adhere to a strict determinism. The characters do possess some free will, although looking at Morris one may wonder how much. However, Morris could have chosen to become a pharmacist; we see Helen making a number of choices regarding the men in her life; and Frank decides to change what appears to be an immutable life pattern. Nor is the ending pessimistic in terms of what Frank has achieved, moving as he has from the world of Ward Minogue to one of caring for humanity.

The novel is only partly realistic. Tony Tanner observes that “although the plight of the Bober family is real enough, the novel moves effortlessly towards fable. …”¹⁴ The actual location of the store is never stated; it exists in a poverty-stricken area that has the feel of permanence and timelessness, and its actual location is irrelevant. What is stressed is the metaphoric and symbolic nature of the action, with the setting—the neighborhood and the store—providing an enclosed world of material deprivation wherein the characters either work through their spiritual odysseys or fail to recognize the central importance of the spiritual and are left, in Malamud's terms, failures.

Moving through this mythic wasteland setting are minor characters who exhibit both realistic and fantastic aspects. The “Polisheh” is a reminder of the very real anti-Semitic world of Eastern Europe that Morris fled. Al Marcus, dying of cancer, uncomplainingly fights death and makes the most of what life has dealt him. Breitbart, also accepting the suffering that life has meted out to him, trudges through the neighborhood selling “lights,” a symbol of hope. The “Macher” is a highly symbolic figure, diabolic with his red beard and relation to fire. All four characters lean, in varying degrees, toward unreality but remain also part of the real world.

Irony is the basic stance taken throughout the novel, ironic affirmation being seen by a number of critics as central to Malamud's approach. The striving of the characters to achieve their goals is usually undercut by an opposite character trait that prevents their success or by a result that is far different than that which was desired. Morris's goodness achieves neither material rewards nor respect from his family. While Malamud admires Morris, he is ruthless in not permitting him any satisfaction or fulfillment as a result of his goodness. As mentioned earlier, even Morris's burial seems to annihilate his memory as it takes place in a huge, anonymous cemetery. Affirmation occurs only through a sense that goodness is worthwhile as an end in itself and through Frank's transformation on account of Morris's example.

Through Frank's analysis of his life he even recognizes the irony in his own character. Virtually everything he has done has had negative results, largely because of an inherent character flaw. Despite this, his hero is St. Francis and he longs to be and do good. When he finally achieves his goal, the result is not physical freedom but a form of imprisonment. For Frank, physical imprisonment in the store is equal to spiritual freedom, an irony that he must accept if he is to remain moral. However, his victory looks remarkably like a defeat.

Ihab Hassan has written that “the achievement of Malamud's style, which survives his ironic play, lies in the author's capacity to convey both hope and agony in the rhythms of Yiddish speech.”¹⁵ The Yiddish-English dialect that Malamud uses, most effectively with Morris and Ida, shows some of his characters to be a part of two cultures and, in many ways, attached to neither. The Bobers do not live in a Jewish neighborhood, but they are not part of the wider non-Jewish American world. Ida's English, heavily inflected with Yiddishisms, aids in stereotyping her as a narrow, fearful, nagging, immigrant Jewish woman. She always fears the worst, and she has reason to. She lives in poverty and feels that she has no control over her life, particularly since Morris persuaded her to leave their former, Jewish neighborhood for their present one. Indeed, everything she is afraid will happen does. A typical exchange follows:

“The Italyener,” he said, drying himself, “bought this morning across the street.”

She was irritated. “Give him for twenty-nine dollars five rooms so he should spit in your face.”

“A cold-water flat,” he reminded her.

“You put in gas radiators.”

“Who says he spits? This I didn't say.”

“You said something to him not nice?”

(TA, 10)

Much of the novel's language does not have this quick give and take but is rather flat, reflecting the passage of endless, deadened days for all the Bobers. There is nothing to look forward to for any of them. Understatement is commonly used to describe events and to create a tone of flat, dull repetitiveness. In the dialogue just cited, however, Malamud manages to combine the seriousness of the Bober's plight (they cannot even keep their tenant as a customer) with a hint of humor in the squabbling of Morris and Ida. The Yiddish dialect itself, with its occasionally odd diction and inverted sentence structure, adds to this sense of both tragedy and humor because it implies, on the one hand, incomprehension of and ineptitude in dealing with a situation, while on the other hand it contains the comedy inherent in an attempt to understand a situation in broken English.

In fact the novel is not funny, as Ruth Mandel comments: “The whole weight of the novel crushes laughter. It is unlaughable comedy about the funny little man who is not funny at all. This is the artistic achievement—the grotesque mixture of high seriousness with what seems funny and yet is not. All of which heightens the pathos” (Mandel, 266). Here can be seen overtones of the influence of Charlie Chaplin, to which Malamud attested. Chaplin's famous tramp certainly is funny, much more so than Morris Bober, but there is a strong element of pathos in Chaplin's character that always causes a hitch in the laughter.

Malamud manages to use the very harshness of the situation to create a type of humor that stems directly from the Yiddish tradition. This humor owes its effect to “the wile of Yiddish folklore, the ambiguous irony of the Jewish joke. Pain twisted into humor twists humor back into pain” (Hassan, 200). Through omniscient authorial narration with frequent movements into the minds of the characters, Malamud manages to gain absolute control for himself as author while still providing a sense of immediacy and intimacy. We are drawn directly into Morris's musings on the bitterness of his life, presented through the ironies of Jewish humor: “Years ago Karp had spent much time in the back of the grocery, complaining of his poverty as if it were a new invention and he its first victim” (TA, 24).

Ida is too humorless, too immersed in her own despondency to be able to view her situation in ironic terms. Helen can see the irony in her unrealizable goals and does, at times, see the situation as Morris does: “At the end you were sixty and had less than at thirty. It was, she thought, surely a talent …” (TA, 19).

The characters are differentiated further through their speech. Most of the time Helen's speech patterns and thoughts are presented not in Yiddish dialect but in good standard American English, perhaps better than the average. Her language lacks colloquialisms and slang and is suitable to a somewhat bookish person who desires self-improvement and shows these characteristics in her speech. It is even superior to that of Nat Pearl, the law student, who lapses into profanity at stressful moments, and it differs from Frank's speech, which is markedly colloquial. However, it is noteworthy that Malamud presents Frank's speech as containing far less profanity than Ward Minogue's. Like Helen, Frank is trying to improve himself, and this may be the reason for his being granted a superior level of speech. Through Malamud's subtle shifts from third-person omniscient narrator to interior monologue, we see that Frank is capable of lyricism, as when he thinks of Helen's body: “… the breasts like small birds in flight, her ass like a flower” (TA, 72). Frank's words and thoughts of St. Francis are always presented through lyrical language.

The character whose speech is least affected by thematic concerns is Louis Karp, a simple down-to-earth boy who, like all the other sons in the novel (Nat, Frank, even Ward), courts Helen's love in one way or another.¹⁶ His language is uneducated street slang, which reflects his basically unthinking attitude toward life: “Say, baby, let's drop this deep philosophy and go trap a hamburger. My stomach complains” (TA, 43). He is gentler than his father, who, while coming from a similar background to Morris, does not possess his innate goodness. Julius Karp's language, having Yiddish inflexions but lacking all warmth and wisdom, used to present harsh realities and ignorant of the heart, also reflects in its spare directness the nature of the speaker.

Malamud's use of language is part of the American literary tradition in that “it is a significant development and expansion of the American colloquial style, established as a vital literary medium by Mark Twain. The Jewish style is for the first time in our literary history a voice that conveys ethnic characteristics, a special sort of sensibility, and the quality of a foreign language, yet remains familiar and eloquent to non-Jews” (Grebstein, 20-21).

In addition to adhering to American literary traditions, Malamud used universal myths as a basis for the novel's structure. In particular, the movement of the seasons underscores the events of the plot, with the tale beginning in early November and ending in April. The narrative covers two years and in some aspects parallels the use of myth in The Natural. Here, however, the seasonal symbolism and the theme of man's fall, death, and redemption support rather than control character development. Malamud has said that “the chief business of the writer is ‘the drama of personality fulfilling itself’” (Richman, 52). In The Assistant, Malamud placed this drama first and the mythological structure clearly second.

Winter is setting in just as Frank, having reached the level of petty criminality, begins the story with a load of failures from his past. He had started his life in California and has arrived in New York: a movement from west to east, in American terms a pilgrimage reversed. The Bobers also have reached a low point. Morris has been imprisoned in the store for 21 years, the age at which an individual attains his majority, his full civil rights. Morris and his family are without freedom and future, and he is very much aware of this. Morris lives in the dreams of a youth that is long past; Ephraim, his son, died of an ear sickness and so never heard his father's teachings; Helen remains unmarried, so there are no grandchildren; Ida complains about lost opportunities and, also, can see no future.

Frank carries the main burden of movement from a past of failure and criminality (a fall); to slipping into Morris's grave (death); to emerging from the grave, taking on Morris's mantle, and becoming his “son,” one who can provide a future for himself and for Morris's ideals (redemption). Like Roy Hobbs in The Natural, Frank revitalizes the wasteland; he undergoes the sacred initiation of circumcision in the spring, the time of rebirth. His rebirth, both as Morris and as a Jew, takes the novel through the seasonal cycle, ending at Passover, the festival that celebrates freedom from slavery. Thus, Morris dies and Frank replaces him in the spring of the year; Morris had misjudged the time when spring arrived, but Frank, his young replacement, has read the signs accurately and completed the cycle from death to rebirth that parallels the seasonal changes in the novel.

Helen takes on the role of fertility goddess: “To emphasize this role of hers, Malamud frequently has her described in terms of obvious symbols of fertility: flowers (harbingers of spring's renewal) and birds. … The bird and flower symbols, especially the former, are also significant because of Frank's symbolic relationship to St. Francis of Assisi” (Hays, 224). Almost in spite of herself, Helen provides Frank with one of the bases for his redemption. There is at least the implication that, eventually, Frank will marry Helen, fructifying Morris's daughter, the prime fertility symbol in the novel.

Father-son relationships form another underlying structural pattern. There are three biological father-son relationships in the novel; in none has the father succeeded in producing a moral son. Showing no love for his son Ward, Detective Minogue desires only respectability, something Ward never provides. Sam Pearl bets on horses and has produced in Nat only a materialist and social climber. Julius Karp is a complete materialist who accepts that his son Louis steals from him. He believes that money is everything and will even buy Helen. Selling liquor has made him rich, whereas selling food has left Morris in poverty, a reflection of American values. None of these relationships is morally fruitful.

A fourth father-son relationship exists between Morris and Frank. Though not related biologically, they nonetheless provide what each needs for his own fulfillment. Although at first Morris does not fully recognize Frank as a suitable substitute for Ephraim, eventually he is touched by Frank's persistent attempts to change. Morris needs a son, and Frank, an orphan, needs a father who can teach him to value the right things. In the sense that a father guides his son in the right direction, this relationship is a more successful father-son pairing than that of the natural fathers and sons. However, as Robert Ducharme observes: “… here, too, there is irony in the displacement pattern, for Frank finds a father in Morris only to replace him through death, and he finds a girl to love in Helen only to assume a selfless, essentially paternal, role toward her as provider for her education” (Ducharme, 38).

As I have noted previously, irony is an essential aspect of The Assistant and a device that Malamud uses throughout his work. Irony assumes a complex, unsure world where the obvious may not be the best and where achievement and success may not be what is of most worth. This view of existence can be seen in Malamud's next novel, A New Life, as clearly as in The Assistant.

Notes

1. The Assistant (London: Eyre and Spottiswood, 1965), 115; hereafter cited in text as TA. All subsequent page references are to this edition.

2. Allen Guttmann, The Jewish Writer in America: Assimilation and the Crisis of Identity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 118.

3. Ruth Mandel, “Ironic Affirmation,” in Malamud and the Critics, ed. Field and Field, 262; hereafter cited in text.

4. Iska Alter, The Good Man's Dilemma: Social Criticism in the Fiction of Bernard Malamud (New York: AMS Press, 1981), 13; hereafter cited in text as Alter 1981.

5. H. E. Francis, “Bernard Malamud's Everyman,” Midstream 7 (Winter 1961): 94.

6. Ben Siegel, “Victims in Motion: The Sad and Bitter Clowns,” in Malamud and the Critics, ed. Field and Field, 127.

7. Tony Tanner, “Bernard Malamud and the New Life,” Critical Quarterly 10 (1968): 152.

8. William Freedman, “From Bernard Malamud with Discipline and Love,” in Malamud: Critical Essays, ed. Field and Field, 164; hereafter cited in text.

9. Sheldon Grebstein, “Bernard Malamud and the Jewish Movement,” in Malamud: Critical Essays, ed. Field and Field, 21; hereafter cited in text.

10. Peter Hays, “The Complex Pattern of Redemption,” in Malamud and the Critics, ed. Field and Field, 233n; hereafter cited in text.

11. Walter Kaufman, “I and You: A Prologue,” in I and Thou, Martin Buber (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1970).

12. Martin Buber, I and Thou, 54; hereafter cited in text.

13. Roth, “Imagining Jews,” in Reading Myself and Others, 231-32.

14. Tony Tanner, City of Words: American Fiction 1950-1970 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1971), 327; hereafter cited in text as Tanner 1971.

15. Ihab Hassan, “The Qualified Encounter,” in Malamud and the Critics, ed. Field and Field, 205; hereafter cited in text.

16. Jonathan Baumbach, The Landscape of Nightmare (New York: New York University Press, 1965), 118; hereafter cited in text as Baumbach 1965.