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From Marginality to Mainstream :A Study adf the immigrant Sensibility inBernard Malamud and Bharati MukheajeeThesib submitted to Tondicherry C~niverdiiyinfuliilment ui the requirement& ior theaurard ob the degree ciDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHYINENGLlSHABRAHAM, MARKOSE BABUDEPARTMENT OF ENGLISHPONDICHERRY UNlVERSITYPONDICHERRY - 605 014

TOMY PARENTS(P.M. ABRAHAM&ACHAMWA

DR. P.BALASWAMY,M.A.,PhDREADERDEPARTMENT OF ENGLISHPONDICHERRY UNIVERSITYPONDICHERRY 605 014C.ER.TIFICATE OF THE SUPERVISORThls 1s to certify that the thesls, "From Marginality toHalnstream : A Study of the Immigrant Sensrblllty in BernardMalamud and Bharatl Mukherlee" 1s a research work done byMr.Abraham, Markose Babu, durlng 1989-93 at the Department ofEnglish, Pondlcherry Unlverslty, Pondlchery and that the thesishas not previously formed the basis for the award to thecandidate, of any degree, dlploma, associateship, fellowship orany other slmllar tltle.(Dr. OC1?^1 P.BALASWAMY)Supervisor.DR. P. B U I S W ~ ~mDUPnlYlUBn Of UWlmmI VYrCHnrrmCwnY.mI

~My lnterest in Bharati Mukherjee was kindled byDr.P.Marudanayagam Professor and Head, Department of English,and my gurde, Dr.P.Balaswamy, Reader, Department of English,Pondlcherry University. When I was considering thepossibilities of working on Bernard Malamud (on whom I hadearller worked for my M.Phll dlssertatlon) they polnted out thebetter potentlalltles of a comparative study of Bernard Malamudand Bharatl Mukherjee.I was quite fascinated by the strlking simllarlty betweenMalamud and Mukheriee on varlous issues, especrally in thellght of the latter acknowledging the farmer as her llterary'guru';the spate of remarks of crltrcs on them alsoauthenticated my work. Stupendous though the task was, Inerslsted ~n mv effort to comnrehend them flrst and comnarethem aoronos df a maTor them'e common to them both - 'theportrayal' of the human psyche caught in the dialectic oftransgression and resolution - subsuming all other similaritiesand differences between them under lt.My work was made easy by my supervisor, Dr.P.Balaswamy.His patient supervision combined wlth scrupulous criticalattention has corlrull~nated In the frultlon of this dlssertatlon.I have recelved excellent advice, tlmely comments andunflagging encouragement from hlm.It 1s a pleasure to acknowledge the help rendered byDr.P.Marudanayagam, Professor and Head of the Department. Hehas been a source of lnsplration ever slnce my Post-Graduatedays, cheerlng me up whenever my splrlts drooped. He hasconverted me lnto a comparatlst. I respect the lmmense rangeand profundity of hrs learning.I should llke to thank the other members of theDepartment : Dr.~.Thyaqara]an, Dr.P.N.Raman2, Dr.N.Natarajan,Dr.su]atha Vllayaraqavan and Dr. Booma Ralaram for their klndencouragement whenever I approched them.I would llke to thank the entlre staff of PondicherryUnrversity Llbrary, who always helped me without any grudge. Inlace on - record -~--.- m\, .---thanks to the Llbrarlans of the followincr - -Libraries: AmerLcan Studies Research Centre (ASRCI Llbrarv.Central Institute of English and Forelgn Languages (CIEF~)

Llbrary, Osmania University Llbrary. Hyderabad CentralUniversity Library- all in Hyderabad; University of MadrasLibrary, Unlted States Information Servlce (USIS) Llbrary. TheBrltish Councll Library - all in Madras; BharathidasanUnlver~ity Llbrary, St.Joseph's College Library, Holy CrossColleq~ Llbrary - al: 17, Trlchy.It Would be churllsh of me if I do not place on record mygratitude to the Government of Pondicherry (particularlyMr.S.Krishnan, I.A.S, then Secretary to Govt. (Education) andMr.Mathew Samuel, then Director of Education) for helping me toattend to the Research Project (full time) at the Department ofEnglish, Pondicherry University by sanctioning Study Leave in1989-91. My thanks are also due to Prof. T. JagannathanRoyerr,M.A.,M.Phil, Principal, Mahatma Gandhl Government ArtsCollege, Mahe and his office staff; Prof. P.P. Jagathy, Head ofthe English Department and all the other members of the EnglishDepartment for enabllng me to proceed on study leave andencouraging me to complete the research work. I alsoacknowledge the help of Mr.K.Ra]an (PhD),Mahe, who helped mewlth the wrltrng and Mr.S.Sathlsh of Sathlsh ComputerConsultancy, Coimbatore and Ms Preethika and Ms Prlya D'Sa ofBlue ChipILoyal Tuff Computer Centre, Mangalore who helped meto complete the computerised draft and ACS Offset Printers,Colmbatore for dolng the laser prlnt.Lastly, I would llke to record the never-failing love,support and interest of my family members. The words 'debtr,'gratltuda' and 'thanks' wlll never sufflce. My parents andbrothers relentlessly encouraged me to complete the prolect.'Abraham Gardens', K.K. Nagar, Trichy and 'Waves'Thalayl,Telllcherry "cheered" me throughout.My brothers - Mr. Ra3an J Abraham, ColmbatoreDr. Roy T Abraham, CochinMr. Isaac Abraham, Trichywere always behlnd me wlth support. My thanks are specially dueto the Mznager of Kothari Industrial Corporation Ltd.Colmbatore, Mr. Ra)an J. Abraham for arranglng and supervisingthe computer draft and the laser print and his wife Jean forprovlding me the hospltallty at Coimbatore.My wrfe Annie, who 'suffered' looklng after the house and oursons, Sanjay (SAM) and Ajay (JAM) during my absence, providedme the opportunity to complete the task.

PagePrefaceA Note on DocumentationCHAPTER:I INTRODUCTION : Immigrant Senslblllty 1I1 TRANSGRESSION : The Hauntlng of Amerlca 45I11 SUFFERING AND COMPASSION : The Old Llfe and the New 94IV MYTH : Passions and Purgations 136V TRADITION : Roots - Wlthln or Wlthaut? 188VI CONCLUSION : Moral Centre -TWO Modes of Atflrmatlon 227A Select Blblloqraphy 273

A NOTE ON DOCUMENTATIONfor quotations from Malamud and Mukherjee, the Eollowlngeditions are used and references to pages have beenrncorporated parenthetically wlth the abbreviations against thetrtles:BERNARD MALANUDTA- The NaturalNew York: Harcourt, Brace 1952AssistantNew York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy,1957PFE13. Collections of StorlesMBA New LlfeNew York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,1961he FlxerNew York: Farrar, Straus and Glroux,1966actures ef Fldelman: & ExhibitionNew York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,1969The TenantsNew York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,1971Dubin's LlvesNed York: Farrar. Straus and Giroux,1979God's Grace~ e york w : Farrar, Straus and Glrcux,1982The Maqlc BarrelNew York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy,1958

Idlots FlrstNew York: Farrar, Straus & Co. 1963Rembrandt'sNew York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,1973SBMBHARATI MUKHERJEEA. NOVB1STDJasmlneStories of Bernard MalamudNew York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux,1983The - Tlqer's DauahtezFirst pubd by Houghton Mlfflin Company1971Published in Penguin Books, 1987Wifeoriglnal Arnerlcan Edltlon Publlshed byHoughton Mlfflln Campany, BostonPubllshed rn Indra bySterllng Publrshers Pvt Ltd, New Delhl,1976JasmlnePubllshed ln Indla by Penguin BooksIndla Ltd, 1990cDarknessm FlctlonDNCDarknessFirst published by Penguin BooksCanada Ltd, 1985- The Middleman and other storiesFirst published in the United States byGrove Press, New York, 1988Published by Penguln Books India Ltd,1990--Davs and Nlahts n Calcutta

in United States byand Company, Inc. New York,1977ms sorrowand- q iThe Hauntlng Legacy of the Alr-IndlaTragedy. New York : Doubleday andCompany, Inc.1987.References to sources for quotations have been peovldedparenthetically following the Author - Date system recommendedin && Handbook for Writers of Research PaDers. 7K-d EC.tin

CHAPTER IIntroduction : Immigrant Sensibility

INTRODUCTION: IMMIGRANT SENSIBILITYIt seems to me that the writer's mostlmportant task, no matter what the currenttheory of man or his prevailing mood, is torecapture hls image as human being as each ofus in hls secret heart knows it to be, and ashistory and literature have from thebeglnnrng revealed it.(From Malamud's Address on receiving FictionWlnner Natlonal Book Award, 1959).The Unlted States (of Amerlca) 1s a name that does noteven succeed ~ r l te ~l lng the world about who llve there.snybody can 11ve there and lust about everybody does-men andwomen from all the corners of the world. Apparently, lt 1s easyto become an Amerlcan. The ddlectlve provides no rellablelnformatlon about the origins, hlstorles, connections orcultures of those whom lt designates. At the surface it appearsa futlle exerclseto seek a palpable commonality among apopulation so large and ethnically drverse, spread across flftystates, seven tlme-zones and tens of thousands of localcommunities. One is led to bellevethe continual ln-gatherlng of the enormous diversityof races aTd peo2les; driven or drawn by religious,polltrca? and economlc forces-that have chosen to

make the Unlted States their permanent home. Whetherperceived through the metaphor of the melting pot,or more fashionable today, through ethnic pluralismAmerica has assimilated and taken its charactersfrom an ertra-ordinary variety of peoples. (Luedtke1987.81.In a world of fast-changinq values and priorities, manhas become vulnerable to new sets of realitles end risks. Thenew reallty may be seen thus:In this century history stopped paylng attention tothe old psycholog~cal orientation of reality. Imearb, these days, character Isn't destiny any more.Economics 1s destlny. Ideology 1s destiny. Bombs aredestlnv. What does a famine. , a aas-chamber. agrenade care how you llved your life? Crisis comes,death comes, and your pathetlc Individual selfdoesn't have a thlng to do wlth lt, only to sufferthe effects.(Rushdle 1987,432).Struggling to define the essence of the new land at thetime of the Amerlcan Revolutlon, the French lmmigrant, Michel-Gullaume Jean de Crevecoeur posed the classic question ofAser;can natlonallty ~n hls Letters from an Amerlcan Farmer:what then 1s the Amerlcan thls new man' He 1s eltheran European, or descendent of an European, hencethat strange rnlxture of blood, whlch you wlll findIn no other country. I would point out to you afanjly wh:~so grandfather was an Englishman, whosewlfe wes Dutch, whose son marrled a French woman,and whose present four sons have now four wives ofdifferent natlons. He is an Amerlcan, who leavingbehind him all hls ancient pre]udioes and manners,receives new ones from the new mode of life he hasembraced, the new government he obeys, and the newrank he holds. He becomes an Amerlcan by belng

eceived in the broad lap of our great Alma MaLeC.Here individuals of all nations are melted into anew race of men, whose labours and prosperity willone day cause great chanqes in the world.(1957,39)After two hundred years the sources and compositions ofthe "new race of men" have expanded far beyond Europe, but theprocess of constant uprooting, transplantation, adaptation andrenewal continues. Definlng Anerlca has been as much anAmerclan preoccupation, as much as ~t has been a foreign one.In a way, lt is part of a triangulation process by means ofwhlch lndlvlduals and soclet~es locate themselves,geographically, polltlcally and culturally. Even before thediscovery of Amerlca "Aristotle attrlbuted the peculiar virtuesof the Greeks to the qeographlcal chance which placed thembetweer the energetic but anarchlc types of Europe and thelngenlcus but servlle nations of Asla" (Bradbury and TemperleyL981,2!. In the same way,other people over the centuries haveattempted to deflne thelr ldentltles by referrlnq to thecharacterlstlcs, real or lmaglned, of neighbourinq societies.In more recent times, as a new nation, Americans began tospeculate on the nature of thelr natlon's ldentlty In thecontext. of rte contlnulnq lnflux of new and lncreasinqlydlverer grcps of ~mmigrants, as well as the rapid expansion ofthe United States ltself - economically, polltlcally, anddemographlcally. Whlle Americans have been Inclined to engage

ln such acts of triangulation, more often than most otherpeoples, the outsiders with theirprlmltlveness of the origlnal state of thecontinent, the fascrnatlon of ~ t s novelties andwonders, the rapidlty of its settlement, thedistinctiveness of the cultures which developedthere, and the nature of the causes which over theyears the United States has espoused, made her, forthose who deprecated as well as those who welcomedthese developments, a necessary point of referencefor their own acts of trlangulatlon, a potent imageIn the modern world (Bradbury and Temperley 1981,6).Whatever the nature of the forces at work, it was plainthat when men and then institutions crossed the Atlantlc theysuffered a sea-change. Whatever their plans, and howeverdetermlned they miqht be to preserve European and Thlrd Worldpractices, they lnvarlably ended up dolnq something different.Rmerlca ended World War I1 as the beneficiary ofunrlvalled good fortune-lts lands were unscathed, lts homepopulations unharmed. It had also become the residence of manyof Europe's and Asla's most prominent refugee intellectuals.Not only did the writlngs of most of these immigrantscontribute to thelr natlve cultures, but also thelr presence inAmerlca helped brlnq Amerlcan culture out of provincialisolation. Today the volume of lmmigratlon to the United Stateshas surpassed that of all other malor immlqrant - receivingcountries taken together. There are at present (1993) over ahundred different ethnic groups llvlng all over the United

states brinqlnq the immigrant population to over fifty million.Europe LS no longer the chlef supplier of immigrants tothe Unlted States. The lead has passed to Asia and LatinAmerica. The sltuatlon 1s st111 fluld and more and more peopleare reaching America. Even in the 1990fs, every day thestatistics 1s getting out-dated. Nationwide, they have changedthe ethnlc mrx of most metropolitan centres. In Greater LosAngeles alone, over the last twenty flve years, whlle theHispanlc presence has Increased three-fold, the Aslans havebecome ten-fold. Currently, the United States has more visiblenumber of lmmlgrants of various stocks than any other countryIn modern hlstory. Among the homes of one flfth of Los Anqelesschool chlldran, Ertc~llsll 1s second to a hundred and fourdifferent ancestral languages.Perhaps, no summlnq-up, metaphorical or otherwise, can dojustice to the complex ~nter-play between Immigration andNatlonal Character. Conveniently, these lmmiqrations may be putlnto four categorles. The Total Identlflers, who llve out theirllves entlrely wlthin the ethnlc group; the PartialIdentlflers, who take thelr ethnlclty In measured and selectivedoses; the Dlsafflllates, who grow-up ln ethnlc or ethnorellqlousnelqhbourhoods, but cannot go home aqaln because theyhave chosen not to, and the Hybrlds, who cannot Identify

themselves through a single stock. HenceIn adlustlng to therr adopted country they, andlater thelr progeny, fashioned ties of belongingappropriate to thelr changing conditions. Theprocess is likely to go on, for where boundaries areloose there 1s freedom to choose". (Luedtke 1987.79)If for no other reason, their acculturlsation demandsattentlon for the llght lt sheds on the character of the UnitedStates. At lssue IS what is meant to be an Amerlcan in a nationwhere hlstory has denled its people the bond of a commonpaternity.Vlewing it closely and subscrlblng to the propositionthat expatrlatlon 1s a baslc human rlght, the Unlted States ofAmerlca fulfilled its needs as the world's leading recelver ofImmigrants. It also opened up a llberatlng Idea for manklnd-theIdea that natlonalitres are changeable rather than irrevocable.Added to lt, the terms for becomlng a naturallsed citizen didnot require lmmlgrants to glve up their rellglons, languages,memories, customs, muslc, food or whatever else they cared topreserve In the folk culture. The process of acculturatlon.therefore, left room for different antecedents and ethnlcafflllations whlle upholding the values of a common civicculture. As Arthur Mann observes: "Llke Israel Zangwlll, whopopularlsed the metaphor of the meltlng pot, Kallen clalmed too

much for his metaphor of the United States as a harmonlousorchestra of forelgn language groups" (Quoted in Luedtke?he natlonal ldentlty, then rested on the faith thatunity and dlverslty were supposed to be not only mutuallycompatible but supportive of 'liberty'.E\'en today, In a new age of hlgh technology, race andethniclty continue to influence social relations in asignificant way. Thxs 1s particularly true as far as some ofthe non-whlte raclal or ethnlc mlnoritles are concerned,because lrrespectlve of economic status, they are stillsub~ected to some neva,d nore subtle farms of socialdlscrlmlnation. The other white ethnlc mlnorlties are lessaffected by these, but they too are culturally separated fromeach other and from the domlnant WASP (Whlte Anglo-SaxonProtestant) community. Such cultural dlvlslons asthe complexltles of languages and customs, diversityof asolratlons, and confllct of interests betweenold akd new lmmlgrants have always divlded Americanscclety horizontally, hindered the growth of classconscrousness, and thus made any soclal mobilizationalong class llnes extremely dlfflcult (Kolko1976.67)Certaln ethnlc sub-cultural tralts are preserved becausethey are conslderd to be assets whlch can ensure success inAmerican soclety, such as "Jewlsh proclivity for the

professions or Irish proclivity for politics". (GreeleyBut in the context of modern American life it isdifficult to identify such traits existing at the level ofpopular consciousness of each and every ethnic community thatremains organised in American public life. Milton Gordon oncetalked about the acculturation model as an alternative to themelting pot. Ethnic groups, according to him, had been adoptingthe values of the host culture and were being integrated intothe host society in so far as their secondary relations wereconcerned. But in their interpersonal qroup-relations, theypreferred to stay withln their own community and uphold theirown ethnic sub-culture. The other alternative to melting pot isthe 'stew-pot' model proposed by Vlrgil Elizondo. Asthe Ingredients In a stew maintain theirdistinctiveness despite belnq affected by theflavour of others, so also do ethnic groups retaincer:ain pecuiiar aspects of their own culture evenafter adoptlng more or less the American llie style(Greeley 1981,150) .Almost all ethnic groups, after two or three generations,have accepted the Anglo-Amerlcan culture as the officialpattern of the country and enthusiastically participate in theeducational, occupational and political mainstream. All thesame, they retain their own native cultural heritage within the~n-group. Thus the assimilation of the immigrants into the host

society happens to be a two-way process. Their adjustmentinvolved, as Oscar Handlin summed up the situation, " theachievement of unity-and yet the preservation of diversities-inAmerican socrety" (1948,206). Oscar Handlin, the leadingAmerican social historian in the early Cold War era, envisioned"immigration as the key to America'snational and worldhistorical destiny" (1951.3). For Handlln, the son of Russian-Jewlsh lmmlgrants who struggled In a working class world oftransclent residency and employment, it was a "fllght from thenest" - from Brooklyn street kid to academic celebrity atAnglo-Saxon Harvard. Handlin's portrayal of the uprooted, thestory of all European immigrants to America, was historicallyqulte unlque because it was done wlth immense empathy. Inlyrical phrases he presented a plcture of their experience asperpetual movement, suspension and danger:the life of the Immigrant was that of a man divertedby unexpected pressures away from the establishedchannels of his existence. Separated, he was nevercapable of acting with the assurance of habit;always in motion, he could never rely upon roots tohold hlm up. Instead he had ever to toil painfullyfrom crisis to crisis, as an individual alone, makehis way past the dlscontinuous obstacles of astrange world. (Handlln 1951,304)Slnce Handlin regarded thls transition as a universalphenomenon, he concluded that as a group immigrants representedin thelr speclflc experience a general change In the llves of

all men. Consequently he observed that "in an extreme form thiswas the experience of all modern men". (1951,305) It was alsoin some degree the connection between the particular history ofthe American immigrant and the human condition in the Twentiethcentury world. The pattern and meaning of the immigrant lifethat was emerging was - "Immigration was a metaphor for thecourse of life, and the immigrant was the apotheosis of modernman" (Ueda 1990,2) .The journey of the immigrant, out of the secureenclosures, the journey of modern man-1s an ordeal wracked withfear and suffering. The journey 1s an adventure that revealsnew possibllltles for actlon-to earn thelr bread In a novelfashlon, to adlust their vlews of the universe to a new world'ssights, to learn to live wlth each otherin unaccustomedsurroundlngs- these were the advantages all people in motionshared with the immigrants. The ordeal that leads to discovery,however, is the lmmlgrants' "personal confrontation" withdanger and consequent loss of control. They found themselves ina prolonged state of crlsls-crlsls In the sense that they werein suspense between the old and the new, "literally intransit". Every adjustment was temporary and therefore in itsnature bore the seeds of maladjustment, for the conditions towhich the lmmigrar~ts were adlusting were strange and ever-changing.

The picture of the immigrant caught in a Sisyphean cycleof insecurity, isolation and dehumanlzation was one steeped Inprofound pathos. Treated as a commodity, the immlgrant feltthat he was losing his human personality. Dehumanization wasintensifled by a brutal separation from the natural world andalienation from work. When the immlgrant looked about himselfto find the reasons for sufferlng, he saw a universe that wasfaceless, distant and unresponsive.Llberty was not an abstract polit~cal value, but rather,the living soclal process shaped by the existentral humancondition of rootlessness. Amerlcan liberty was the flux of awhole society propelled into motion by voluntary individualactions that only social detachment afforded. A significantdegree of mobillty inhibited the rigid stratlficatlon of thepopulatlon. The looseness of the soclal order helped to developa sense of the worth of the lndlvidual and gave people of everysort a conviction that they had an important stake in thefreedom of the communltles ln whlch they lived. And the factthat Amerlcan soclety was formed out of continuous migrationled people to belleve that the Unlted states held the key ofthe future of llberty rn the world. Llberty 1s seen as selfgeneratlngand ramifying: the free man acts to enlarge hisfreedom, whlch leads to contacts with others that create a

wider community offering new options. The American findsstrangers and comes to know them through expanding voluntaryassociations which transcend parochial interests and increasehis Freedom OF action.Thus, 'liberty1 also offers the potential for overcomingthe alienation, isolation and divisions created by the verysocial detachment that 1s a condition for liberty. Asindividuals seek to extend thelr llberty for the sake ofpersonal advantage, people of dissimilar origins gain theabllity to act together under dissimilar conditions. Ethnicassociations could never act as a constraint upon individualoptions in a society of people in constant motlon. A person whosought upward soclal mobllity found that hls chances In lifedepended upon the moblllty to move outside the ethnic limits.The original purpose of group-llfe was to shelter the exposedindividual and the continued existence of group life hingedupon its increasing the power of the individual member. Thefree American, then, was an individual who wished to expand hiscapacity for actlon by increasing the number of choicesavailable to hlm. He sought the company of others, but underterms that would release and not bind him. When this conditionof group attachment was not fulfilled, people would be willingto move outside group boundaries to act together withoutsiders. The values and attitudes that were spawned in the

minds of men/women acting under the conditions of liberty weresuch that it enabled people of different origins to acttogether and to recognize one another as Americans.As one unfolds the narrative of the origins of thesociety, the connection between national character andimmigrant experience becomes visible. The continuous migrationsto the frontier ensured that Americans from the earliest daysof settlement would live in perpetual transit. This life inmotion produced "a new man liberated from his past and free tolive as an individual by the rule of risks of his ownchoosing." (Handlin 1963,160) The lndlvidual who llved therisky, lnsecure life was sustained by a falth In hislhercapacity to mould the future. The willingness to accept riskshad originated in the very nature of the first settlement. Thishad been perpetuated by a society that allowed few individualsstability enough to relax. Everything remalns precarious.Ceaseless strlving and mobllity were necessary to hold on asonly expanslon could preserve what had already been achieved.Living in ongoing risky changes, Americans began to treatchange as a normal part of existence. Individuals, thusdeveloped a common stance towards llfe that created a sharedAmerican identity.Livlng the insecure llfe was the Amerlcan way, acceptednot by compulsion but in a splrit of adventure. Llke the

immigrant, all Americans were, out of weariness, tempted toretreat to the peace and quiet of the nest, the orderlyunchanging group. Risk 1s a normal commitment to stand alonevoluntarily as an individual, to face, in a self-responsibleway, the vicissitudes of life. This is very much in the spiritof the 'lone ranger' image of the American in popularliterature. The existential condition challenges the individualto take the chance of mastering it. By assuming the risk ofstanding alone and by persistent efforts against the chaos, theindividual makes gain, creates a wider community, develops acommon ldentlty with others, and uncovers new resources inhimself or herself and in soclety. The ethical themes whichcelebrated immigrant strivlngs and America's social orderunlfying dlverse peoples were refashioned into a transformingvision of natlonal history as exlstentlallst comedy. The newhero was the archetypal Amerlcan who became the lone immigranthero, gradually overcoming an original state of alienation. Thehistory of America and of the archetypal immigrant Americandemonstrated the beneflts, both personal and collective, gainedby facing llfe as an lndivldual.In the final analysis, one can find in the immigrant'slegacy not only inspiration, but also the special provenance ofAmerican history-the general right to act as an individual-theethos of modern existence. In successive enlargements of the

historical canvas, the American is portrayed as an individualwho is prompted to face the unknown alone, never to feelcontentment, but always ready to push farther into newterritory. Above all, the temptation to withdraw into thesafety of the collective must be ablured. Only then wlll theadventure, the flight from the nest, yield the fruit of selfdiscovery. Lest the children of the immigrants forsake theirethlcal lnherrtance, the immigrants must be careful of theconsequences of jolnlng the crowd. Instead the rewards ofstandlng alone are better. In a post-war age that dwelled onsatisfying consensus, one discovers the unsettling inter-playof lndlvlduallzlng and unlfylng experiences that formed thecore of American life, and which increasingly characterized thecondition of all modern people. The fact remalns that there wasa universal moral dilemma to choose between individualdiscovery and group safety as exemplified by the immigrantexperience.Long-standing persecution of mlnlorltles has been thereall along In human history. The Jews, for example have beensubject to discrimination and persecution in the Christian Westfor nearly two thousand years. It has been the most horrificinstance of brutal destructlveness agalnst a minority group -the killing of millions of Jews In German concentration campsdurlng World War 11. Nazi ldeology claimed Jews to be a race

inferior to the 'Aryan' people of Germany and northern Europe.The term 'Aryan' originally referred to a group of languagesspoken by people of differing physical stock. The Jews inGermany were a group with distinct 'ethnlc' characteristics.Ethnicity points to cultural practices and outlooks thatdistinguish a given community of people. Members of ethnicgroups see themselves as culturally distinct from othergrouplngs In a society, and are seen by those others to be so.Other common characterlstlcs that distinguish one ethnic groupfrom another are languages, history or ancestry (real or~magined), religion, and styles of dress or adornment. Mostmodern socleties include numerous dlfferent ethnic groups. TheUnited States and the former Sovlet Union are moredifferentiated ethnlcally than Brltaln. There are more thanhundred dlfferent ethnlc groups in the erstwhlle USSR, twentythree of whlch have populations of a mlllion or more.Many societies In the world today, in the industrialisedand non-lndustrial~sed world allke, are plural societies.Plural socleties are those In whlch there are several largeethnlc grouplngs lnvolved In the same political and economicorder but other wise largely dlstlnct from one another. Mostpost-colonlal countries are plural societies, because of thepolitical unification imposed on the variety of pre-existingcultures. Virtually, all modern societies are pluralistic to

some extent, with the United States and the former Soviet Unionmore pluralistic than most European countries. The notion of'ethnic minorities' or minorlty groups is widely used insociology, and involves more than mere numbers-discriminations,group solidarity and isolation. Discrimination exists whenrights and opportunities open to one set of people are deniedto another group llke a land lord refuslng to rent a room tosomeone because he or she 1s an Aslan/Indlan. Members ofminority groups often tend to see themselves as 'a peopleapart' from the majority. Experience of belng the subject ofprejudice and discrimination usually heightens feelings ofcommon loyalty and Interests. This results In fostering a senseof group solldarlty, of belonging together. Mlnorlty groups areto some degree physically and soclally Isolated from the largercommunity. Endogamy (marriage wlthin the group) is promoted inorder to keep allve their cultural dlstlnctiveness.Every American accepts the basic values of a democraticcapitalist system that ensures a particular llfe-style to whichthey have all become accustomed and whlch 1s not availableelsewhere ~n the world. The consumer society has had atremendous levelling impact on its people and has become acharacteristic American mode of acculturation. The new mode canbe found in many aspects of modern American life :

the ever exoandino reach of advertisins. theublqultous T; netwo;ks, the wonder worlds i f theshopplng malls and che onnlpresent fast-foods aresnaplng and reshaplnq tne llfe-style of the~mericans in a pa;ticular mould. ~ i l over thecountry, they now usually speak in the samelanguage, eat the same kind of food, drink the samebeverages, wear dresses of the same style andquality, watch the same televison programmes and forthese they pay almost the same tariffs on prices(Bandyopadhyay 1986,64).In other words Americans across the country havedeveloped identical habits which distinguish them from peopleof any other nationality. The comforts of an affluent societyare too much to be sacrlflced for lust ethnic pride.Consequently, the chances of any separatist ethnic movementcoming up in the Unlted States are remote. As people find theiridentities submerged in a culturally undifferentiated mass,finding themselves becoming lust Amerlcans, they consciouslybegin to cllng to their nostalgic memorles of an ethnlc past.Hence, most contemporary Americans, though conforming outwardlycarry thelr ethnlc traditions privately. "Ethnic cuisine 1snormally a component of all thelr soclal ceremonies and a quietsymbol of the ethnlc group" (Glassie 1971,206) .Usually, thesepractices are mostly a family or a particular in-group affairand not actually practised in the nine-to-five offical life ofthe Unlted States. Over the years, the composition of the

neighbourhoods have also changed. Ethnic neighbourhoods havegiven place to either mixed neighbourhoods or neighbourhoodsfor particular socio-economic classes like the "yuppies' or"gays". Even today's Chinatowns in New York or San Francisco,Chlcago or Los Angeles, despite a few shopsigns in Chineselanguages, look like any other nelghbourhood with a narrow mazeof streets, neatly bagged garbage, taxis, tourists,pedestrians, dellvery vans, fastfood loints, and hawkersvending anything from T-shirts to telephones.More than two million East European Jews came to theUnlted States between 1880 and 1920. The transatlantic crossingfrom the Old world to the New was akind of hell that cleanses a man of his sins beforecoming to the land of Columbus. From poverty,pogroms and degradation, from a world of ghettoesand hundreds of years of powerlessness, despair andadlustment the Jews from Eastern Europe came to aland of opportunity and success. They began torealise that the study of the Torah was no longer aslgn of achievement. Instead,as Abraham Cahan'sDavid Levinsky was told it was the American Dreamthat one had to achieve in the New World. Althoughthe Jews who arrived at the end of the nineteenthcentury and at the beginning of the twentiethcentury had pretensions, the generation that wasinspired by the courage and suffering of the firstgeneration by the avantgardism of the 1920s and19305, was the generation that spawned the AmericanJewish literary explosiion of the 1940s and 1950ssince. (Walden 1982,vol.Z. 1).The Twenties and Thirtles brought forward writers like

Meyer Levin, Ludwig Lewishn, Samuel Ornitz. Myron Brinig,Michaelold, Henry ~oth, Albert Halper, Daniel ~uchs and AnziaYezurska. The Forties produced Saul Bellow, Delmore Schwartz,Isaac Rosenfeld, Leslle Fledler, Alfred Kazin, Irvlng Howe andNorman Mailer. The Flfties saw Phllip Roth, Bernard Malamud,chain Potok, Cynthia Ozick, Hugh Nissenson, Norma Rosen, CurtLeviant, Elie Wlesel, 1.0. Singer and many others.In the new chosen land of America, the Jews wantednothlng so much as the chance to be a part of the largersoclety. The typlcal Jew seeks an ldeologlcal posltion whichdenles the existence of any tenslon, Chosenness, thetraditional vehicle for self-deflnltion among Jews, became inAmerica along with related concepts of covenant and exile-apointer to traditionally gulded Jewish self-understanding. Thischosenness marks the polnt at whlch the three linesof relatlon which deflne Jews-those binding them toGod, to their fellow-men, and to each other-ofnecessity intersect. The people of Israel enteredthe world, according to its own sacred history, notthrough a natural growth from famlly and tribe, butsuddenly, with a single event that they did not~nitiate: the covenant at Slnai. Jews wereidentified from the start as a 'kingdom of priestsand holy nation' paradoxically commanded to dwellapart from humanity In order to serve a divinepurpose in which all humanity was somehow included.(Elsen 1983,s)The vlclssitudes of life In the many Dlaspora communities

einforced and enhanced this primordial self-consciousness andonly the integration into the modern gentile world which beganin the late Eighteenth century has presented Jews with aslgnlficant challenge to the assumptlon that they are meant toremaln a "people apart".The Jews had adopted a nation, which due to a puritanlegacy, deriving from the Hebrew Bible, had traditionallyregarded Itself as a chosen bountrful land. The Jews havediscovered that the Americans saw themselves as a peopledestlned to bulid a "city on a hlll" after traversing a greatwilderness. They found it dellcate to lnslst on one's essentialdifference from t?e soclety they eagerly wlshed to join. Thesolution was to arrlve at a balance between exclusivity andpartlclpatlon, continuous wlth Jewish tradition and acceptableto Amerlca. Thls .ed to a re-rnterpretatlon of the idea whichhad served both Jewish and Amerlcan seif-deflnltron for ages.It glves both a sense of belng at the centre of thlngs, engagedln useful work whlch the Lord will watch and bless.For the Amerlcan-Jewlsh wrlters, from the cities, townsand shtetls of Russla-Poland, arrlvlng at a time of nationalreform and psychjc crisls, of prlmary importance were theproblems of adlustment to the new culture and reconcil~ation oftheir old country culture with that of the New World.Scrambling for a dollar, everyone working, they endured so that

their children might become Americans. The pressures of theAmericanizing process brought in new problems for the AmericanJewlsh wrlter. With dlsdain for h1s parents' ways, dress andaccent, he often apted for the new at the expense of the old.Traditlons, values, religion-all were subordinated to the needto emulate the Americans or the Jews who were no longer greenhorns. Writers since Cahan, in the first generation who helpedbrldge the two cultures in a host country, wrote of the ongoingbridging experience. Thelr literary talents explored thesoclologlcal dlmenslons of a mlnorlty group. As the ghettoliterature gave way to fiction as a llvlng form, the American-Jewlsh wrlter, who benefitted from the national andinternational processes, wrote of himself, his people, anti-Semitism, the War and the attempt to understand himself and thesociety he llved In. ;he fact that thelr quest for identity-theeffort to create a llterature In a non-WASP (Whlte Anglo SaxonProtestant) coitext helped to create a new genre In literature,thereby demonstrating that the Amerlcan Jew was beginning tofeel at home.By the 1920s America's now Amerlcan Jews, wlth one footIn the old country and the other in the new, put their ghettoproblem behlnd them, and were rebelling against their parents,struggling for their own identities, as did others. In the1930s, in the qrlp of the Great Depression, Jews moved into

prominence in movies, in the theatre and in literature. Thetruth and the traumas of the immigrant's experience promptedthe Jews In the Jnlted States to respond in many ways to thepressures of the New World. Some quickly or eventuallyassimilated. Some attempted to flnd a middle-way by which theycould become Americans and still retain their sense of beingJews. Others were so alienated as to drop out and pass into thegreat other world-the world of the gentiles. Since the 1940s,Jewish wrlters llke Bellow, Mailer, Salinqer, Malamud, Miller,Frledman, Roth, Heller, Ozlck, Rosen, Schwartz, Trilling,Potok, Slnqer and Wlesel responded as no other group to thecountry's urgent cultural need. Slnger wrote In Yiddish, WieselIn French and Mailer, Sallnger and Trilling dealt onlyperipherally *-ti Jews. But Bellow, Malamud, Roth and theothers are In every sense American-Jewlsh writers because theirnoveis and storles reflect their concerns. More than any otherJew~s? .writer , it was Bernard Malamud who gave the requireddirection and thrust to propel the Jewish-American writer tothe centre staqe of Arnerlcan llterary wrlting. Withoutinsisting on tne ;ewls essential difference from the societythey desxred to join, Malamud struck a healthy balance betweenaloofness and assimilation - whlch America accepted andacknowledged sincerely.Desplte thelr rndivldual differences they usually dealt

with Jews In the American experlence with the same goals inmind. Bernard Malamud quested for moral salvation and selfrealisatlon.Regardless of the rntensity of hls religious Orcultural commitment he wrote about some essential aspect Of theJewlsh experience In America. The Blblical past, the rlse OfHitler , the Holocaust, the new state of Israel and the need ofAmerlcans to agaln belleve In humanlty helped. Affirming hisbelief In the humanity of the patriarch Abraham, Malamud knewhls debt-lt had to d~ with the presence and contlnuation ofllfe.In contrast, Thlrd World ~mmigrants, more than any otherlmmlgrant group, have struggled to belong to the malorityculture whlle attemptlng to malntaln thelr ~dentity. Theirreceptlon In Amerlca has been mlxed largely because of thelrrefusa: or laabllity to assimilate socially. Some writers inthe Unlted States and the Unlted Klngdom have attempted tovolce the experlence of lmmlgratlon and asslmllatlon. Over halfof today's Aslan-Americans come from socletles wlth Confucianbackqrounds-Chl~ese, Korean, Japanese and Vletnamese. Asubstantla1 mlnorltg of Aslan-Amerlcans come from non-Confuciansocletles. But they too brlng wlth them a herltage that hashelped them to flourlsh in Amerlca-Fllllpino, Indian,Paklstanl, Afqhan, SrlLankan etc. Slnce Unlted Stateslmmlqratlon lass were llberallsed in 1965," the number of

Amerlcans of Asian extraction has quintupled to more than fivemllllon people". (Oxnam 1967.32)The rapid Influx of Asians has opened a new chapter inAmerican immigration hlstory. Aslans are proving, often inunprecedented ways, that foreign values can flourlsh onAmerican soll. Amerlcans are proving that immlgration does notnecessarlly lead to exclusion and discrlmlnation. Aslansooletles have selectlvely adapted thelr tradltlons to meet theneeds of contemporary economlc progress and politicallntegratlon. The new Aslan-Americans have "leapfrogged" and"have achieved In one generation what used to require two tothree generations for European lmmlgrants" (Oxnam 1967,32).Whlle all lnlmlgrants confront the challenge of culturaladlustment, those from Indla have often displayed a speclalcapaolty for adaptlng anclent vdlues to new circumstances.Westerners often thrnk of modern history as a struggle betweenthe forces of tradition and those of modernity. Indians tend tosee a different dynamlc In whlch the past and present often relnforceeach other. Culture 1s at the heart of India's soaringgrowth. And the success of many Indian-Americans 1s a directmanlfestatlon of that same powerful Indlan process of culturaltransformatlon and contlnulty. The malorlty of the half mllllonAmerlcans of Indian extraction are hlghly motivated andrepresent the outflowlng of skllled professionals known as the

"braln draln" phenomenon.Indian traditlons are much more different and religiousthan the secular and structured inherltances from Westernsocletes. Perhaps, this 1s the reason why Indlan-inheritedtraditions sometimes do not mesh well with American society.Indlans often feel caught in a vice-between the pressures ofthelr traditlons and the pressures of trylng to make ~t InAmerlca, particularly thole In artlstlc fields worry about atenslon between the American emphasis on creativity and theIndlan emphasls an dlsclpllne. It may be sald that the futureccntalns a cultural challenge for Aslan-Indlans and othersallke. Many Indlans are llkely to confront a troubling dilemmaas they try to flnd a "mlddle ground" between preserving Aslan-Indlan tradltlons and seeklng broader influence throughasslmllatlcn. The Aslan-Indlan lmmlgrant ln the new world ofAmerlca faces-the enlqma of success, of accomplishment, ofhavlnq made an Impact; the enlgma of denlqratlon anddlscrlmlnatlon; the enlgma of "holding-on" versus "letting-go".Many wrlters of South-Aslan extractlcn have grappled wlththe immigrant experience. Perhaps ~t 1s our creatlve writerswho have glven the best expression to the enlqmas and dllemmasof the expatrlate experience. V.S. Nalpaul, Hanif Kureishi,Saros Cowaslee, Vlqram Seth, Amltav Ghosh, Salman Rushdie, RajaRao and the women novelists, Shanta Rama Rao and Bharati

Mukherlee have all lllumlnated the lmmlqrant horlzon wlth thelrcreatlve wrltlnqs. Whlle Nalpaul has glven volce to hlSass1mllatlon he knows that he can never be completely"malnstreamed" lnto the new world. Although he studled muchabout England durlng hls seventeen years of educatlon lnTrlnldad. Nalpaul could never get away from the Idea of Indrathat hls famlly has carrled wlth them-the Indla of thelmmlgrant experience. It 1s exempllfled In the serles of booksthat Nalpaul has wrltten about Indla, even though hls voyage 1sfrom total lncomprehenslblllty to one of qrudglngunderstandlng. Hanlf Kurelshl's 1s the loudest cry agalnst theblatant raclsm of the Brltlsh. Vlkram Seth 1s the totallyasslmllated yupple wlth no qualms and no hlnt of Indlannessexcept the name and the baggage of Anglo-Indlan educatlon. RalaRao who has llved In the Unlted Srates for nearly twenty yearshas been honest In hls expresslon of hlmself when he says thathe carrled hrs Indla wherever he went.As for the women wrlters, Santha Rama Rao and BharatlMukherlee are qulte aware, lf not self-consclous, regardingtherr posltlon as South-Aslan wrlters re-creatlng the llves ofexpatriates and lmmlgrants. Both wrlte In Engllsh and havemade thelr homes and practised wrltlng In South-Asla and theWest. At a tlme when most of Asla was overtly under Westerndomlnatlon. Rama Rao wrote about the tenslons between South-

Asrans and Westerners. Her writings show her aa a perceptiveand compassionate narrator of expatriate experience. RoshniRustomji-Kerns feels "Bharati Mukherjee can take her placeamong the best South-Asian and American writers of today. Herwork ranges from very good to dazzling" (1988,659). Carefullyconstructed places of residence, houses, hotels, hostels andashrams; places which are alive wlth busy families, placeswhlch have fallen In ruin or places whlch are in the process ofbelng built, flgure prominently In the works of these womenwrlters. Apart from belng backdrops for thelr narratives, theyare lntegral parts of the South-Asian protagonists' llves asthey seek refuge from the assaults by different cultures. Theseplay thelr part In the struggle to understand their culturaldilemmas.Bharati Mukherjee 1s even considered as a descendant ofSantha Rama Rao as both women came from an economicallyprlvlleged class. Although both of them often speak aboutHlndulsm and the complexities of Indian culture, theirdiscussions tend to have the aura of Intellectual exercises.Muhherlee is ambivalent about her North Amerlcan experience.Outraged by raclsm In Canada where she lived with ClarkBlaise, her Cancdlan husband, she flnds Amerlca a 'havenf.Stlll she wants tc, be seen "as an Amerlcan writer in thetradition of other hmerlcan wrlters whose parents or grand

parents had passed through Ellis Island" (Darkness 1985,3).Mukherlee makes a distinction between herself and otherwell bred post-colonials like Vikram Seth who longsto be mainstreamed into 'the new generation ofWhltmans, Malamuds, Phillp Roths and JohnUpdikes'.Sometimes a thorough process ofdecolonization may be necessary 'To attempt to shedour Indiannesss, our South-Asian essences in orderto become wholly mainstreamed' in the majorityculture of North Amerlcan or the British Isles isperhaps altogether too artlflcial.Like Draupadi inthe Ramayana as each sarl 1s shed, a new sarigenerates lcself. We cannot honestly say farewell towhat 1s Indian withln us. (Jussawala 1988,595).As lmrnlgrant wrlters both Malamud and Mukherjee have comeout of their ethnlc shelters and proven to the outer world ofAmerica thelr lndlvldual capabllltles. As such if the rise ofmlnorlty llterature slgnlfres anythlnq clearly, ~t 1s thatJewlsh and Aslan-Indlan novelists have flnlshed wlth the lob ofadlusting to the new culture, and can now devotehlmself/herself to the truth whlch in Llonel Trllllng's words:" In lts essence llterature 1s concerned with self, and theparticular concerns of the llterature of the past two centuriesha; been wlth t - self ~ ln lts standlng quarrel wlth culture".(Quoted In Rlchman 1967,Zl) The contemporary form of thatquarrel has been bequeathed flrst to the American Jews byvirtue of hls history and later to Americanized Asian-Indians.Both the Jew and the Aslan were hitherto, relegated and pushed

to the backgrould by other gentlle and domlnatlng lmmigrantgroups. The sudden emergence of the Jewlsh-Amerlcan author hasoccured at preclsely the moment when few condltlons need botherhlm. Raclal amlty 1s no longer the myth whlch so many Jewlshwrlters yearned for In the past. Havlng won hls long strugglefor a place In soclety, the Jew 1s free as any man to wrrte asan American, and not as a rnlnority flgure. Perplexlngly, oneflnds that the best of Malamud's novels and storles, wllfullycultivate attitudes and backgrounds which are speclflcallyJewlsh. Moreover, these are exactly the works whlch haverecelved the largest share of crltlcal and popular acclalm. Inthe company of Slnger and Babel, Malamud the Jewlsh wrlter hascome lnto prornlnence when he has seernlngly disappeared as aseparate entlty.Ironically, the theme and trappings of hls formerailenatLon have hecome the lndlspensable features of thatpromlnence The Irony 1s compounded when one recalls that inthe past, ailenaxion bas the single most lrnportant lngredlentIn denylng the Jew an essential volce In hls adopted country.The greatness of any writer Ls perhaps ldentlflable by what hedoes, not let hlmself or hls readers forget about humanexistence. Wrltlng about man and hls survlval, the Jewlshwrlter has In the maln devoted hlmself to forwarding thatposslblllty of an end to the torments of allenatlon whlch

Rmerica presented. Adapting tonot wrong to say thus:his people's identity, it isthat thelr efforts met with success is alsounderstandable for lt llves on in the multitudes ofidentities through which the Jew has turned into aneat comfortable American the endless stream of Wisebumblers, pious book-store owners, gentle Savantsand garrulous but loving mothers (Richman 1968,21)Having put an end to social allenatlon the American-Jewlsh writer has reaped a more profound allenatlon. If notcut-off from soclety, he 1s cut-off from hlmself. And thlstheme permeates Malamud's flctlon. His hero 1s the"unintegrated mask-wearer", seeklng for a connectlon wlth theworld. But In falllng to connect wlth hls own nature, he flndsthe world one of chaos and of unfulfillment. Malamud'scharacters possess an dnclent ldentlty and thelr relatlonshlpto thls ldentlty determines thelr development. It 1s thestruggle to establlsh unlty wlth some unacknowledged centre ofone's personality. Thls quest for lost roots drrects Malamud'sJewlsh heroes.Wlth the regular Influx of lmmrgrants Amerlca is alteredtoday. All around, the face of Amerlca has changed-whether youllve In clties, teach In unlversltles or rlde public transport-the change 1s qulte obvlous. But unfortunately, nobody appearsto speak for them-the new Americans from non-traditionallmmlgrant countries, also don't find a place ln present day

flctlol. Perhaps, the days of Faulkner and Hemlngway are over.Whlle Amerlcan movles and muslc are quite influential, fictionor novels are not able to catch-up wlth them. The Americanequivalents of Garzia Marquez, Mllan Kundera, Salman Rushdie,V.S. Nalpaul, Nadla Gordlmer, Levls and Applefeld areconspicuous by thelr absence. Instead one flnds thenovels ofTon1 Morrlson or a Lore Segal. Amerlcan flctlon about mlnorltyexperlences and lmmlgrant experlences llke The Ruq Merchant byPhlllp Lopate, Continental Drlft by Russel Banks andMeltlnq Pot by Lynne Sharon Schwartz have the deslred range ofvlslon and the energy and urgency of sheer Invention.The crLx of t?e problem 1s thit both lnslde and outsideAmerlca, "Amerlca? flcticn" has become synonymous wlth themainstream, well-promoted novelor story collection -andclever, mannered and brlttle as lt 15, has lost the power totransform the world's ~maglnation. "Mlnlmallsrn", appears to bethe bllnd-spot In current Arnerlcan wrltlng. Mlnimalism alms forrecognltlon, namlng the dread, lnvoklng the villains and thevlctlms, but avoldlng the confrontatlon. Mlnlmallst flctlon 1sdeft, a shorthand of shared, almost coded responsesto collective dread.. Minlmallst techniques seem ahealthy response to too much comrnunlcation, too muchmanipulation.. Minlmalism 1s that search for Eastereggs In a plastic garden In the middle of a suburbanshopping mall. Life, barely I feel that minimalismdrsguises a dangerous soclal agenda. Minimalism isnativist, lt speaks In whlspers to the initiated. Asa new-comer, I can feel lts chlll, as though it were

deslgned to keep out anyone with too much story totell 1Mukherlee 1988,2)Mukherlee's complaint that she 1s being kept out Of thedemaqds of mainstream American literature 1s understandable.One has to change and cater to the taste and requirements ofchanglnq tlmes. Mukherjee's world 1s different from theNlneteenth century lmmlgrant world. These new Americans are notwllllng to Walt for a generatlan or two to establishthemselves They're worklnq for themselves and thelr children.They are not In America to sadrlfice themselves for thefuture's sake. To paraphrase the words of Lt.Co1 Oliver North'slawyer, Brendan Salllvan "They're not exactly potted plantsu(Mukherlee 1988,2). They are characters In the latest Amerlcandrama.Lacklng a country, avoldlng all the messiness of rebirthas an lmmlgrant, the expatrlate or exlle, eventually harms eventhe flnest senslblllty. The natlve soclety marches forward andthe exiled wrlter preserves her lmage of lt in proseinzr-easlngly "mannered and self-referential". (Mukherjee1988,2). Unless one can make a vlrtue of memory and artifice,the deeply rooted exlle can end up, for all her genius,without an audience. Mukherlee 1s the klnd of wrlter who shiesaway from too much authorla1 InterventLon. Rushdie's Shame,Amltav Ghosl'.'~ Tt~e Cmcle of Reason and the Anglo-Indlan Allan

Sealey's The Trotter Name bear the marks of being such anexile. Eventhough an inheritor of Brahminlcal eleganceMukherjee would rather 'cash-ln on the other legacy of thecolonial vrjter-r1k.r dJallty. Hlstory forced Indlans to seethemselves as both the "We" and the "Other" and their languagereflected the:r slmultanelty. Perhaps, this hlstory-mandatedtralnlng In the ethnlc and qender-fractured world ofcontemporary Amerlcan flctlon, facllltates her easlly to"enter" llves flctlnnally, that are manifestly not her own.Amerlcan flctlon requlred both of Mukherjee and Malamudto "shed" thelr ethnlclty and "cater" to the demands of AmerrcaIn general. Staying aloof would help nelther of them.Marglnallty had the lmpllcatlon of standlnq apart, as theAmerican-Jewlsh writer was perceived to do wlth respect to bothsldes of the hypberi. Wheti-er there was the overlap between thecultures or a wanlng and an aldustment of the extreme conditionof allenatlon-the progress of asslmllatlon has continued toerode the traces of Jewlsh mores and ethos. The Amerlcan-Jewlshwrlter has slnce recsgnlzed that he 1s less marginally Amerlcanthan marqlnally Jewish. Even wher they are most 'modern' theAmerican-Jewlsh wrlters dramatlze the herltage they cannotescape. They still retalp thelr lrony and 'sacred' rage. Theyare In search of new lmages of divlnlty. The central thrust ofMalamud's strategy 1s to write about the slmplest and most

aslc emotions-the moral obligations to "give". Malamud modelshis characters on the '?.ch1emiel3* -to be a Jew is virtually tobe a schlemlel, to be moral-therefore, a blunderer.Mukherlee believes that Thrrd World material is some ofthe richest material ever given to a wrlter. she is confidentthat lt wlll never be recelved harshly by the Americanaudience. The wlt, polse and dellcate beauty wlll always berecelved warmly and applauded. Many or most masters of Amerlcanwrltlng have turned their backs on such a resourceful goldmlne. Indlan-Americans should be seen and considered In thetradltlon of mlnorlty lmmlqrants llKe second-generation Jewish-Amerlcans. Itallan-Amerlcans, Irlsh-Americans or French-Canadians. Indians may look a llttle dlfferent and havedlfferent soundlng names, but they are also In America llkeother immrqrants for the same purpose-to llve and let live.They may commlt blunders In thelr hurry to get a hold andsettle down in Amerlca, but basically, at heart, they aremoralistic and human.One proves one's Amerlcanlsm by llvlng in peace wlth allthe other "Amerlcans", by agreeinq to respect soclal manynessrather than by pledglng alleqlance to one group. Democracyrequired c it!.zens of a certaln sort-autonomous, selfdlsclpllned,capable of co-operation and compromise. Curiously,'Schlemle1'- the well-meanlng bungler, a morallstic Jew.

"Americanlsatlon" did not touch the deeper self. The ongoingimmlgration makes it difficult to see the real success ofAmerlcanlzatlon in creatlnq distlnctlve types, characters,styles and artlfaCtS of all sorts. Americans recognize oneanother, take prlde In things that fellow Americans have madeand done and idertify with the national community. Americanimmlgrant-soclety has no choice. Tolerance 1s a way of muddlingthrough when any alternative pollcy would be vlolent anddangerous.An ethnlc Amerrcan is someone who can llve his spiritualllfe as he chooses, on elther slde of the hyphen. In thls senseAmerlcan cltlzenshlp 1s anonymous, for lt doesn't requlre afull cornmltment to Amerlcan natlonallty. The all lmportantrdeologlcal cornmltment 1s the so;e pre-requlslte of Americancltlzenshlp. Amerlcan population lacks coheslon and itscultural llfe lacks coherence. At the core, the left slde ofthe hyphen 1s stronger; along the periphery, the right sideseems stronger though never fully dominant. What Amerlca offerdwas as eluslve and ethereal as the speculatlve condltlons oflts own polltlcal founding. Amerlca 1s lmaglnatlon's own land.The practlce of fiction in Amerlca has been a necessarlly selfconsciousaffalr-lt has contributed to lts greatness. Americanauthors, In faclng crltlcal problems, have produced some of the

finest, most characteristic Innovative wrlting.Essentially,the integrity of thelr finished work was foremost onthese writersr mlnds; the sometimes painfulawareness of threats to that integrity often madetheir final products masterpieces (Xlinkowitz1980,g).In a sense, all Amerlcan flctlon is experimental. Toexperiment with dlalectlc dimension In man's/womenPs thoughtsbecomes an interestlng aspect of modern writing.Both Malamud and Mukherjee treat manls/woman's thoughtsand actlons as external manlfestatlons of the dlalecticalelements wlthln hlmlher. The malor thoughts or actlons inMalamud and Mukher:ee are "transqresslons" and "resolutions".In oraer to preserve hls/her own self, manlwoman transgresses -lt 1s hls/her transqresslon In the social, professional, legal,domestic, famlllal and sexual level; and In order to punlshhlmself/herself man/woman efface themselves - lt 1s hislherself-punishment. Both Malamud and Mukherjee just do notconslder the pro~lem of transgresslon and resolutlon as merelya soclal drama between man and man or man and woman, but as onethat deeply involves the metaphyslcal status of manjwoman. Thedialectic of life and death at the metaphyslcal level becomesthe dlalectlc of transgression and resolution at the morallevel, but the reglon whlch suffers thls dlalectical movementsof the rnetaphy~ica~ and moral forces 1s the human psyche-caughtup In the vortex of transgressions, sufferlnq and compassion -

80 that it becomes the area of exploration in both Malamud andMukherjee who present a flne opportunity to the scholar toprobe the two types of lmmlgrant sensibility.We see an unconscious slrnllarlty, a spiritual unlty and amoral afflnity - between Malamud and Mukherlee in thelrprofound consideration of rnanlwoman ~n their flction - toexplore whlch In detall is the alm of thls study. Malamud andMukherlee who hailed from countries whlch were considered thenparts of the Eastern world have now become parts of the Westernllterary hemisphere because they *.ere Influenced by mastersespecially of European literature Also they have a remarkablerange of reference tc problems related to polltlcs, psychology,morality, religlon etc. The key for such a widespread interestand Influence lles In thelr profoundly modern way of looklng atthe perennial problems of man/woman rn thelr flctlon. Both arequlte fascrnated and awed before the mystery of manlwoman, andthey consider 'man/womanf as a rlddle to be pondered over andover agaln ln order to arrlve at hls/her secret - apropos allthelr storles are explorations lnto the true nature ofmanlwoman.All the tltles of Malamud's elght novels - The Naturdl(1952), The Asslstant (1957), A New Llfe (1961),% Fixer(1966), Plctures Fldelman l1969), The Tenants (19711,Dubin's Llves (1979), God's Grace (1982) and the unflnlshed

The PeoDle; and three collections of short stories, W Ma&Barrel (1958), Idlots D&& (1963) and Rembrandt's (1973)refer directly, indirectly or metaphorically to man. Similarlymost of the titles of Mukherjee In her three novels:Tiuer's Dauuhter (1971). Wife (1976) and Jasmlne (1989); thetwo collections of short stories : parkness (1985) and aMiddleman and Other Storles(1988); and the two works of non-fiction: Davs and Nluhts Ln Calcutta (1977) and The Sorrow andLix 'EE~QK (198il are drrectly or lndlrectly related to thecondltlon of man:womal..The spirltual relatlonshlp between 'creator' and his'creatlon' cannot be underestrmated In the case of wrlters ofsuch calibre as Malamud and Mukherlee because thelr creatlon isnothlnq but their 'self-effacement' - thelr art consists intransmutlng 'persolallty' Into 'impersonality'. Thls fact glvesan authentlclty to their creatlon. They wrote on what theyfelt, experienced and llved In thelr life : the architecture ofthelr creatlon rests on thls authentic base. And thls spiritualunlty not only between them and thelr creatlon but also betweenthe authors themselves (to be discussed In detall below in thisregard) 1s the basls :or thls comparative study of them.In matters of literary influence Colerldqe's paradoxholds good: "the artist receives what he gives". (Quoted inKarl 1979,87) If Mukherjee had not had the root of the matter

~n her, if her native instincts had not led her in thedlrectlon of evocative metaphor and atmospheric density, shecould scarcely have been accessible to the lnfluencespostulated here. In the absence of any critic or wrlter,conslderlnq Mukherlee alongside Malamud In thelr study andmaking a full-fledged study of them, the need 1s imperative tomake a comparatlve study of thls klnd. It 1s not a study toestablish the influence of Malamud on Mukherlee, nor 1s it astudy of evaluatlng thelr creatlve output, but lt 1s acomparatlve study to see a thematlc rapprochement between twodlfferent mlnds engaged In creatlon at dlfferent places and atdlfferent times.In fact, both Malamud and Mukherlee are the explorers ofthe same lnterlor landscape of man/woman In their flctlon.Malamud and Mukherlee not only perceived, experienced andaccepted duallty wlthln themselves and rn the world outsldethem, but made use of them, consciously or unconsciously inthelr flctlon also, the maln thrust of which 1s the portrayalof 'manlwoman' cauqht In the dialectical forces wlthln andaround them. The present enqulry postulates that the common'Gestalt' between Malamud and Mukherlee 1s thls dualltyexpressed In terms of man'slwoman's psyche cauqht ln thedlalectlc of transgression and resolution related to hisjhermetaphysical and moral sub-stratum.

Both Malamud and Mukher~ee reach the lnner and outer lifeof manlwoman through hisfher psyche ; they go below lt andabove lt and the resultant vlslon of manjwoman becomes spatialln that man 1s neither thls nor that, nor 1s he/she either thisor that but both; hejshe belng afflicted wlth at least twocontrary forces at a level beneath hls/her conscious psyche.Llke Freud they propose that man at hls best and at hls Worst1s sub2ect to a comman set of explanations that good and evilstem from the same root: that nether depths of the lnteriorlandscape 1s the meetlng ground of the arts of Malamud andMukherlee.The baslc difference between Comparative Llterature onthe one hand and Natlonal Llterature, General Llterature andWorld Llterature on the other, with whlch lt 1s assumed to beoverlapping 1s that the former comblnes both 'matter' and'method', whereas the latter are concerned only wlth 'matter'.Thepurlst approach of the French school 1s countered by thelrberallsm of the American school in expanding lts domain fromllteratures to other areas of human rxpresslon. In thls processof 1ts ever-wldenlng gyre, lt would do well ~f lts centralfocus 1s not on ~ t s matter but on lts method: comparatlvlsm.Adeflnltlon of Comparative Llterature based on ~ t smethod wlll keep fresh its distinction In the diffusion of ltsscope. Ulrlch Welssteln points out that: "as early as 1901, the

English scholar H.M.Posnett was complaining that the term,'comparative Literature' (derived from the French) deslqnatesthe obiect of study (l.e., its matter) rather than the methodemployed. He hlmself was compelled, as he put it, "to make thename of subject matter do service for the uncolned name of thestudy of the subiect matter." (1973,9) Whatever explanationsare glven to term ' Comparative Llterature' to exorclze ~t oflts mlsnomerlsm, from its etymological bases In French,Italian, Spanish. Portuguese, Dutch and German, its basicconnotation that lt 1s a method flrst and matter next should beborne in mlnd whlle dlscusslng lts scope and deflnit~on.It 1s only the method employed and not the matter to besublect under lt that will malntaln rts dlstlctlon and ldentltyas an autonomous dlscrpllne. Comparative llterature shouldabstract a common 'Gestalt' (structure) from out of theconstituent units of the two (or more) texts, or authors, orliteratures or dlscipllnes under its scrutlny ln order toarrlve at the baslc truth about them. It 1s In this sense thatthe method 'Cornparatlve Llterature' 1s employed In thisthesls .The striklng slmilarlty between two baslc Gestalts may bethe result of influence, unconscious or consclous, or theresult of accidental colncldence. "analogles without contact".(Aldrldge 1969.5) If it is the latter, comparative llterature,

apart from maklng authors mutually illuminate each other,becomes a formldable lnstrument of revealing and justrfying the'oneness' of humanity, whlch will lead to see "literature' as"one" according to Wellek and Warren (1968,50). Thus whileconstructing the archltectonics of Comparative Literature, theprocess of ldentlfying simllaritles between the structures ofthought ln different authors separated by the chasm of tlme andplace ln order to arrlve at a baslc truth common to themreveals and Iustlfles the rapprochement between them in a levelevidently below the consclous psyche.The metaphysics of thelr dialectical manjwoman who 1sconscious of the simultaneous existence of two extremes withlnhlm/her 1s discussed ln Chapter I1 where spatlally dislocatedfrom thelr old envlronment and allenated by the new world, thelmmlqrant characters are compelled to exerclse their newlyacqulred freedom for their survlval In the strange land. Caughtin thelr existential dllemma, they cannot but 'suffer'.Compasslon recognlses the falliblllty of manlwoman. How theworld of transgressions of the characters of both the wrlters,Malamud and Mukherlee, 1s countered by their world of sufferingand compassion is the sublect of study In Chapter 111. Afterexplaining the aversion of Malamud and Mukherlee for externalpunlshment, Chapter IV describes the process of the splrltualpunlshment In thelr protagonlsts. Transcending Into the world

of "passlon and purgation", 'myth' 1s explored in the Contextof security to the religious and metaphysical concerns of humanbeings, thereby uniting the real with the ideal. The struggleto connect and establish unlty wlth some unacknowledged centreof one's personality, a quest for lost roots, directs bothMalamud's and Mukherjee's protagonists. Chapter V probes Intothe Jewlsh literary tradltlon of Malamud and hls heroes and theHlndu-Brahmlnlcal, Aslan-Indlan roots of Mukherlee and herherolnes before arrlvlng in the Unlted States. The concludingchapter sums-up their immigrant vlslon of the world ascharacterlsed by a strong moral centre.Malamud's reverence for man and Mukherlee's concern forwomen are Integral to thelr moral vlslon. The chapter ends byexaminlng the dlalectlcal vlslon of llfe of Malamud andMukherlee from the polnt of vlew of afflrrnation - therebyconflrmlng the hypothesls that the two wrlters have been'malnstreamed' as exponents of the lmmlqrant senslbillty lnmodern Amerlcan flctlon.

CHAPTER I iTransgressions : The Haunting of America

CHAPTER I1TRANSGRESSIONS : THE HAUNTING OF AMERICAThere exist in everyman, at any time,TWO SIMULTANEOUS POSTULATES:One of these postulates tendingtowards God, the other towards Satan.-- Baudelaire'Identity' may be defined as the process In the psyche ofsome sensltlve persons, of creative self-realisation and theidea of 'Natlonallty', the establishing of a collective image.To create an ldentity is part of the essential business of anartist. A sense of nationality may grow out of the discovery ofldentlty and the more frequently ~t happens, the better ithelps to establish a tradltlon that 1s both distinctive androoted. ThereforeIn any event what is supposed to be clear is thatthe Indlan who wrltes in Engllsh 1s 'ex-hypothesiun-Indian'. Helshe is a product of two cultures andtherefore abnormal by the standards of either.Histher sensibility is mixed and therefore 'impure'.In the dlalogue between East and West helshe canspeak for neither partlclpant, though helshe mayhave some usefulness when the dialogue breaks down.(Ralan 1965,3 )Perhaps, the presence of two cultures In onz's mind formsa wlder and palpable basis on which to start the quest forIdentity. In a sense, the manlwoman with mlxed allegiances is

contemporary Everyman / Everywoman and to deliberately shutone's self off from the challenge of thlngs that are not Indianbetrays an obsession with lnsularlty.Today, India 1s faclng stlff radical challenges not onlyIn its sociological landscape but perhaps even in theimmemorlal landscape of the heart. The clash is not simplybetween East and West but between the 'mores' of the pre-urbanclvlllzatlon and one commlted to drastlc rndustrial growth.Perhaps, It 1s not posslble for the Indlan tradltlon wlth itslmmense capaclty for assimilation and unique power ofsynthesis, to really come to terms wlth the Inevitable newsltuatlon, wit.hout deep erosions In its fundamental character.Actually, man (or woman )wlth mlxed senslbllity is caughtbetween crcssfires, d h ~ l e creatlng an lmage out of thischallenge. The successful handllng of the situation helps Inmalnstreaming-the conviction that life is the expression ofboth the tradltlon and the actual. W.B. Yeats has expressed theIdea of the lnterlor vision and the exterior landscape in hislast poem 'Under Ben Bulben' :Many times man llves and diesBetween hls two eternltlesThat of race and that of soulAnd anclent Ireland knew lt all.Both Bernard Malamud and Bharati Mukherleetreat man's(woman's) - (hereafter 'man' stands for 'woman' also ) thoughts

and sctlons as external manlfestatlons of the dialecticalelements wlthin hrm. The malor 'thoughts' and 'actions' inMalarrud and Muknerjee are utransgresslons". In order topreserve his own self, man transgresses. It 1s hiscrrae/transgressio~ in the social, moral or religious level andIn croer to punish hlmself man effaces himself-it is his selfpunishment.It 1s a little too complex to be understood rn itstatallty. Whlle Mukherlee handles the problem of transgressionand redemptlon between woman and man as a social drama, Malamudtreat.s :he problem betweea man and man at a deeper level-themetaph{slcal status of nan. Transgression 1s the externalmanlfestatlon of the llfe-instincts because lt 1s aimed atself-preservation. In the extreme sltuatlon man isexlstentlally prone to preserve hls self, but thls exlstentlalPrEservatlon of hls self becomes at another level moraldestruction of his self. The dlalectlc of llfe andtra:isqresslcn at the metaphysical level becomes the dialecticof transqresslon and redemptlon at the moral level, but thereglon whlch suffers thls dialectical movements of themetaybyslcal and moral forces 1s the human psyche and thisbecomes the area of exploration In both Malamud and Mukher~ee.

~~~~~~------------>Destru~ti~e

'broad nature' makes lts initial but full bloom as Levin in Aand as Jasmlne in Jasmine. The ideological as well asformal afflnlty between these two modern novels reveals how farMukherlee comes close to Malamud in her basic vision of man.Both the novels which are conscious meditations upon man andhrs destlny provlde us wlth basic data to arrive at theirmetaphysics of man as embodled ln Levrn and Jasmine.- A - New 1s a good huntlng ground for philosophical,soc~olog~cal and moral formulas. Conslderlng lt a primarydocument whlle evaluating the hlstory of modern thought, we mayplace lt beslde Hegels' equally penetratlng diagnosis of themodern soul's lnner condltlon ln The Phenomenoloav - o f~(Wlnfleld,l980,399). Joseph Frank speaks elaborately of ltsmodern importance and influence thus:Few works in modern literature are more widely readcr more often cited than Dostoevsky Notes fromUnderaround. The desigation "underground man" hasentered into the vocabulary of the modern educatedconsciousness, and this character has now begun -llke Hamlet, Don Qulxote, Don Juan and Faust - totake on the symbolic stature of the great archetypalliterary creations. No book or essay on thesltuatlon of modern culture would be compeletewlthout some alluslon to Dostoevsky's figure. Everyimportant cultural development of the past halfcentury Surrealism, Crisls Theology, Existentialism,has clalmed the underground man as its own; and whenhe has not been adopted as a prophetic anticipation,he has been held up to exhlbitlon as a luridlyrepulsive warning. (1961,l)Bernard Malamud, one may convincingly declare, is the

'tfirst important American writer to shape out* his earlyexper~ences in the immigrant mllieu a distintive style oflmaginatlon and to a lesser degree a distinctive technique offlctlon as well. With a ear for the rhythms of speech and thetonalities of implication, an eye for the shading of theattltude and feeling of Jewish folk culture he has created afictional world uniquely his own.Ii that 1s Malamud's achievement, In Bharatl Mukherjee'sfictional worldone discovers portraits of herself and heralternate selves. She gradually moves away from themes ofexpatrlatlon and nostalgia for old traditional homes to focuson changing Identitles and the formation of emotional ties withNorth America. Immigration from the Thlrd World to the U.s.forher 1s a metaphor for the process of uprootlng and rerootlng orwhat her husband Clark Blalse, ln his book Resldentcalls'uniiousement' and 'rehousement'. The lmmlgrant characters inher navels go thrcugh extreme transformatlon in Amerlca and atthe same tlme alter the country's appcance and psychologicalmake-up. As Mukherjee herself says: "In some ways, they arellke European lmmlgrants of earller eras. But they havedifferent Gods. And they come for dlfferent reasons". (1990,33)The Jewish folk figure on which Malamud has modelled mostof hls protaqonlsts is the 'schlemiel', the well-meaningbungler, compounded with the uschllmazel",the hapless soul

who is lnvarlably at the wrong end of the bungling. The Waynalamud handles thls doubly 111-starred flgure illuminates hiswhole artlstlc relationship to his Jewishness. Malamud treatshlm - most memorably in the Fldelman storles - with a veryspecial quality of amused sympathy modified by satiricawareness. Malamud's protagonlsts are 'schlemiels' who talk tothenseLves and repeatedly engage in self-confrontation. LikeFldelman, they are shrewdly but futile aware of thelr own'7l~nltatlons - "self confessed farlures" caught In thelr owntIaps and rankling over thelr predicament. "To be a schlemlel-for Malamud 1s almost lnterchangeable with the ldea of being aJew-rrelns ts assume a moral stance ln his frctlonal world".(Alter 1970. 5)Ceymoux Levln, the protagonist of & New Life, is aBtypical Malamudlan 'schemlel' who comblnes ln himself thetralts of a 'schl~mazel'. Avictlm of hls own wrong choices,Levln considers hls llfe "a sad hash of beglnnlngsv. He sees"In the strewn garbage of hls lrfe, errors, mlshaps. Ignorance,experience from whrch he learned nothing". (NL 228). &1s at once an academlc satrre and a "blldungsroman", deplctlngLevln's quest for new llfe. Malamud has removed the "schlemiel"hero from a qhettolzed New York of The Assistant across thecuntlnent to rascadia college, a thlniy disguised verslon ofOregon State Colleqe, where Malamud taught for almost a decade

from 1949. The change gives both his hero and the fiction in~hlch he 1s embodied a sense of dislocation.Leslle Fiedler remarks that "A New L&& is about theFlftles, almost as much as it 1s about the West; the age ofMcCarthylsm and Cold War" (Fledler 1977,150). The collegeserves asthe back - drop of the novel, Levin struggles toteach as the educational system at Cascadia miserably fails toteach "how to keep clvillzatlon from destroying itself" (NL101). Wlth flne satiric thrust. Malamud cuts into the morass ofFreshman composltlon, the evaluation of teachers ln terms ofpopularity, the ln-flghting for the soon-to-be vacated positionof the Chalrman and the demise of the concept of thehurnanltles. Levln's career shows us in the words of Louls Rubin"not marl as teacher, but teacher as man". (Rubln 1962,512)Jasmine the herolne of Bharathl Mukher~ee's novel JasmlneDoves from East to West to frnd a new llfe, llke Levln. In thenovel deallng wlth the Indla of the Elqhtles, Jasmine thencalled +tiwas born a Hlndu In independent India. She wasbroughizn oral traditions and eplc lrterature In whlch animalscan talk, blrds can debate ethlcal guestlons and monsters canchange shapes. Llke Mukherjee, Jasmlne was taught to belleve inthe existence of alternate realltles and thls bellef makesitself evldent In her flctlon. Jasmlne is exposed to the West,through absorption, malnly of lts language and mores. She finds

~t dlfflcult to dissoclate the language from culture and herprlmary emotlons from language. Her's is the problem ofcommunication, the inability to face-up to one'semotionalcrack-up. She is in the predicament of an Indian widow findingherself out of depths in a foreign country with an alienmllieu-a klnd of culture-shock. Actually, lt isthe vlslon of lying serenely on a bed of flre underpalm trees in my whlte sarl had motivated all theweeks of sleepless, half-starved passage, the numbedsurrender to various men for the reward for of anorange, a blanket, a sllce of cheese (Jasmine 120).she had chosen America as the place to dle. The rhythmsof the new India wlth lts basic tendency towards unpredictablevlolence has rendered her a wldow.The search for the real is a functlon of the quest forthe ldentlty ln both Malamud's and Mukherjee's flction. Thisnotlon of the identlty is especially cruclal for the JewlshAmerlcan wrlter and the Thlrd-WorldAmerlcan wrlter, caughtbetween an Amerlcan ethos, hls/her Jewlshj Thlrd World self andrworld. Malamud and Mukherjee have been preoccupied with therecovery of the real primltlveness in modern man and that tooIn a hlghly clvlllzed world.For a further lllustration we must turn to theintellectual and rellglous cllmates of the early Twentiethcentury Europe and India, which were characterized by trends of

thought based on Reason, Science, Industrialism,utllitarlanism, Positivism, Enlightment, Socialism andNihllrsm. Especially the rapld growth in sclence, industry andtechnology made the people believe that the logic of materialproqress would resolve all the intractable human problems. Theprevalent belief was that the sclentlflc and mathematicaldeductions should be the basls for the analy sls of the lnnernature of man that he was innately good and amenable to reasonand that once enlrghtened as to hls pure ~nterests, sclence andreason would ultimately enable them to construct a perfectsoclety - a Crystal palace on thls earth.In Amerlca both Malamud and Mukherlee descended Into thehell of not only Jewlsh and Aslan - Indlan lmmlgrantsenslblllty but of human nature also and were in consequencephysically broken but spiritually and artlstlcally awakened,for lt is the blackness of thelr experience In the remotestareas of darkeness whrch has a strong lmpress upon theirnetaphyslcs of man. And to extract the real prlmltlve resldueIn the heart of modern man-the modern lmmlgrant man and womanInto Amerlca-1s thelr primary concern In their novels andshortstorles. Thls also demonstrates that the basic ingredientsof the human nature are the same.LeVln's and Jasmine's new llfe, then, 1s to be acontlnual engagement wlth the West, with nature, with a

community/communities, with some facts current and traditionalIn American hlstory. They have to interact with social forces,wlth Amerlcan clvilizatlon and American folk. Although the realthlngs are there, both Levin and Jasmlne never come to the partof partlcipating in them. Towards the begi4ng of the novelLevin knows and he chooses to avold the events and meanlngs ofcurrent hlstory. "America was" he says, "ln the best sense of abad term, un-American" (NL 21) and he 1s "content to be hlddenamld forests and mountains In an unknown town in the FarWest". (NL 30) To hlm "teaching was ltself sanctuary-to beenclosed In a warm four-walled classroom". (NL 41) Towards theend of the novel he commits hlmself to soclal leadership.Jasmlne also wants to leave her country for the far West. Shetells her husband Prakash Vl]hafter thelr marriage:We'll go to Amerlca. ... I thought of the old manunder the banyan tree. If we could first get awayfrom Indla, Chen all fates would be cancelled. Weldstart wlth new fates, new stars. We could say or beanythlng we wanted. We'd be on the other side ofthe earth out of God's sight. (Jasmine 84-85).Which ever slde of the earth one is, even I£ it is out ofGod's slght, crimes and transgressions are reflections of thesoclety In which one llves. Crlme 1s a protest against theabnormality of the soclety and nothlng more, Crime rate couldbe contained more by a rational organlsatlon of the societythan by rellglon. Quite often man's lrratlonallty would run

counter to their zeal for reformation and perfection. Ifsociety 1s normally organized there will be no crime, becausethere wlll be nothing to protest against and all men and womenwlll become righteous in one instant. The underground forces inman account mostly for his acts, whether crimlnal or not he ishelpless before these forces swaying his activities. That iswhy man's predicament in this world is traglc and unfortunate.crlme,whlch 1s thus ontoloqlcally the expresslon of the darkforces In man, manifests soclally as a transgression of a codeexpllcltly secular In Malamud and religious In Mukherjee. Thlsinnate and hldden thing whlch 1s paradoxically a strength andweakness 1s referred to as a fundamental weakness In bothMalamud and Mukherlee. Malamud's Levln 1s dlmly conscious ofthe fundamental Ealslty In hlmself and hls convlctlons and heattributes ~t to the dead weight of his instlnct whlch he wouldnot step over, again through his weakness. From thisfundamental falslty or weakness within us nobody can escape asConrad's Marlow says in an afflrmative tone:Nothing more awful1 to watch a man who has beenfound out, not in a crime but in a more thancrrmlnal weakness. The commonest sort of fortitudeprevents us from becoming criminals in a legalsense: it is weakness unknown, but perhapssuspected, as in some parts of the world you suspecta deadly snake In every bush-from weakness that mayIle hldden, watched or unwatched, prayed against ormanfully scorned, repressed or may be ignored morethan half a llfe time, not we d us 1s safe.(Conrad 1968:42-43)

The ontological falsity or weakness in the heroes Of~alamud and the heroines of Mukherlee comes to the surfaceunconsciously ln a crltical situation, and theirheroes/heorlnes recognize that they are ridiculously subject toa flendlsh appalling loke by belng caught unawares in theircrlmlnal weakness. One may call it "sln" or "folly". Actually,~t 1s a violation of the human bond rather than of the divinelaw-a transgresslon.Malamud's short storles In the collection The MaaE--where the traglc suffering of the Panessas in "TheB1llt', Lieb in "The Loan" and Rosen In "Take Plty" acquiremeanlng In thelr compassionate reponse to their needs ofsuiferlnq brethren. The prlnclpal sublect of Malamud's shortstorles 1s the ambivalence of human nature. "The Billu forexample emphasizes the duallty of human nature In whlchcompasslon wars wlth self Interest, conscience with greed. Atenement ]a nLter, Wllly Schlegal takes advantage of anelghbourly grocer, Mr. Panessa by running up a bill of erghtythree dollars and then switching over to a near by self servicemarket. Obsessed by guilt he develops a hatred for the elderlyPanessa. When he recelves a letter from Mrs. Panessa pleadingfor ten dollars for her srck husband Wllly hldes in the cellar,but the next day he pawns his over coat and runs back wlth themoney only to dlscover the grocer belng carried off in a

coffrn. Wllly's slnking heart becomes " A black paintedw

from thelr idealised self.When In extremity man is true to his self then it turnsinto 'transgression' at another level. Dostoevsky says "....on earthnzture.man strives for an ldeal that is contrary to hisWhen he flncs he cannot achleve that ldeal .... hesuffers and he calls thls condition sin " (Quoted inJonet 1976,134) Malamud's heroes are left wlth no other optionthan to 'transgress'whlle struggling for the ideal.Slmllarly, a ty~iical Mukherlee herolne wants to test how farshe should turnout: faithful to that ldeal conception of One'sown personality, every woman sets for herself secretly.Ideal selves of their herolnes run parallel to the laws oftra3lt;onal morality, but at the same tlme run counter to theirreal selves and the gap between these two selves'5'transgresslon' ln both the novelists. This fall in the moraypsychlc status of the heroesJheroines that is, their psycho-moral fall occurs In a crltlcal srtuatlon In a mist.characterlsed by ~solatlon, possession, and duallty affectingthelr mlnds.TheBoth Malamud and Mukherlee sublect thelr heroes/heroinesto a crltlcal situation to study thelr behaviour in a period ofemergency. When they are In lts grlp they cannot but realizetheir lnner self whose Irrational forces make important thepower oi external restraints such as Religlon and Morality in

controlling them. They experience a mist in which they committhelr transgressions inevitably.Transgression is thus theresult of an lntellectual/ethlcal error in perception in acrltlcal moment.Almost every transgressor 1s subject to afallure of wlll and reasoning power by a chlldlshphenomenal heedlessness at the very Instant when prudence andcautlon are most essential. There is some kind of eclipse ofreason and fallure of wlll-power at the same time oftransgresslon. As Conrad says In The Nature of a Crime..... every human belng knows what it 1s to act,irrationally, under the stress of some passion orother. We are drawn along irresistably : we committhe predestined follies or the predestined heroisms: the other slde of our being acts in contraventionof all our rules of conduct or of Intellect ..... wesee a vision of a state of mind In whlch morality nolonger exists : we are qlven a resplte, a rest : anlntervai in which no standard of conduct oppressesus (Quoted In Deane 1980,591).Aandcomparlso? of the transgressions of Malamud andMukherlee nutatls mutandls wlll reveal how the act 1s performedin a moral mlst. The heroes/herolnes are irreslstably awakenedto the nlqhtmare of their self and they experience a break-downIn the course of thelr psycho-moral fallThe Worlds of Malamud and Mukherlee brlm withtransqresslons: the major transqresslon In Malamud is one ofthe 'tconsclence'l and in Mukherjee, "morals".All the elghtnovels of Malamud, Natural, Assistant, A New Life,

ya&. , Pictures Q€ ridelmarl, Us Tenants, DubinfsEI9EI: deal with the transgression of the humanconscience. Similarly most of the stories of Mukherjee can begrouped as those dealing with 'moralistic' violations,especially The Tiaer's Dauuhter, and Jasminr and thestories in Darkness LC? Middleman U Storieq.There is a vast difference between Malamud and Mukherjeetrapping their heroeslheroines into the net of transgression.For Instance, we are not unaware of the difference between theStature of a Levln and OfCJasmlne, though the dlfference can beexplaired. Malamud's heroes seem to be more aware of thecri~lnai potentiai in them than Mukherlee's heroines, becausethe latter seem tcb be caught unawares In crlminal situations,but thls dlfference is only of degree and not of kind becausebotn are shrouded in a mist-the former by the extreme awarenessand the latter by their extreme unawareness, so that they couldnot avoid the criminal situation. Their actlons turn out to becrlminal because of the human context in which they findthemselves. They come to do bad or good only when impelled bythe instincts of self-preservation in an extremity. Theirheroeslheroines find themselves between two kinds of freedom:The freedom to transgress and the freeedom to get away from thetransgression; the former refers to hls/her momentary contactwith the demonical self and the latter to the prompting ofand

hls/her moral self-but the former overwhelms the latter.In the quest for "new llfe", Malamud's protqonlsts donot just limit themselves to the struggle for survival in thenaturalistic world as do the protagonists of Theodore Dreiser,(Dreiser limits hls canvas to the naturallstlc world) but enterlnto relationships which the exlstentiallst psychoanalystLudwlq Binswanger calls 'Mit-welt',(llterally 'vlth-worldr).Although they appear to be 'schlemiels' destined to fail andlose, they are not just passive victims of fate andClrcumstances wlthout any capaclty to reslst ,or change.Instead, they have the splrltual strength wlthln them tocounter the external threat. As Malamud hlmself observes:"One of my Important themes 1s a man's hldden strength. I amvery much interested In the resources of the splrlt, thestrength people don't know they have untll they are confrontedWlth a crlsls". (Handy 1977.67).Roy Hobbs is revealed in The Natural as a schlemieldestined to fall. He 1s a vlctim of fate and circumstances - aprlsoner of his own prejud~ces and llluslons. Baseball or humanrelatlons call for a code of conduct based on feltresponslbllltyfor others. ROY vlolates the code and histransgressions result ~n his fallure both ln human relatlonsand baseball. Roy's lrratlonal pursult of money, fame and sex,hls refusal to learn from sufferlng or experience, his

Jnabll~ty to come out of the shell of egotlsm-all lead to hls.oralrlislntegration.-3le &s.&.&&r.t portrays the travails of a Jewish grocersmoothened by the frustrating effects of Depression and Anti-serltrsm. Although the novel is not a critique, rt probes thepsyche of an lndivldual fated to be lost In the vortex of life.The drudgery of hls dual routlne has made Morrls "weightless,unmanned, the victim In motlon of whatever blew at his back:wlnc, worries, debts, Karp, holdupnlcks, rulns. He dld not go;he wds pushed.of. "(TAHe had the wlll of a vlctlm, no wlll to speak183) Mnrrls 1s normally aqalnst gulles and trlcks.Hls only transqresslon lands hlm ln dlsmal farlure.lnahillty LC plark evil could be seen ln hls desperate and lnept-ttt?lnpt ta tiuri', h~ s,:r,rt, for lnsdrance money. Morrls suffersnialnly because of 31s honesty and moral lnteqrlty. Frankregrets hls laak of restraint and resolves to be dlsclpllned.He trles to lmpress upon Helen that he 1s " a very good quy" Inheart, and clalms that "even when I am bad I am good". (TA 126)Hls carsfully-bullt relation with Helen goes to pieces with hls"stupid" rr,ove ln the seduction attempt.HlsThe act oftrar~!;()rt.ss~on turns the passionate longing of Helen intovlolfnt hatred for Frank.111 F:ug, the protagsr,ist IS an agnostlc and freetillr),~; i:lut 01' necessity 80k conceals hls Jewlsh ldentlty and

takes up employment ln a dlstrict forbidden for Jews. Insteadof l~vlng like a Jew and facing llfe, Bok indulges lntransgression- Whlch a Jew is not expected to do (concealinghls legltlmate JewishhCCS) - and comes to pay a heavy prlce forthls concealment. Bok 1s suspected and arrested when aChristian boy 1s found dead. Hls concealment of Jewlsh falthcanflrms the S~Splci0n of the prosecuting officers. Bok pleadshls lnnocence In vain. He 1s thrown In prlson and kept therefor three years wlthout trlal or Indictment. Some men "grow asnen In prlson". (TF 72) The super human endurance of Boksustalns the indomitability of human splrit.Plctures of Fldelman is a burlesque of an American-Jew'sadventures wlth painting and sex In Italy. The crux of theproblem for Fldelman sprlngs from hrs concept of relationbetween art and llfe. He occaslonaly reallses theresponsibllltles of llfe gulded by the symbollc flgures llkebusskind and Beppo. Durlng hls travel through varlous Itallancltles, ~n pursult of different occupations, Fldelman comes toknow of hls own inadequacies and failures. Malamud 1slnterested more in "the wear and tear of hls soul rather thanthe trlals of hls ineptitude " (Davenport 1969,549)Regardlng the problem of cholce referred to by Yeats Inthe eplgraph of the novel that "the Intellect of man 1s forcedto choose-perfection of llfe, or af the work,"(MB 330).

idelman makes a greedy demand asklng for " Both " and sets outhls travel to Italy. He achieves neither because of hisegoism. Fldelman's refusal to give up hls sult for Susskind andtc return the money to the frustrated visltor of hisunderground exhlbitlon of holes and hls act of stealing hls ownpalntlng- an act of transgression-ail betray h ~ self-love andegotism.The Tenants centres aroundthe creatlve agony of twowrlters- Harry Lesser, a Jew and Wlllie Spearmint, a Black. Thenovel 1s a prob~nq stildy of creative process as well as thetangled web of stralned relations between two ethnlc races.Llke Plctures ot Fldelman, lt deals wlth the problem ofreiatlon of art to llfe. Lesser, the Jewlsh novellst, 1s aperfect formallst but falls short of ideas and struggles inva Ln t.of lnlsl zis iiould-be masterplece. Spearmlnt, the Negrorlovel~~t >as ihe authentic black experience but falls to giveit a coherent shape. Here, as ln Plctures of Fldelman, Malamudsuggests that l ~fc IS more than art. Both Lesser and Spearmlnttall to recoqnlsr the truth.aThe inadequacy of both the wrlters In thelr rzponse tolife end lobe IS evident in thelr relatlon to Irene Bell. WhlleLesser's wrltlng reveals psychoiog~cal tenslons. Spearmint'swork characterizes a revolutionary outburst of black anger.Enot~ons overpower technlque. Wh;leLesser's craft outweighs

hls theme, Spearmint's powerful theme betrays poor treatment.rphe problem starts when both writers exhlblt deficiencies Incompassion and love-a Clear transgression of the wrlters code.he first s ~gn of disharmony between the two wrrters comes outwith Harry's genulne crltlclsm of Wlllle's manuscprlt. "There'saflawed quallty, what you call blurred, that gives theshlfting effect that bothers you". (TT 58) He also points outthat black experience cannot become literature "Just by writing~t down" (TT 60). Willie who is deeply preludiced ag

oublnls marriage with Kitty, a widow, is one of conveniencenecessitated by mutual need.Both Dubln and Kxtty live Inthelr own worlds away from the present- Dubln In his lives ofthe dead, and Kitty in her rernlniscences of her former husbandand sewrated children.At the age of fifty six, Dubin isattracted by Fanny, a P ~O~~SCUOUS girl, less than half his age.He 1s In a fix, caught between hls obligation to his wife andpasslon for Fanny; this results in hls transgression-havlng anllllclt affair with Fanny.However, latter torn by a sense ofgullt towards hls wlfe, Dubin goes back to hls wife with love.Flnally the obllgatlon to wife trlumphs over the passion formistress.Malamud lndlcts modern clvlllzatlon for destroyingprlmrtlve values In god's Grace.The entlre effort of CalvlnCohn, the lcne survlvor is to reallze man's errors and not torepeat them.Prlmltlve condlt~ons are recreated by contrrvlngthe escape of C0h.n from the nuclear war and the Flood.Malamud trles to stress the dreadful lsolatlon of man throughCohn to underline the value of companionship.Driftingaimlessly on the lone oceanographlc vessel Rebekah-Q Cohnreallzes that "right words" and "Ylght life" acquire meaningOnly In relation to other human beings.Cohn almost becomes aspokesman of Malamud In hls concern for compassionate co-eXlst4nce.AS the tribe of chimpanzees on the Island

ln~reases, he Usurps the role Of a teacher by establishing anschooltree" to impress on the brutes the need for ethicalrcstralntHe tries to inspire a new awareness in them and ofmnklnd whlch had fallen because " men had falled each other inobligations and responslbllltles -failed to achlevebrotherhood, lost thelr lovely world, not to mention livlngllves".(GG 119) Cohn's transgressions-ralses the doubt: "whynad'nt H e created man equal to whom He had lmaglned?" (GG 136).This apparently provokes the wrath of God who fantasticallydescends on the island as a Plllar of Flre to knock him of hisstool saying :I am the Lord Thy Godwho created manto perfect Himself. (GG 137)Thls fantastic encounter 1s a symbollc manlfestatlon ofCohn's guilty conscience seeking ~ t s blame ln God for man'sImperfection.Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, John Updike and VonnegutJr. have all dealt with the problem of man's survlval Inrelatlon to four dlffernt problems which have affected the llfeOf modern man more adversely than any other problem. SaulBellow examlnes the theme of man's survlval In the context ofan anarchlc soclal atmosphere where one has to stretch One'scapabllitles to the mavlmum In order to remaln human. Malamuddeals wlth ~t In the context of a world considered for its

acial, political, institutional and professional rivalriestending to frustrate all human hopes and efforts to outlive theonslaughts of fate and circumstances. John Updike treats theproblem in the Context of an Americawhereln God has failed,leaving man high and dry to fend for hlmself in the vacuum ofnlhillsm. Vonnegut treats ~t in the context of a unlversemarked by the monstrosities of war, sclence, technology andmaterlallsm which afford no chances of freedom andlndlvlduallty to man.Their works register an ldentlcal growth In consciousnessfrom the 'Vlctim' tothe 'survlvor-hero' vla the 'Vlctim-survlvor', with succinctness and urgency. The victim-protagonlst of thelr early works are Immature and do notdlsplay any capacity for moral growth. In thelr fallure to riseabove thelr crlses lnsplte of thelr best efforts they conveythelr wrlters' lnltlal dlsbellef In modern man's capabilitiesto prevall over the contradlctlons of hls existence. In themlddle phase, these wrlters recover thelr bellef in man to someextent and wrlte about the vlctlm survivors who, unllke thevlctlm protagonists of their early novels, learn through thelrexperience of life and there-by overcome their predicaments.The vlctlm 1s generally a weak character. Circumstances be fallhlm In such a way that he 1s thrown lnto an "ultimateSltuatlon" of despair. or ~nstance, Jay Gatsby In Fitzgerald's

~h~ Great GatsbY tries to Come out of the abyss of nothingnessby turning his past dream Of marrylng Daisy lnto reality. ~ ut,he only sinks deeper and deeper into it as he trles to comeout. Gatsby is finally driven to despair in which he seeks=elease In suicide.The victim 1s Immune to moral growth. He does not havethe necessary intelligence and perception to make a properdlaqnosls of his SltUatlOn and to derlve moral wlsdom from hlsexperlence of life. Roy Hobbs In Malamud's The Natural(1952)1s another case in polnt. Hls efforts to emerge as the everbest baseball player are defeated because he 1s lnnocent andInmature. Unable to learn from hls past experlence Roy keeps onrepeatlng hrs old mistake of falllng for women and flnallylands hlmself In a very humillatlng situation. The victimsuffers from his surroundings.Bharati Mukherjee is hlghly articulate about her negatlveexperlence ~n Canada havlng been a vlctlm of raclaldlscrlrnlnatlon and returns to the toplc wlth an almostobsessive regularity. In and Nishts In Calcutta shedescribes her isolation (vlctimlsation) In Canada due to herParadoxical posltion of belnq "both too vlslble and toolnvlsible". (DNc, 136) lihlle her colour made her too vislble,as a wrlcer she was lnvlslble. In the Introduction to DarknessMUkher3ee takes up her recurrlnq theme of Canada's hostility to

~~lan settlers. "In the years that I spent in Canada - 1966 to1980 I discovered that the country is hostile to its citizenswho had been born in hot, moist continents like Asia". (2)~fter becoming a United States citlzen In 1988, looking back ather life In Canada, Mukherjee recognizes herself as anexpatriate there who had clung to her ethnlc identity.traces this position of hers to the ideology of the Canadianmosaic which reinforced the stance of expatriation byrncouraglng the maintenance of the speclal characteristics anddifferences of native culture:SheI was a psychological expatrlate, though a'naturalized' Canadlan for flfteen years, slmplybecause Canada 1s a country officially hostile tothe concept of assimilation (It proclaims the virtueof 'mosaic' over the Amerlcan 'meltlng pot').Percervlng myself to be in a comfortable butunwelcomlng environment, I struggled to maintainvarious emblems of my difference. (Mukherjee 1988,2)Both In Tluer's Dauuhtec and ln Ur theprotagonists, Tara and Dlmple are expatriates, geographicallyas well as in mlnd and splrlt.They share the expatriatechdractaristlc ot belng 111 at ease botn In the native cultureand in the allen one.expdtrlates.the nr,tent;onThey represent the dllemma faced bySivaramkrlshna says about Tara and Dimple thatot thelr Identity as Indlans 1s ln constanttenslon wlth the need for ~ t s renunclatlon lf they have to

acquire a new identity as lmmlgrants." (Sivaramkrishna1982,74) Jasblr Jain feels that "Mukherjee's novels arerepresentative of the expatrlate senslblllty". (1985,12)~ccordlng to Roshnr Rustom]l-Kerns, In these novels, Hukherleepresents "some of the more violent and grotesque aspects ofcultural collisions". (1988-89,659).Tara Banerlee Cartwright returnlnq to India after sevenyears ln the Unlted States of Amerlca experiences theallenatlon of an expatrlate who senses a gulf between herselfand her natlve people and tradltlons. But in analyslng her ownsense of alienation, Tara reallses that it extends further backlnt0 her Indlan past, to her education under Belgian nuns,beyond the experience of expatrlatlon:How does the forelqness of the splrlthegln7.. ... Does lt begin rlght In the centre ofCalcutta, wlth forty..ruddy Belqlan women, fatforeneads welllng under starched whlte head-dresses,long black habits lntenslfylng the hostility of theIndlan sun? (TD 37)Dlnll,le also expel-rences an lntense lonellness whlch isdifferent, qualitdtlvely, from the lonellness of thecxpatrl.rtt?. There 1s a progresslve and total estrangement fromthe envlronnent, from herself and iron exlstenze itself. "Shewa5 so much worse off than ever, more lonely, more cut off fromAmlt, from the Indlans: left only wlth borrowed disguises. She

felt llke a shadow without feelings" (Wlfe, 200)In both these novels, not only 1s expatriatlon a majortheme but it becomtts a metaphor for deeper levels of allenationll

of an expatrlate, Mukherjee emphatically brlngs out thefutility of such a stance. In Darkness she observes:If you have to wonder, if you keep looking forsigns, if you wait-surrendering little bits of areluctant self every year, clutching the souvenirsof an ever-retreating past-you'll never belong,anywhere. (2)In the United States of Amerlca Bharati Mukherjee sees herselfas an immlgrant. In her works which were either completed orfully wrltten In the Unlted States, Mukherjee explores theimmigrant senslbility, recogn~zing its duallty and fluldIdentity and acknowledging alternate realltles. In theIntroduction co Darkness Mukherlee clearly articulates hermovement from expatrlatlon to lmmlgratlon and traces the changeto the act of mrgratlng to the Unlted States of Amerlca. Thetransformat~on as wrlter and as resldent of the new world,occur~ed wlth the act of inmlgratlon to the UnltedStates4,(Darkness 2). . . "For me lt 1s a movement away from thea1oofnt:ss of expatrlatlon to the exuberance of lmmlqratlon"(3).The movement from expatriation to immigration is alsoreflected ln the cholce of the wrlters whom Mukherjeeacknowledges as her models. When she experienced herself as anexpatriate, Mukherjee saw Nalpaul as her model. It 1s Onlywhen she outgrew and discarded the posture of an expatrlate

that she rejected Naipaul as a model and chose Bernard Malamud"Like Malamud, I write about a minority communitywhich escapes the ghetto and adapts itself to the patterns ofthe domlnant Amerlcan culture"(Mukher]ee 1990,35) The shiftfrom Naipaul to Malamud as literary model signlfles thetransition from the exiled expatriate to the vibrant immigrant.Unlike the expatriate with his/her nostalgia for thepast, the immigrant plunges Into the present and getsenthuslastlcally lnvolved In the envlronment around hlmlher.Whlle the exlle parades paln and qrlevance, the lmmlgrantcelebrates the fact of belng allve In a new world, of beingreborn. Immigrants are energetic, reslllent, able to acceptchanges. They themselves change in the encounter of culturesand they also brlng about change ln thelr environment. Theasslmilatlon Involved In lmmlgratlon does not mean a denlal ofthe past. It only means glvlng up a rigld holdlnq-on to thepasc. It 1s a recognition of duallty, of fluld identity rn thelmmlgrant. It 1s an acknowledgement of alternate realities.In Darkness, Mukherjee says that she saw her Indlanness not "asa fraglle identity to be preserved agalnst obliteration" but"3s a set of fluld identities to be celebratedV(3).In the collection of stories, Darkness (published ln19853 four were wrltten In Canada, rn Montreal and Toronto.They are "The World accordinq to Hsu", "Isolated Incidents",

"Hindus" and "Courtly Vision", Mukherjee comments on these,tories in her introduction: "The purely \Canadian1 stories inthis collection were difficult to wrlte and even more painfulto live through. They are uneasy stories about expatriation",(2) Most of the remainlng stories were written in the springof 1984 in Atlanta, Georgia, when Mukherjee was wrlter-lnresidenceat Emory University.In "Hindus", wrltten In Canada, but set In the UnitedStates of Amerlca, Hukherlee juxtaposes an expatrlate agalnstan lmmlgrant to draw out the contrast. Leela Lahlrl, thenarrator of thls flrst person narrative reveals an lrnmlgrant'sfluld ldentlty. She proudly declares, "I am an AmerlcanCltlzen" (133) but she is also proud of her Bengall Brahminpast. H.R.H. Maharalah Patwant Slngh of Gotlah 1s an obviousexpatriate wlth a grievance aqalnst Indla. "Indla wants me tostarve In my overgrown palace". (135) He 1s fllled withhatred for Indla, self-plty and a sense of Injury.Belng a newborn lmmlgrant does not mean totally denylngher Hlndu past. Her colleague Llsa, surprised at Leela'sfluent use of Hlndl remarked, "I had no idea you spoke Hindu"(140). Earller when Leela had been rnarrled to Derek, she hadfelt anger at the lgnorant confusion between Hlndl and Hlndu.That had been malnly due to Derek's Influence. But now shethlnks:

May be she's right. That slight undetectable error,call it an accent, isn't part of language at all. Ispeak Hindu. No matter what language I speak itwill come out sllghtly foreign, no matter howperfectly I mouth it. There's a whole world of usnow speaking Hindu. (Darkness, 140)~avlng transgressed this 1s Leela's acknowledgement of herduality-her basic Hindu imagination or spirlt and her immlqrantAmerican sensibilrty.The story, though wrltten In Canada,reveals the movement from expatrlation to lmmlgratlon."courtly Vlslon", the fourth story wrltten in Canada lnthis collectlon, recaptures the total vlslon of the artlst whopalnted a Moghul Emperor's court In all lts various aspects.There is nothing particularly expatrlate or Immigrant aboutthls story.The remalnlng storles In the collectlon were wrlttenafter the mlqratlon to the Unlted States and thelr protagonistsare mainly immigrants. If the expatrlate senslbllity 1s probed,lt 1s to lts disadvantage.In "AngelaU,the protagonlst is anorphan glrl from Dakha subjected to war-time atrocities in thePast and now adoptedby the Brandons In the United states ofAmerica. Angela 1s a well-settled immlgrant wlth no nostalgiclonglnq for her natlve country Bangladesh and no hatred for ltelther. She continually draws contrasts between Bangladesh andAmerlca with cool detachment and total objectivity."Plgs aren't fllthy creatures here as they are back home"

(~~rkness II).....demonstrative family ..... A"We have deep feelings, but we aren't aparent's grlevrng would be aspectacle in Bangaladesh" (16). Even In viewing herselfthere 1s a matter-of-fact juxtaposition of the past and thepresent - "Agirl with braids who used to race through wetleechy paddy fields now skates on frozen water; that surely 1sa marvel".(17) Though her body is war-scarred, she carrlesno scars of transgression on her psyche and 1s able to adjustwell ln Amerlca.Immigrant in the story.She emerges as a successfuly assimilatedMr. Bhowmlck in "A Father" is predominantly an expatriatethough hls wife and daughter are well-adjusted immigrants.1s nostalgic about the feminine and tender women of his youth.He 1s dlsappolnted that hls daughter Babll, an electricalenglneer. 1s not feminlne enough for hlm.HeShe wasn't womanlyor tender the way that unmarried glrls had been in the wistfuldays of hls adolescence" (Darkness 63).He is stillsuperstltlous enough to go back home and start again to undothe evll effect of an ill-omened sneeze. "A dozen times a dayhe made these small trade-offs between new world reasonablenessand old world beliefs"(64) When he discovers hls daughter'sPregnancy, though conventional thoughts of family honour fleetthrough her mlnd, he 1s happy that some one has found herfeminlne and lovable.H ~ S shock turns to violence when he

hears that she has transgressed traditional practices and goneln for artificial insemination out of a hatred for men. "Whoneeds a man' The father of my baby 1s a bottle and a syringe.Men louse up your lives. I just want a baby" (72). Hestarts attackrng nls pregnant daughter wlth a rolling pin. Theeruption of vlolence is due to hls lnablllty to reconcile thewlstful expatrlate in hlmself with the lmmlgrant ln hlsmllltantly feminist daughter. The inadequacy of the expatriateand hls lnabillty to cope with immlgrant livlng is brought outIn thls story.In "Nostalgia", the protagonist 1s Dr. Manny Patel, apsychlatrlc res:dent at a State hospital In New York. He hadchosen to settle In the Unlted States of Amerlca and resentedbelng zalled "Paki Scum" (Darkness 98) by one of his mentallyunhinged patients. Ordlnarlly, he was not one for nostalgla, heWas not sn expatrlate but a "patr;ot" who was very enthuslastlcabout Amerlca. Yet, ln thls lmmlgrant, hls Indlan past diedhard. " In crlses he seemed to regress, to reach automaticallyfor the mlracle cures of hls Delhl youth, though normally hehad no patlence kith nostalgla" (105). At such tlmes herealrsed hls transqresslcn ard dualltp. "he would forevershuttle between the old world and the new ". (105) In thlsstory the expatriate element cf nostalgla trlps hlm up.Attracted by a "goddess" in an Indian shop, he is baited and

exposed to blackmail. "The Indian food, an Indian woman In bed,made him nostalgic". (111). But disillusionment follows and hegoes back home, a sadder but wiser man. In this story, theexpatriate element of nostallgia is exposed as weakness, achink in Dr.Patelrs immigrant armour.In "Saints", the perspective 1s shifted to Shawn Pate1aged flfteen, son of Dr. Manny Pate1 and Camllle. Belonging tothe second generation he experlences no confllct betweenexpatriation and immigration. He 1s an American who takeseverything includlnq transgression ~n hls stride- theseparation of hls parents, hls mother's relatlonshlp with WayneLatta, Wayne's other grrl frrend and hls own sexual urges.An analYSlS of the characters In thls collection of theshort storles will reveal that the theme of expatrlatlon 1sllnked to fragmented, dlslnteqratlng, alienated characters,vhlle the immigrants are fairly well adlusted to the newcountry and lts llfe style. However, both the expatriates andthe lmmlgrants are caught In the net of transgression.In technique, very often expatriation is expressedthrough irony and an omniscient narrative wlth occasionalShlfts ln perspectlve and also authorlal comments. TheImmigrants often appear In flrst person narratives and revealthe author's supple volce whlch can enter varled immigrantsensibilities.

In the next collection l&ban and Other stories,all the eleven stories deal wrth Aslan lmmiqrants, though someare narrated by native born Americans who feel the impact ofthese immlgrants on their llves. The theme of these storles 1simmigration and the reciprocal effect of the lmmiqrants andAmerican life on each other. In these stories that deal withenergetic immigrants, there is a definite movement away fromexpatriates who were marginal men and women to lmmlqrants whoare middlemen ln more sense than ole. They are not only brokersor go-Detweens ln varlous deals, but people who are in themlddle of where actlon 1s. Bharatl Mukherlee's llterary careerhitherto, may thus be seen as an ongolng quest fromexpatrratlon to immigration.Immlgrants have fasclnatlng tales to relate. Many of themhave 1-ved In newly lndependent or emerglng countries whlch areplagued by civll and rellglous conflicts. They have experiencedrapld changes in the hlstory of the natlons In whlch theyllved. People who uproot themselves from thelr countries andcome to the Unlted States, elther by cholce or out ofnecessity, are confronted with the requirement to joinmainstream Amerlca. They must absorb suddenly two hundred yearsOf American hlstory and learn to adapt to Amerlcan society.Bharatl Mukherjee attempts to illustrate thls In her novels andShort storles. Her characters want to make it, survlve and

succeed in the New World. Most of them are filled with ahustlerlsh kind of energy ( like Alfie Judah ). Any amount ofhurt or failures cannot discourage them from moving towardstheir goal. They do not give-up in the face of set-backs anddepresslon. Qulte often they have to rlsk their llves. Theytake risks they could not have taken in their old, comfortableworlds to solve their problems. It is as ~f they are reborn asthey change cltlzenshlp.Mukherjee has been wrlting about these new lmmlgrantsslnce the days of her flrst novel The Tlaer's Dauahter (1973).In this novel she deals wlth a woman who marrled outside herculture and knows that her life 1s permanently located in theUnlted States, but whose emotional llfe is llved In India. As aWriter she had twc, worlds perfectly balanced at that time -and she could draw on both ambldextrously. She nelther lost onenor wholly lmmersed herself In the other. she could see theworld she had left behlnd lntact although she was far awayenough to wrlte about lt. In a way, Mukherlee was biculturaland caught lr, thdt struggle. But that was only till she wroteher first novel. Now she has changed and 1s no longer so. Sheherself confesses: "1 underwent a tremendous crlsls whllewrltrng Davs and Nlqhts in Calcutta. I reallsed that I was nolonger an expatriete but an ~mmlgrant-that my life was morehereW.(eatei 1989,129). It 1s not so much that India falled her

America transformed her. The letting-go of India might havebeen traumatic, but aha did not want to insulate herself byhanging-on to an outdated image of the country. Bharatl~ukherjee writes about a kind of new pioneer. The deslre for%more, more, more....' marks her characters as dlstlnctlyAmerican. Her characters are brash and spunky and have a senseof adventure. They may transgress and come to bad ends but theydo not glve-up. Mukherjee arms to expose Americans to theenergetic voices of these new settlers In the Unlted States.The new changing America is the theme of the storles InThe Middleman. The lmmigrants lr! her storles go through extremetransformation In Amerlca and at the same trme they alter thecountry's appearance and psychological make-up. Mukherjee'scharacters have to assume different ldentitles. These people donot ask for our sympathy nor are they going to remaln plungedln doom, gloom and antiquated memory. They Intend to go outthere, cur some deals and carve out a plece of the Amerlcan piefor themselves. These lmmlgrants assume ldentltles of a newconerlaseekerla traveller; a naturallsed cltlzen; ahousewlfe/a householder; a studentla scho1ar;a loverlaseducer,a bankerla bus~nessman. They turn up as a sufferer oraggrlebed person. They find themselves as law-breakers orlllegal aliens.Success in the Unlted States came at a tlme when she

equired lt. Unfavourable experience in Canada after hermarriage, where there was a lot of bigotry against Canadiancltlzens of Indian origin upset her. Although she did write anessay about racisim entitled' An Invisible Woman', she had tofor sixteen years to leave Canada in 1980 with her family.~~aving Canada was like havlng a gloom llfted. The Unitedstates of America, with its meltlng-pot theory of lmmlgratlonhas a healthier attltude towards lmmlgrants than Canada.Amerlca gave her the freedom to wear clothes of her cholce;lead a llfe of her choice, and write flctlon of her cholce.Out of the eleven storles InMiddleman four directlydeal with Indians. The Mlddleman of the tltle story In thecollection, Alfle Judah, has the lob of travelllng around theworld providing people wlth what they need-guns, narcotics andautomobiles. The story has-as the back-drop an unnamed countryln Central Amerlca where he gets Involved ln a guerrilla war.Actually, as Mukherlee herself recalls; "Mlddleman...... 1s setIn a ranch In Costa Rlca where I spent several months. So I amwrltlng not necessarily about real people but about thoseghettos and that geography that I feel a real part of".(Patel1989,129) Choosing this as the first and tltled story, theauthor has done well to introduce the readers to a typicalMukherlee short story-a story that has pace, violence, sex andnative Jargon.

Middleman Is a real break-through for BharatlMukherlee because now she 1s actually dolng a doubletransformation. It is as much a book about immigrants as a bookabout the new America. The idea behind the title is belng Intransition, between two cultures. Being at ease in both, yethavlng to negotiate the mlnefields of belng In the rnlddle-beinga wheeler-dealer, Mukherlee got the idea of the book from anincomplete novel about a man who served in the army in Vletnam.After the war the man becomes a professional soldler and hireshlrnself out In Afghanistan and Central America; Mukherjeeherself acknowledges:Whlle I was worklng on that novel, a Jew who hasrelocated from Baghdad to Bombay to Brooklyn, tookcontrol and wrote hls own story. He attracted mebecause he was a cynlcal person and a hustler, asmany lmmlgrant survlvors have to be.(1990,33)In a world of vlolence, swift transltlon andtransformatlon for the uprooted lndlvldual, Mukherlee tells thestorles of these people wlthout fuss or fluster and on mostoccasions leaves the reader exhausted and frightened by theviolence as some of her storles llke 'The Middleman' and 'LooseEnds' reveal. There are also storles wlth unexpected tenderness- (that wlll Interest the Indlan readers) llke 'Orbitlnq' and'The Management of Grief'. In 'Orbitlnq' the immigrant woman isa naturallsed citlzen. A New Jersey woman of Itallan origln

arranges a Thanks-giving dlnner at her home. Her parents andher Afghan boy-frlend Ro are invlted. A crisis ensues over whoshould carve the turkey - her father or her boy-frlend. Suchcross-cultural confusion 1s common In Mukherlee's storles. Itbegins as a comeGy but soon changes because misunderstandingleads to anger and vlolence. Ro, the Afqhan boy moves fromairport to alrport for refuge from hls country's battlefields.Rlndi laments: "All over the country, I tell myself, women aretowing new lovers home ta meet thelr families". (Mas 63) Ro isashamed that 5e cones from a culture of paln, but Rind1ldollses hlm. "I reallse all In a rush how much I love thls manwlth his blemlshed, tortured body I wlll glve hlm cltlzenshlplf he asks.. . .Ro's my chance to heal the world.. . .Ro 1s ClintEastwood, scarred hero and survlvor,".(MOS 74, 75)"The Management of Grlef" also deals with paln andang,~isn. Aggr:.e\ed lnmiqrants-some newcomers, others seekersand travellers lose their dear and near ones In the 'Kanishka'Rlr-Indla plane crash. In the short story, how the affectedones manage thelr grlef 1s brought out very touchingly as thetragedy turns out to be plural. In 'Fathering' the secure llfeof a yuppie livlng with hls girl-friend ln upstate New York isdisrupted by the visit of hrs child.Strong famlly ties and powerful work ethlcs of Asiancultures are key factors In Aslan-Amerlcan achievement. In the

stories of Bharati Mukherjee, the famllies are not the Americanfamilies that one is accustomed to reading about in fiction.over the years, the American family has become quite different,not just because of soolal influences and new sexual standards,but because of the interaction between mainstream Amerlcans andnew immigrants.Mukherjee'sstories are discomflting because theychallenge accepted codes of behaviour in Amerlca and reveal thechanges taklng place there. Alarge number of these stories aretold by natlve-born Amerlcans whose llves are affected bynewly-arrived or first-generation Amerlcans.There are emotlons more fundamental and universal thankllllnq. Perhaps, the success of two stories 'Jasmine' and 'AWlfe's Story' lies In the fact that Bharatl Mukherlee haselther forgotten to be violent or chosen to be less vlolent.Jasmlne 1s an rllegal Carrlbean lmmlgrant from Trlnldad.Trlnldad was too small a place for Dr. Vassan]l's daughter -for a glrl wlth ambltlon. Jasmlne 1s a student of lrfe.Adaptation or transgression there was no doubt that "she was aglrl rushlng wlldly into the future".(MOS 138).Mrs. Panna Bhatt narrates her story in 'A Wrfe's Story'.She is the Indlan housewife-lmmlgrant: "I'veleft home, myhusband, to get a Ph.D. ~n speclal ed.", (MOS 29) In America.She discovered Amerlca transgressing-when oastlng her mind over

the past as she rldes In a cab in New York with her Hungarianlover Imre:In the back of the cab, wlthout even trylng, I feelllqht almost free. Memories of Indian destitutes mixwlth the hordes of New York street people, and theyfloat free, like astronauts inside my head. I'vemade it. I'm making something of my life".(nos 29)In story after story, the great ease Bharati Mukherjee displayswlth her subject and idiom draws the reader closer. The readerfollows the twists and turns In Maya Sanyal's thinking In 'TheTenant'. Maya 1s a naturallsed cltlzen In the Unlted States,llvlng her llte the Arnerlcan way. She 1s qulte liberated andultra-modernSrlr 15 very much part of a permlsslve societywher~ eocla? trarsgresslon 1s no ta~oo and sexual standards aredifferent. A Fh.D.In Comparatlve literature and teachlng atthe :irl+erslty of Northern Iowa, born ln 1954 In Nehru's Indiashe married an Amerlcan because "A11 Indlan men are wife-beatersM(MOS 99) according to her. Llke her Dr. Chatterjl 1s anatueallsed Amerlcan. Hls confession "You are sometimes lonely,no'But you are lucky. Dlvorced women can date, they can go tobars and ~ISC~S. They can see men, many mens. But insidemarriage there 1s so much lonellness".(MOS 108) reveals hisnlnd. Maya has met. and slept with marrled men, nameless men,nut never with an Indian. She was a tenant wlth Ted Suminskiand ?redHer enco,Jrters wlth the Indians Dr. Chatterjl and Dr.

~shoka Mehta kindles the dying embers of hope in her life, whenshe has by clrcumstance, become a rootless, wandering tenant.'Danny's Glrls' deals wlth 'Proxy-marriage' and'permanent residencef In the United States. Dinesh, a twentyyear old, Dogra boy from Slmla 1s Danny in Flusinq, the UnitedStates of America. He took out ads in papers in India promising"Guaranteed permanent Resident status In the United States" togrooms wllllng to proxy-marry Amerlcan glrls of Indian orlgrn.~s arranged qblte a few. "The brldes and grooms dldn't have tollve wlth each other, or even meet or see each other!"(MOS142). The story 1s narrated by an Afrlcan teenager whoseparents had been bounced from Uganda by Id1 Amln and barredfrom England by Pdrllament. The boy develops a fancy for Rosle,a beauty from Kathmandu, Nepal. He was runnlnq errands for herand Danny. Unable to stand Danny calllnq hlm 'a bl]ra',(eunuch)he I.ebolts one day " to llberate Rosle and myselfU(N0S 148)The lmmlgrant as a newcomer, a seeker, a travellerattemptlnqto enter Amerlca illegally 1s traced well in "BuriedLlves". "Burled Llves" 1s the story of a forty-nlne year oldschoo~ teacher. Venkazesan, from Trlncomalle, SrlLanka.Even as an adolescent he'd battened down all hispasslon; whlle other students had sllpped love noteslnto expectant palms, he'd studied, he'd passedexams. Dutifulness had turned him lnto a parlah (MOS154).

The Liberatlon Tlgers were In full-throated cry and theerstwhile Ceylon 1s in civil turmoil. Venkatesan is caught inthe whirlpool of strlfe and had to leave the Island to survlve.~uticorin was the town hls ancestors had left to seek theirfoxtune In the tea-gardens of Srl Lanka and Venkatesan leavesthe ~sland, by paying illegal entrance to the Unlted States viaCanada.But fate has lt that he stays ln Hamburg, Germany.Venkatesan, the one-time teacher of Matthew Arnold in Trincost. Joseph's college meets G. Remml, one-time sollcrtor InParamaribo, Surlname. Queenle, Remmi's cousln lodges him. "Inthat glossy green Kimono, Queenle the land lady shocked hlmwlth her beauty". (MOS 169). Queenle was a vldow wlth adaughter. Her grandfather had been born ln a Sinhalese vlllage.He later worked In the Carribean, Brltlsh Gulana and Surlname.Venkatesan had started out as a teacher. Now he is a lusty,furtlve, illegal alien. Hearlng the word'Polizel' hereflected: "he was almost flfty. By flfty a man ought to stoprunning. Maybe what seemed accldental now-Queenle's daughter'skleptomania b:owing away hls plans for escape-wasn'taccldental". (MOS 176) Venkatesan has become a lover, a cltlzenand h~sband by chance. Perhaps, he 1s the only emlgrant (In thecollection) who leaves hls country and does not reach America.But, all the same Venkatesan meets wlth hls America even before

he reaches the United States of AmerlcaBharatl Mukherjee's cholce of subject makes a lot ofsense lf for no other reason than it is virgin territory.Whether it is Alfie Judah in 'The Mlddlemanc, panna hat inWife's Story', Jasmine, the Illegal Carribean immigrant, MayaSanyal, the rootless Indian who 1s a naturallsed cltizen InAmerica - these and the other remarkable characters who peoplethe eleven stories In the ColleCtlOn - wlthout any hesitationor doubt transgress and demand and secure the reader'sattention. She herself 1s one of them and as such she isunlquely placed to write about the new American. Mukher~ee hasexpressed her views In an artlcle In New York Tlmes BookThey have all shed past llves and languages and havetravelled half the world in every direction to comehere and begln again. They're bursting with stories,too many to begin telling. They've llved throughcenturies of history in a single llfe-time--villageborn, colonized, traditionally raised, educated.What they've assimilated in thlrty years has takenthe West ten tlmes that number of years to create.(Quoted In Davldar 1385.5)Though the materlal Mukherjee uses is new, she belongs to theclan of first and second generation immigrant writers like-Tlmothy Mo, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Russel Banks, who arediscovering that to write about people like themselves makessense. David Davldar 1s of the oplnlon that:

She is in another sense following In a long andrespected American traditlon-that of the immigrantwriter writing about the immigrant community he orshe is part of - Roth, Nabakov, Malamud, Singer,Doctorow.. ..the list is distinguised and forms amajor part of contemporary Americanfiction". (Davidar 1989,5)In a critrcal review of Bharati Mukherjee, Anita Desai writes:she feels a klnship with of all writers BernardMalamud. Having moved away from 'the aloofness ofexpatriation to the exuberance of rmmlgration' shesays she 'jolned lmaginatlve forces with ananonymous driven underclass.. ..I see my 'immigrant'story replicated in a dozen Amerlcan cities andinstead of seelnq my Indianness as a fragileidentltv to be preserved aualnst obliteration (orworse a' 'visible-' drsflgurement to be hidden) I ieelt now as a set of fluld ldentlties &celebrated' , and she sees Malamud's stories as partof the same celebration. (Desal 1985, 145-146)Qulte In keeplng wlth the Twentieth century spirit andtrends Julla Kz lseva, the French llngulst, llterary critic,psycho-analyst and post-modern feminist remarked: "a person ofthe Twentleth century can exlst honestly only, as a forelgner".(Davldar 1989,5) Bharatl Mukherlee has taken that dlctum a stepfurther. As a foreigner turned natlve she has ventured intolives "fictionally, that are manifestly not (her) own" and inthe process has opened-up a new world to the readers bothnatlve (Indlan and American) naturallsed and foreign.The task of an author 1s to make hls/her lntrlcate and

unknown world comprehensible to mainstream American readers.~hls is what good novels and stories are expected to do. Andthat was precisely what Bernard Malamud and Bharati Mukherjeedid. The quest for the real becomes the chief component in thesearch for the ldentlty ln the flctlon of both Malamud and~ukherjee. Having descended into the hell of Jewlsh and Asian-Indian Immigrant sensibility the two writers deal with humannature that may be physically broken yet spiritually andartlstlcally awakened. While Halamud's heroes are left with noother alternatlve but to 'transgress', whlle struqqllng for thedeal, Mukherjee's herolnes want to test how much they shouldturn out falthful to that ldeal conception of one'spersonality. Perhaps, the rewards of the new llfe are sufferingand compasslon.

CHAPTER I I ISuffering And Compassion : The Old LifeAnd The New

BUFFERING AND COIIPABBION: THE OLD LIFE AND THE NEWWe are all lonely ........ We'velearnt to plty one another forbeing alone. And we've learnt thatnothing remains to be discoveredexcept compassion.-- BRONOWSKIMalamud and Mukherjee stand for justlce. They evaluateall human actlons In terms of justice. As such the aspects ofthe mind affected by transgresslons and the concomitantreactlon agalnst the actlon or Inaction becomes related to theconcern of Malamud and Mukherjea Cor justlce on this earth. Inother words, thelr criminal world 1s also governed by a worldof lustice characterized by thelr ethlcal temperament. Almostall characters of Malamud are worried over the problem oflustice, and hls atheistic characters go to the extent ofquestlonlng the divine lustlce itself, In lts dispensation.Mukherjee's concern for lustice is also evldent in her wish todo "Justlce" to the vlslble world. Justlce is broadly two fold:external and internal-that punlshment which comes from outside1s mechanical and that punlshment whlch comes from wlthln 1ssplrltual (psycholoq~cal). This chapter will explore whyMalamud and Mukherjee seem to favour the spiritual to the

mechanical purishment and have their herolheroine transgressors.uffer thls inner punishment In their attempt towardsredemption.The shocklng awareness of the wldenlnq gulf between whatman 1s and what hr ought to be has prompted the Jewlsh writerto thlnk In terms of moral regeneration and to evolve an ideaof new life based on compassion, love and humanism. The Jew inrecent literature has emerged as "a symbol of conscience-outwardly as a functlon of hls persecution whlch reached itscllnax In the Holocaust, acd lnwzrdly as a functlon of his,rellglous character. (Benson 1977,291 Jewlsh hlstory wlth ltsuntold human suffering and Jewlsh tradltion with its emphasison humanism have added a polgnant touch to Jewish writing.Suffering and compassion have been integral to Jewlsh historyand then way of llfe.The S a h and Festlval Praver Book, which the Jews useIn mcst of the synagogues today, deflne the Jew as a figure ofcompasslon. One of the prayers reads: "I am a Jew because inall places where there are fears and sufferlng the Jew weeps"(1946, 304). The Jewlsh bellef that sufferlng is a means ofcompasslon informs the prayer before Kaddlsh (the Jewlsh prayerof mourning): "Glve us inslght In thls hour of qrlef, that fromthe depths of suffering may come a deepened sympathy for allWho are bereaved, that we may feel the heart-break Of our

fellowmen and flnd our strength in helping them". (1946, 38).Thus a struggle for a new order of life with compassionas lts cardinal principle seems to characterize Jewishtraditlon supported by their history. The affirmation of humanvalues In the waste land world has been emphasised by creativewriters In general. While reflecting the disorder, defeat anddespair of the day, the writer has to face the moral question,the essence of whlch according to Bellow 1s-"In what form shallllfe be justified?" (Bellow 1973,62) Bellow further assertsthat "the moral functlon of a wrlter cannot be dlvorced fromart". (Bellow 1973,62)The conscientious writer cannot be content wlth justmlrrorlng the times. He feels the need to suggest or instruct,however indirectly ~t may be, wlthout lnvltlng upon himself therisk of being a propagandist. Bernard Malamud, quoting AlbertCamus, says: "The purpose of the writer is to keep civilizationfrom destroying ~tseif."(Hassan 1963,5) Belng "crvlllzed"lmplies a sense of fellow-feellng and compassion, the lack ofihlcn IS the root cause of all problems In the modern world.Man, Faulkner believes, wlll endure and prevall because he has"a splrlt capahle of compassion and sacrifice andendurance".(Faulkner 1963, 348) Jacob Bronowskl makes a veryPerceptive comment In hls book The Face of Vlolence: An Essay-wlth a Plav: "We are all lonely .... We've learnt to plty One

another for being alone. And we've learnt mat n o w xmj&Mdiscoverea comoassion". (1967,162)whether one learns to pity in the sprrit of compassion or not,one realises ~ t s inescapable need.The solitariness of the transgressor works up on hispsyche (hereafter'he' refers to 'she' also) by comparing thestates of those who have transgressed and those who have not.he criminal loses his fitness to llve and hls heart isembittered. He compromises wlth hls gullty consclence after andeven during the punlshment with the satlsfactlon that he hassuffered for his transgression. But there may be no redemptionIn his llfe after thls mechanical punlshrnent. He agaln commitsanother crlme and goes to prison. The mechanical punishmentthus fails in one Important aspect: it never takes lntoconslderatlon the vlew that the crimlnal 1s as much affected byhls crime as hls vlctlm 1s-hls transgression 1s a double-edgedweapon affecting himself and hls vlctim.Above all he is a crlrnlnalltransgressor first before hisOwn consclence. All the herolheroine transgressorsof Malamudand Mukherlee who compromise with thelr consclence becomedlslllusloned and consequently are at the mercy of theirconscience accepting lts accuslng flnger. If Malamud isconcerned more with the psychological account of transgressionthan with transgression as such, Mukherjee's insistence is not

on the events as such but on thelr effect upon the personsbecause the moral significance of any act interfere(s) with thevery nature of things. Thls sDlrrtual punlshment is notconsequential but concomitant upon crlme, in other words, thehuman psyche is caught at once in the dialectic of crime andpunlshment. Dostoevsky confirms that even the most hardened andun-repentant murderer knows all the same that he 1s a'crlmlnal', that ls, he considers in hls consclence that he hasacted wrongly, even though he is unrepentant.says in "The Honest Thlef ",HIS narrator.. no sooner has the crlme been committed thanrepentance begins to gnaw at his heart like aserpent, and the man wlll die not because of thecrime he has committed, but because he has destroyedwhat 1s best in him and what st111 entitles hlm tobe calied a human belng.(Dostoevsky,ll)As lf echoing Dostoevsky, Conrad says In Nostromo: "Atransgression, a crlme enterlng a man's existence, eats it uplike a malignant growth, consumes lt like a fever". (Conrad1966,523) Thls concomitant effect of crrme upon the psyche ofthe crimlnal 1s llkened to a dlsease by both Malamud andMukherlee : In the former, the guilty consclence gnaws thecrimlnall transgressor like a serpent and he dles of suffering,Whereas In the latter the crlminal/transgressor Suffers amallqnant qrowth 01. a fever which troubles the existence of the

::rlmir,dl ;riece-neal and t h i suffering redeems the,,inir 31 !transqressor wt.0 has made a self assertion in histher,,-ts of crimeltrarsgrassi on.The spiritual punishment both in Malamud and Mukherjee,which comes from within works for the salvation of thetransgressor in a mysterious way. Because of his transgression,the individual is isolated not only morally but alsopsychologically: in asserting one side of hls self in anc):tramlty, he alienates himself fron the cther side of his selfdnC this aller-ation is reflected In thls estrangement from hisfel'low human beings. However individ,ualrstic 'le may be, her:avno? he t.rue tc t.he oneside of his self, but should realisethe 5eepr.r Cora, of iumanlty embodied ln t,*e ldral self which heha?. I:,!;t In the crlmlla? interval. The re-assertion of theecllpsei self in the form of self-effacement runs parallel tohls acceptance of the external reallty, the law of which he hastransgressed rn his transgression. So the psycho-moralisc~ation rs broKen through hrs communion flrst with hisecllpsed self and then with his fellow human beings and thisconmu7lon 1s aci-leved thrmgh his 'confessron' flrst to himselfand then to a fellow human being who 1s capable ofUnderstanding him. Terrence Doody says, "a confession is thedelihe:ate, self-conscious attempt of an individual to explainhls nature to the audience who rerresents the kind of ~0IUmunity

he needs to exist and to confirm him. Confession is always anof community 'I. (Doody 1980,4)Compassion provides man with a comprehensive view oflife. It calls for inter-personal responslbillty underscored bylove, authentic empathy and intense understanding. The meaningof compassion could be discovered not in isolation orallenation, but in a reeling of community that one's fate istled up wlth others In pain and pleasure. The term "compassion"has its etymological roots ln the French and Latln expression,flcompasslon" which means "to suffer wlth ". Rollo May, apsychotherapist, aptly Illustrates the tenets of compassion inThe Power and Innocence. He defines compassion as follows :Cornpasslon is the name of that form of love which isbased on our knowlng and understanding each other.Compasslcn is the awareness that we all shall eithersink or swim together. Compassion arises from therecoqnltlon of community. It realizes that all menand women are brothers and sisters, even though adisciplining of our own instincts is necessary forus even to begin to carry out that belief In ouractions. (May 1972,251)The history of the Jews, the so-called "chosen people of God"reveals that they have always been "chosen" either forPersecution or discrlmination. The hideous blood-bath InGermany, the organlsed krlling in the shape of pogroms inRussia, deprivation of rights ln Romania, polltical oppressionand religious persecution in other countries have compelled the

jews to flee like nomads from their own home lands to differentIn a state of unsettlement and unrest. Until 1948 theyhad no country of their own. They remained slaves in Egypt anddwelt among the Babylonians, lived in the Hellenicworld, stored at the bier of the Roman empire,flourished in the Mohammedan civilization, emergedfrom a twelve-hundred-year darkness known as theMiddle Ages, and rose to new intellectual heights inmodern times. (Dimont 1964,151Jewlsh hlstory, for all the glory of great names llke Jesus,Paul, spinoza, Marx, Einstein, Freud - is an unparallelledchronicle of discrimination, persecutiion, exile and attemptedgenocide.In America the Jews suffered the same disabilities as theother lmmlgrant groups. Ever since thelr flrst settlement inthat country, they have reslsted the tyranny of the majority.Resistance has tightened the internal cohesion of the Jewishcommunity. Suffering has chastened the Jews and acted as acoheslve force of unlon and solidarity. Their four-thousandyear history has taught the Jews not only 'suffering' but also'compassion' as a way of llfe.Whlle sharlng the deep concern of other Jewish novelistsfor the predicament of modern man, Bernard Malamud goes furtherand asserts that only suffering and compassion can redeemmodern man. Chastened by suffering, hls characters mellow under

its cathartic effect. Compassion is not just a strain as inother Jewish writers, but is the core of Malamud's moralvislon. The theme Of Suffering has traditionally occupied the~ewish writer to an extent unequalled by wrlters of othercultural background. The experience of suffering is universaland inescapable. It is the burden of the past, of the present,and very likely of the future. Suffering for Malamud becomes'nihilstic' and corrosive if it is not endowed with compassion.The intense reverence for man and his dlginity is integral toMalamud's moral vislon. He is interested rn brlnging out man'shidden strength and compassion provides man with his 'hiddenstrength'.Compassion recognizes the fallibility of man. Every onehas his lacunae and failures. It is these common failures,weaknesses and sufferings that make one feel a tie with anotherand experience what Henry James calls a " traglc fellowship"with suffering humanity. The 'human' element in man with its'struggles between fulfillment and non-fulfillment' makes himfeel a mutual responsibility. Compassion is a balance setbetween indivlduality and a new sense of solidarity.These tenets of compassion are the bed-rock of theJewish ethical code, what J.C. Landls calls the code Of'mentshlekhkaytf. (1967,140) This code has now become "anlntegral part of the \shtetll culture of Eastern Europe,

emphaoising the sense of community and felt responsibility forthe fellow being". (Knopp 1975,7) Knopp has examined how*mentshlekhkaYtl is put on trial in the works of IB singer,Nelly Saohs, Andre Schwazbart, Elie Wiesel, Saul Bellow andBernard Malamud. Theodore Solataroff traces the process ofmoral development in Bellow, Rosenfeld, Malamud, Gold, and Rothand asserts that these writers delineate "life's losers andvictims with deep compassion" and guard "thelr pity from thesentimentality". ( 1959,96) Knopp further Illustrates that"'Mentshlekhkayat' also encompasses the very strong sense ofcommunity that has traditionally been a feature of Jewish life.The paramount characteristic of this community feeling is themoral imperative of man's responsiblllty to his fellow man".(1975,7)Llke compassion, the code also recognlses the "human"element In man-the presence of opposing tendencies towards goodand evil within man. But lt has an "implicit faith in themoral significance of man's actlons, the falth that man has thepower withln him to effect changes In the world for good or for111, and that he has the obllgatlon to apply thrs power in thecause of goodU(~nopp 1975.7) The code 1s pragmatic and choosesto concern itself wlth the livlng condition of man rather thanthe salvation of hjs soul. Redemptlon 1s sought here in thlsworld itself-in an ethical uprightness. The code is in

agreement wrth the tradrtronal Jewlsh view of messianicredemption as "a hope for an earthly paradise of love andlearning, (and) a Utapian vision of a region of social justiceand decency."(Landis 1967,114) In a world of chaos andsuffering, the morality of mentnshlekhkayat becomes acompensation for suffering or a mltlgation of it.The pattern of the protagonist's moral growth terminateswith his recognition of the grossness of his initial dream,preceded and supported by hrs self-discovery, and a certainknowledge of the world which in its turn deflned the self. Atthe sametime, the terminal polnt marks the emergence in theprotagonists, of a new set of values equipped with which hewill launch on his second quest, the quest for heroism. Thecontours of a real new llfe, of a better life, are now vlsible.So begins a fresh struggle wlth the world by which theprotagonist will assert hlmself, wlll deflne and evaluate theworld in hls own terms and flnally transcend it.The pattern includes sltuations in which the strong,lnstrnctlve imprlses of the heart - plty, love, guilt, hateetC. become powerfully engaged. These feellngs connected withblood are generated by the protagonist's involvement in somebaslc human relationship, sometimes sought by him and sometimesinflicted upon him. The distinctron, however, gets blurred as

the relationship develops, the quester becomlng the victim and~lce-versa. These relatlonships demand of the protagonist thathe drop his mask and become aware of h ~ s essential humanity,and understand his real human need. Quite often it involves amoral problem as in the case of Levln.The quintessentialMalamud plot is therefore one in which the values placed on thefree-flowing feelings of the heart are pitted against moralflrmness and ictelllgence each testlng, connecting andfortifying the other.The sufferlpg of Jews lncludlng the tragedy ofdestruction of six million has cast a distinct stamp on thesensltive mind of Malamud and "he feels the need on the part ofa writer to 'cry' about itn.(Wershba 1958.2721. He also assertsthat "Jews are absulutely the very stuff of drama" (Candee1958,272). D~splte these assertions, Malamud In hls worktranscends tne reqlonallsm and ethnlc barrlers In his depictionof human suffering and complexity of life.The Jewish experience which Malamud dramatizes in thisplot throws his protagonists into its rich content and action.It recognizes the llmltatlons of the human conditions and thereality of suffering as the only reallty there can be to life.Secondly, llfe belng what lt is, man must learn to endure it,acquiesce in it but with hope.Endurance presupposesacceptance of suffering in one's ow3 life and In others, of the

mutuality of suffering, Of the common human predicament. Theonly morality is that one must suffer with the hope that otherswill suffer less.Morris's experience, 1s In fact, the experience of almostall the characters who Populate Malamud's world : Pop Fisherand even Memo Paris in Tbs Natural ; Breitbart, the light-bulbpedlar, Detective Minogue, father of the criminal Ward, inAssistant; Leo Duffy, Bucket, Avls Fllss, and even the farmerwho asks Levin to pull out an aching tooth with a pair ofpllers, ln A && j&s; Bibikov, Kogrn, and Zinaida inFixer; the plmps in picture? of Fidelman; Mary Kettlesmith,Willle and Levenspiel In The Tenants ; Oscar Greenfeld, Gerald,Maud , the waiter in the Venetian restaurant, and Fanny'smother ln Dubln's Llves. The experlence of suffering isunlversal and rnescapable. All experlence In tlme-of love,hate, friendship, charlty, 1s defined by the reality ofsuffering.The NaturaL is quite different in both subject andtreatment from the short-storles and his later full-lengthfictions. H1s concerns In thls only non-Jewish novel is withthe "schlemiel" hero, the eternal vlctim overtaken by fate,morality, false love versus real, and the meaning of sufferlngIn a man's life. ~t 1s a tragi-comic baseball yarn in which ateam 1s pulled out of earller disasters by Roy Hobbs, an

untrained natural baseball player, who emulates Babe Ruth tolead the league. ROY, later gets involved with the managerisvoluptuous niece and her shady friends. ROY ~obb's early~uffering is an aocident of fate-one does not choose anunworthy mother, nor choose to be orphaned, nor choose to beshot in the belly by a madwoman. But Roy's later suffering isdifferent. Iris Lemon Suggests that Roy could save himself offuture agony lf he could only learn to make the rlght choices.But Roy rejects Iris's wisdom for Memo's materralism until itis too late. Pursuing false lcve while lgnoring true, RoyHobbs 1s doomed to repeat the past. When Roy confesses hispast In gloom, Irls consoles hlm and teaches the value ofsufferlng ana experience whlch he falls to understand. "We havetwo lives, Roy, the life we learn with and the life we livewith after that. Suffering is that brings us towardhappinessn. (TN 148). Unlike Memo, Iris plays the role of ahealthy mother. And the last act of compassion for Iris redeemsRoy.In Asslstant Malamud's next novel, the intensesufferlng of a compassionate Jew opens up the possibilities ofredemption to his gentile assistant. The "hidden strength" ofboth Morris Bober and Frank Alpine lles in their compassion.Malamud draws heavily on hls father's life as a grocer andMorris' predicament resembles hls father's who lived In ableot

~enury without compromising on his moral rectitude. Malamud'sof suffering and compassion is exemplified in MorrisBober. Morris does not go to synagogue, does not eat kesher,and keeps the shop open on Jewish holidays. Yet he considershimself a true Jew. For him Jewishness lles in an ethical lifeof goodness and fellow-feeling. Frank 1s an Immigrant from thewest in search Of better life. He has begun his career as aholdup nik, thief and liar. Ida calls hlm "a man with twominds". He wavers between gullt and remorse, but unlike RoyHobbs of T k Natural he learns from his suffering and overcomeshls weakness with great struggle. After the death of Morris,FranK works for the Bober family upholding the principles ofinterpersonal responsibility and compassion for which Morrlsstrove throughout his life. Helen, Morrls's daughter, isImpressed by Frank and her renewed love for him can beperceived in her remark : "I wanted you to know I'm still usingyour Shakespeare".(TA 36) Although the novel does not bringabout the marrlage of Frank wlth Helen, it leaves a sense ofhope in that dlrectlon. This tale of the relationship betweena poor Jewish grocer and the Italran boy who came to rob himand exchange identities reminds one of a fable of good and badWarrlng for Everyman's Soul in a Morallty play.In a way, asthe title would indicate, it is Frank, rather than Morris onwhom the novel centres.It 1s h ~ moral s regeneration on which

the action focuses.,3 N W LifP is an academic novel projecting the powerstruggle of an English Department in a technologically oriented~chool. Levin is no stranger to suffering when he arrives atcascadia as Encjlish jnstr'uctor. His love affair with PaulineGilley, the Composition Director's wlfe, progresses at herinstigation. His Sexual adventures on campus remind one of theremark that "Right now to be both Jewish and a Professor ismore erotically dangerous than to be Richard Burton" (Daniels1965,26) Levin silffers wlth Paullne in her gurlt over herinfidelity, he suffers for his own disloyalty. He suffersbecause she lives with Gilley and goes home from parties withhlm, and because he cannot call her his own.To begin with, Levln 1s a vlctlm of wrong choices. Heseeks physlcal love In Laverne - a waitress, Avls Fllss hiscolleaque, Nadalee - a student and Pauline his colleague. Whatbegins as an act of adultery with Pauline ends as aninseperable bond. In the beglnnlng Levin avoids Pauline out offear of getting involved. But eventually he takes upon himselfthe burden of Paul~ne and her two adopted children at the costOf hls career. As Mandel remarks: "He(Lev1n) has moved from sexand a waitress ; sex and hls colleague Avls, sex and hisstudent Nadalee, sex and Pauline Gilley to Pauline minus sex,to self-sacrifice for the Idea of love"(1970.263) Jonathan

saumbach Comments : "Love is sacred in Malamud's universe ; iflife is holy, love is a holy of holies. At the end of thenovel Levin achieves a kind of unsought heroism in sacrificinghis career for the g&.c&& of love"(1965,105) Actually it iscompassion more than love, that prompts Levin to undertake theresponsibility Of Pregnant Paullne and her adopted children.prompted by compassion he discovers in hls act "a way of givingvalue to other llves through assurlng r1ghts8'(NL 222) If hefalls to give hls unstlnted love, he succeeds in extendingcompassion. His love for Pauline 1s chastened by compassion.Levin wakes up to the reallsation of the bitter fact that lovegoes not with freedom but wlth entanglement and commitment.Perhaps this 1s why "Levln flnds hls new llfe in a newrelatlonshlp". (Handy 1977,73)Malamud's location In The Fixer has shlfted from modernurban Amerlca to early twentieth century Russia. It is a worldof pogroms and tea-drinking, old men In caftans. The hero,Yakov Bok, the fixer, is the shtetl handyman, building andflnrshing furniture, palntlng, plastering, dolng all the oddlobs which more educated Jews shun. Like all Malamudianprotagonists, he had a mrserable past. His mother died tenmlnutes after his blrth and his father was a chance victim oftwo drunken soldiers who "shot the first three Jews in theirPath, his father had been the second "(TF 8). Practically a

orn orphan he had to "dl9 with my flnger nails for aliving" (TF 13). At the age of ten, he was apprenticed in thetrade of a 'fixer'. Inspite of hls hard work he suffers fromdire poverty. His wife, Raisl, after five and a half years of abarren marriage has left hlm, eloped with some gentilestranger. Except for his father-in-law Shmuel, he has no otherfamrly. Nor has he any meaningful relationship with othermembers of the shtetl community. Yakov was recruited to theRusso-Japanese war, but was discharged as he was an asthmatic.At last, Bck grows slck of his life in the shtetl, whichto him is like a prison. He decides to venture on his new lifein Kiev. He thrr.ks his knowledge of Russlan and love forSpinoza would secure hlm a llvlng there. At Klev 'the Jerusalemof Russla' Yakov lives rn constant fear of belng recognized asa Jew. The thnuqt oi returnlnq t i,him.the shtetl 1s like death toIronically, Bok 1s rnvolved in the hysterical anti-semitism. In a moment of compassion he saves a druken Russian,Lebedev, from snowy death. The grateful Lebedev offers hissavlour a job as a foreman In hls brickworks. To accept the jobBok conceals his identity from Lebedev and the public. In themeantime Zhenia ~clov, a twelve year old boy is murdered. Thepandora's box is opened and Bok's mlsfortunes begin. He isaccused of 'ritual murder' and as he plans to escape toAmsterdam, he 1s arrested by the police. As he 1s carried to

~rison-on the road, manacled and leered by the crowd, herealises and regrets his mistake in concealing his identity.~ok, by nature a victlm, is discovered to be a Jew,circumstantial evidence 1s complled and he is imprisoned toawart indictment on the charge of 'ritual murderr.Bok's ordeal in prlson, a time span of almost threeyears, whlle Grubeshov, the prosecuting attorney compilesevidence to draw up an indictment, 1s in fact the most~mportant part of the novel. The solltary cell into which he isthrown 1s made hor In summer and beastly cold in winter. It isalways damp and foul-smelling. The condition of the matress onwhlch he sleeps 1s such that to beat out the bedbugs woulddlslntegrate lt He has to sleep In darkness, the food isfilthy, tasteless and mostly accompanled by dead cock-roachesand rats. His shoes have nalls stlcking through the soles thatcause suppurating sores on his feet. As though the physicaltortures are not enough, the deputy warden, a sadistrc pervert,orders a series of daily lnspectlons of the prisoner's personduring which he must strlp and submit to the degrading searchof his mouth, armpits and anything else. At flrst the searchoccurs twlce a day, then three times and flnally Six. And totop it as a punishment for "consplrlng with outside agitators"B0k 1s chained to the vall during day and at nlght must lie ona plank, hls legs enclosed In stocKs.

The gradual resumption of his Jewlsh Identity is one ofthe most profound changes that Bok undergoes in the course ofhis imprisonment. Physically he begins to look like a Jew againas his beard and forelocks grow. He occupies his mind byremembering fragments from the Psalms whlch he puts togetherinto a lament -it contains the essence of Jewish sorrow.The biggest temptation of all for the fixer, the hardestto reslst, is the temptatlon to commlt sulclde, "to end hissufferlng for once and all, to get rld of all he was and hadbeen. His death vould mean there was one last choice, therealways is and he had taken lt ".(TF 268). ~ u thls too he findsthe courage to reject. sufferlnq has chastened Bok and herealises ln an epiphanic moment that he should live and die forothers. Pernaps, one trlvlal man comes to represent the sixmilllcn killed by the Germans.Suffering has caused moral transformation in Bok. He issympathetic and compassionate to Ralsl. He 1s even ready to ownher bastard child, Chalm, as hls son for her sake. HIS moralSteadfastness 1s evident In hls refusal to sign the papers ofconfesslcn sent by Grubeshov throuqh Ralsl as a last resort totrap hlm. He refuses to betray other people In the interest ofpersonal comfort. ~e prefers to break rather than bend beforeGrubeshov. He also refuses to be pardoned as a criminal. Herefuses to learn the message of mercy from the inhuman Tsar. He

indicts the Tsar for his lack of charity and compassion. Thetriumph of the fixer is in his attainment of compassion asngrace under pressure". The flxer's existence acquires meaningfor his positive act Of responding to history with a feeling ofresponsibility towards the Jews.Like Levin, Yakov Bok starts out having lost the meaningof his Jewishness and the novel 1s the process of itsrediscovery. Frank Alpine works twenty four hours a day for theBobers; Levln reslgns himself to a llfe of dredgery at highschool teachlng for Pauline and Bok's sacrifice goes beyond thepersonal to the political and social.The extremity of man's efforts to seek freedom In and outof the self is stressed ln the vlolent act at the end of aTenants. The triviality of the tltle lmplles the end of bothHarry Lesser and Wlllle Spearmlnt. Each is in quest of theother. Lesser seeks human love in formal art represented byLesser's. Towards the end of the novel both writers are forcedto sacrifice art, as life overwhelms them. They finally achieveunion in mutually destroying each other: "they aimed at eachother " Malamud tells us "accurate blows". The alm and theaccuracy lrnply the directlo" and disclpl~ne both achieve intheir souls at the moment, with whlch they trnscend themselves.Lesser is now more than he is. So is Wlllle."Each, thought thewriter, feels the anguish of the othert'(TT 173). 2t.E T~nantS

ends here. The end also Promises a new beginning. The novelcloses unmistakably with the message of "Hab rachmonesu (Havemercy or compassion).The title of B&in!s Lks not Only reflects the divisionin Dubin's Self as has been pointed out earlier, but finallysuggests his triumph over the lives he is involved in both inbooks and lives. Through his struggle with inner and outercontingencies, Dubin ultimately frees hlmself from the prisonof hls eqo, and recoqnises and fulfllls his responslbllitytowards others, thereby rlslnq to the status of the Malamudianmoral hero. Like lts immediate predecessor The Tenants, Dubin'pLives has two endings: the one where Dubin returns to his wife,and the other, the list of hls works. In returning to his wife,Dubln not only reooqnlses hls responsibility towards her, butcomes to terms with his past whlch is symbollsed by her. Healso accepts the inevitable fact of hls aglnq and therebytrlumphs over tine. His supreme realisatlon of the value anddlqnity of human life is contained In his reply to Fanny'squestion whether he loves his wlfe. " I love her " (DL 162) Themoral hero who through suffering wants everybody "to be" andloves all lives and through love and compassion he redeemsthem, and of course, himself. Dubln's victory also lies in thefact that he redeems the people whose llves he has written. Ashe himself says, he relives their lives and discovers the value

of glory of human life. By writing biographies, he not onlyfinds himself, but gives profound insight into human life. Hisown adventures often Parallel events In D.H.Lawrencees life:Frieda's elopement with Lawrence, her bltter flght with himjheraffairs with several men and Lawrence's impotence. Towards theend of the struggle Dubin reallses language is not life.Dubln's return with love to Kitty and her children is borne ofhis awareness of commrtment to thelr lot. It 1s an epiphanicact of grace and Zompasslon. Dubrn 1s changed by the epiphanyof Fanny's qurlelcss sympathy for Kitty. Commitment ultimatelygets the better of passion as in Malamud's other works.Malamud's last novel God's Grace presents the traglcIntensity of allenation and the desperate yearning forcommunity In the context of total annihllatlon of llfe.Although thls novel dlffers from the other novels of Malamud,It employs fantasy as technrque and lts essential similaritycould however be traced to his preoccupatlon with compassion asa means of transformatlon and redemption. Presenting aprlmltivistlc settlng ~od's Grace conveys the need ofc0mpass:on through tne synbollc ~xterplay of the noble savageand the ignoble ainll:.zatlcn. The desperate efforts of Cohn tofound a community wlth anlmals, and to create a new societybased on responsibility and Compassionate concern for fellowbelngsreflect Malamud's humanistic fervour and primitivistic

~oncern. G!2!XSG!XlGS becomes a strongly-felt plea on the needfor compassion which is the only means to save the world fromthe impending doom.In pictures ef Fidelman it 1s resistance on the part ofsusskind and Beppo that results in Fldelman's liberation asartlst and man. Almost every episode in the novel ends with anact of violence. A mature awareness of love redeems both victimand victimiser, both Fldelman and Annamaria at the end of"st111 Life". The heroism of the Malamud protagonist, histranscendence of self and world, is dependent on such anawareness.Malamud's three collections of short-stories- ThT;m, and Rembrandt's && has placed him as ashort story writer of considerable skill. He 1s often comparedwlth great Yiddish masters as I.L.Peretz, Mocher Sefcrim, andSholom Alerchen not only for hls technique of story - telllngbut also for his "concern for moralrty and ethlcs".(Sieqel1965,171) The compassion whlch shapes Malamud's moral vision inhis novels is evldent In many of hls short storles as well.Reeling under the pressure of misfortune and injustice,Malamud's characters strive to seek redemption il compassion.A deep concern for compassion unlfles Malamud's apparentlydissimilar stories. Inordinate suffering In the w,inhuman violence in~dlots ~lrst and failure of

communication in &&randtfp && are explored in the backdropof compassion. The citation of the National BOO^ Awardcommittee for !iEUS B.9lXd reads : "Compassronate and profound1, its wry humour, it captures the poetry of human relationshipat the point where reality and imagination meet". Compassionat the cost of self-effasive sufferlng 1s poiqnantly evoked instories like 'The Bill' and 'Take Pity'. The predicament ofpanessa and Axel in their stories recalls that of Morris in 'J&Assistant. In 'Idlots First' the tltle story stresses theredemptive value of compassion. Stories like 'The Death of Me','The German Refugee' and 'The Cost of Living' speak out forcompassion in the wake of vlolence and depression. 'IdiotsFirst' graphically describes the agony of a dying father forhis retarded son. "Heb rachmones"(Have Mercy) the cry ofLevenspiel (ln Eh= Tenants) sums up Malamud's philosophy ofcompassion.The study of Malamud's novels and short stories revealsthat the inner spiritual strength of characters comes out oftheir suffering and compassion. Compassion in Roy Hobbs Of '2&NaturaL dawns very late in the form of hls love of Iris Lemon.In Assistant Morrls Bober 1s compassion incarnate and llvesand dles for others In the mldst of withering sufferlng. FrankAlpine takes the role of Morrrs after his death and Suffers dayand night out of compassion for the Bober family. compassion in

Seymour ~evin Of A NSh! Li&z gives him strength to give up hisjob and shoulder the responsibility of Pauline Gilley and heradopted children.Suffering chastens Yakov ~ o k of The Fixerwho ultimately decides to Suffer for the sake of his race, anddoes not yield to the tempting offers of release by the Tsarist~fflcials despite inhuman torture.Malamud is at his best InAssistant and The Fixerwhere the themes Of Suffering and compassion are evoked mosteffectively. Speaklng about The U Malamud himself calls it"the best book I ever WrOte".(MalOff 1966,109)It recievedwide acclaim and won the National Book Award and the Pulitzerprlze.The themes of suffering and compassion are consistentIn the early novels, while the later ones somewhat falteringlysuggest It.The last novel God's Grace reveals that Malamudhas not lost his falth in humanity.To hlm "llfe is betterthan death" and suffering and compassion makes llfe better.Maimed and crippled, both physically and mentally, thecrlmlnal loses his fltness to llve and hls heart 1s embitteredby this klnd of punlshment.He compromises hls guilty-conscience after and even during the punlshment wlth thesatisfaction that he has suffered hls transgression. But, theWestlon 1s whether there 1s any redemption In hls llfe afterthls mechanical punishment.It cannot be denled that bothMalamud's and Mukherjee's protagonists possess the redemptive

quality of perseverance- they battle with their misfortune withdetermination and Put UP with their misery peacefully. In theprocess, they learn from their bitter experience and grow to anew moral awareness which in turn promises a new life. Their.ctions stem from the belief that in each manlwoman there is acapacity to learn from histher suffering and to become bettermorally.In the Western imagination the Jew had always played aspeclal role as wizard, magiclan, possessor of secretknowledge. From hated, feared or rldlculed flgure, lurking onthe fringes of the culture, he was transformed Into the Man whosuffered, Everyman.To Americans especially, ever respectfulof eye-witness reports and ready to listen to the man who wasthere, the Jew compelled attention.As the most expert andexperienced sufferers, Jews were consrdered the best tolnstruct Amerlca. In the words of an analyst:First and foremost, there 1s the theme of meaningfulsuffering, which in Malamud also implies the questfor moral resolution and selfreallzatlon..... Malamud's wrltlng, like that of theMovement at large 1s also richly comlc.Paradoxically, the comedy 1s at once a mode ofexpression of the suffering and a way of easing it.With the Jew humor is an escape valve for dangerouspressure, a manner of letting-out things too painfulto be kept in.. . ..finally, the Jewish writer speaksin a distinctive llterary voice(Hassan 1962,81Bernard Malamud has a tough, sardonlc and deeply compassionate

.ision.Few writere Can transform pain into responsibility~ith the quiet, steady glow Malamud can give to language. Muchof the sweetening or more accurately bitter sweetening, comesfrom the comedy, almost as typical of Malamud's work as itsconcern with Suffering.The tltterness of Jewish humour isnowhere better exemplified than rn The Flxec :The days were passing and the Russian Officials werewaiting impatiently for his menstrual period tobegin. Grubeshcv and the army general oftenconsulted the calender. If ~t didn't start soonthey threatened to pump blood out of his penis witha machine they had for that purpose. The machinewas a pump made of lron with a red indicator to showhow much blood was berng drained out. The danger oflt was that lt dldn't always work right andsometines sacked every dzcp of blood out of thet,scy. It was used ~uc,lis;vely on Jews; only theirpenises fltted lt. (TF 207)Therefore, Malamdd's protagonists sustaln their comicsense even durlnq the time of crlsls and save themselves fromanguish, isolation and inferiority complex unllke Bellow'sJoseph.If on the one hand, in his early works, Malamud'sProtagonists are the victlms u: their overwhelming urge forWomen and thelr overpowering passion for wealth, on the otherhand Mukherjee's hero~nrs becox 'vlctlms of fun and SOclalsecurity provided by ren. Conseque?rly, they exhibit acompulslire desir,? to ncvc from n:ie place to another in search

of beautiful womenldependable men and wealth. Initially, theyignorant about the corruptive forces of the new frontier.heref fore, their weakness for womenlmen compels them to fallinto the traps of seductresseslseducers who drain out all theirand deprive them of their ambitlon for a brightfuture. Their weakness for wealth attract them towards wrongmen/women who misguide them for their own materlal gain anddestabilize their moral bearings.Both Malamud and Mukherjeegive advance information about their protagonists to readersabout the diabolic nature of certaln characters through thesymbolic implicatrons of the red and black colours of theirdresses and the religious implication of thelr physicaldeformities like a 'sick breast' and 'half-face'.One ofthe problems that baffles Third World writers 1s how to expressa sense of displacement. Mukherlee achleves thls remarkably bytaklng Jasmlne to an America with whlch she is quite familiarnow. In her first novelTiaer's Dauahter she said "changesin the anatomies of nations are easy to percieve. But changeswrought by Gods or titans are too subtle for measurement". (TD7). But it is only through a sense of place and itscorresponding ethos, can a novel achieve an 'authentic voice'.Bharati Mukherjee's protagonist appears to be a victim Of life,whlch is visionless, because ~t is 'voiceless'. Hence Jasmineis nelther typically Indian nor exotically Westernlsed.

perhaps, she is essentially human, basically feminine in hersensibility, struggling to find modes of authenticcommunication.The choices before an illegal immigrant, dressed inshreds of national costume, trotting out like a vagabond on theintercontinental arena are limited. They just ask to be allowedto land: to pass through and continue. By carrying a sandalwoodGanapati in her purse, Jyoti believes that the ~ o d with anelephant trunk can uproot anything in her path.Changes in landscape, necessarily, imply changes insensibility. But lt is also possible that the changes inlandscape may be so radical and swift that the sensibilityexposed to these changes may find the 'volce' smothered andstifled. The sltuatlon becomes all the more complex lf ~t is anIndian situation. Jasmine has reached America, but the gulfcreated by the changed landscape also rules out any possibilityof a 'connection' between India and Amerlca. Soon she realisesthat there was no concept of shame in the foreign society thatshe was now part of. She wanted to become the person theythought they saw: humorous, lntelllgent, reflned, affectionate,not illegal, not murderer, not widowed, raped, destitute,fearful. Jasmine is exposed to the West, through absorption,malnly of its language and mores. She flnds lt difficult tod~ssociate the lariguage from culture and her primary emotions

from language. Hers is the problem of communication, theinability to face Upto one's emotional crack-up. Hers is theprediacament of an Indian widow finding herself out of depthsln a foreign Country with an alien milieu a kind of cultureEssentially. it is the agony of a ,voice' struggling foridentity and getting stifled in the process repeatedly.The rhythms of new India with its basic penchant forunpredictable violence has made Jasmine a widow. Arriving inAmerica, at Florida she tastes primitive brutalrty at the handsof the scarred Vietnam vet who brings her there. And now, asJane Ripplemeyer her modesty is outraged by her youngneighbour- farmer Durrel Lutz. She 1s given a raw deal by theSukhwinder Singhs, The Half-Faces and the Durrel Lutzes. Ineach case the outrage subsides, but the resldue of unforgivingbltterness remains. Jasmine realises that she 1s not able toshare her knowelege of Half-Face and Durrel with any of herfriends. All through these experiences one notes Jasmine'scompassionate self tightening her persistant nagging feeling ofher inability to communicate what she experiences. The chokingof the normal channels of communicatlon, the stifling of the'Voicef makes her taut. Her consciousness both awake andasleep, is shot tnrough with night-mares of violence, murder,rape and death. Happy to be in Amerlca, she wishes out ofCompassion she had known America before it had got perverted.

The shooting of Bud "Was unthinkable a deicide, worse thana~~asinating the Mahatma". (Jasmine 196). She reflects: "I havea husband for each of the women I have been, Prakash fors as mine, Taylor for Jase, Bud for Jane, Half-Face forKali". (&SU!im197). She is not choosing between men. JasmineIS caught between the 'old-world dutifulness' on the one handand 'the promise of America' on the other.The central and controlling Image of recent flction isthat of the rebel-victim. Helshe is an actor, actress but alsoa sufferer. Almost always helshe is an outsider, an initiate,an anarchist and clown-a Faust and Christ compounded ingrotesque or ironic measures. The poles of crlme and sainthooddeflne the range of hislher particular fate, whlch IS hisjhercharacter. Nihilism, crazy self-affirmation and psychopathyconstitute the limit towards which one type of hero-heroinetends. Martyrdom, self-negation and defeat constitute the otherlimit which a different type of herotheroine approaches. Thefigure of the rebel-victim, represents the eternal dialecticbetween the prlmary 'Yes' and everlastlnq 'No'. It 1sman's/womanrs answer that he/she conform or abolishhlmself/herself.The new herolheroine mediates the contradictions ofAmerican culture by offering himselflherself, in passive ordemonic fashion as scapegoat. Hls/her function is to create

those values whose absence from our society is the cause ofhis/her predicament and ours.It is factuous, therefore to say that recent fictionis devoid of values. The 'ethic' which the new heroprojects is inductive; it is defined existentiallyby his actions and even more by his passions. Thisaccounts for the shifts and evasions, the ironiesand ambiguities, the self-made quality of hismorality. (Hassan 1962,6)Mukherjee deprcts the problems faced by the Indian andother Thlrd World lmmlgrants who attempt to assimilate intoNorth American life styles. She focuses upon sensitiveprotagonists who lack a stable sense of personal and culturalidentity. These characters get victimised by racism, sexism andother forms of social oppression. Much of Mukherjee's fiction1s informed by her personal experiences. In her first novel,TheDauahter Mukherjee presents a satirical portralt ofIndlan soclety from the perspective of Tara BanerjeeCartwright, a young expatriate who 1s not yet accustomed toAmerican culture yet is estranged from the moralsand Valuesof her native land. Returning to India to visit her family,Tara who 1s married to a North Amerlcan is shocked byCalcutta's poverty and squalor amidst politlcal uprisings. Thebook's strength and orlginallty come from its author's subtleuse of her herolne. Unable to adjust to her earlier ethos as acompassionate Indian, the reader gradually discovers that it is

not so much Tars as the world around her that is crumbling.Mukherjee's second novel is a psychological study ofDimple, a young woman from Calcutta who settles in New Yorkwith her new husband. Brought up to live as a passive anddependant Young lady according to traditional Indian standardsof feminlty, Dimple lacks the inner resources to cope with thefear and alienation that she experiences in New York. Dimple isalready a victim of her own personality, caught in traditionalpassivity, female treachery and covert violence. In Americacompassion helps her turn it outward. Her powerlessness andllttle acts of cruelty typlfy women in many societies at somepoint in hlstory. If she had remained in Indla she would havecommited suicide. In America she commlts murder. The Indianmlddle class, normally seen in horrible muddle becomes moresympathetic than ever it does about tragedies of Indian villagellfe concerning mothers-in-law. In she signifies andsharpens her focus. She confronts soclal and personal violencehead-on, and splits her complex compasslonate self into sharpfacets, creating characters who shatter like glass.One must leave the reader to ludge how much of Qarknesscomes from the writer's temperament and how much fromexperience. Mukherjee tells how in Canada she thought ofherself as an 'expatrlatel because she saw 'lmmrgrants' toCanada as "Lost souls, put up on and pathetic". On departing to

the United states of movlng naway from the aloofness ofexpatriation, to the exuberance of immigration", (Darknee&,,)she immersed herself with relief and gladness in theconvenience of the great melting pot. This sense of a will tosink into an alien Culture distinct from remaining a member ofa self-conscious minority in a more pluralist society likeCanada inspired many of the stories that are collected inparkness. "Tamurlane" tells of her fatal encounter between~slan-illegals and Canadian polrce and Immrgrantion officers.It is one of the best stories rn the collection, because itarouses genuine passion and is bitter-sweet, lronlc in tone.The basic problems of maklng contacts, and of learning therlght compassionate behavloural signs that wlll transform oneare focused in the central Indianlsouth-Aslan characters.Violence in America is ubiquitous and terrible, but it isdemocratic. It offers her and others some klnd of freedom.Nobody is slngled out. The characters Mukherjee portraysrnclude Maharajas, rllegal allen bus boys and bayonet-scarredrefugees. In the oprnron of a scholar, "the newcomer's feelingsabout the West span a spectrum from marooned expatriation toexuberant identifiaction to momentary nostalgia for old homes".(Cooke 1989,267)The characters of Mukherjeefs stories often exist in thesame plane, juxtaposed, flattened-out in a way that 1s both

~oghul miniaturist and modernist.~lthough failure tocommunicate is at the heart of this collection, compassionmakes the Protagonists in Darkness bright, althoughencountering disappointmentunlike sad Western characters.Moments of loss, attainment, violence and yearning for graceexplode in crystalline fixity.As a critic observes:The stories are lapidary with detailed objects, evenproducts. American brand names and Indian exotica(invested with an equal power)objectify emotionsthat....at once distances and compels the reader.Isolated body gestures-the sister of a dying womancarrying home dinner leftovers ln a 'shiny packagebreast-high as if it 1s a treasure', an unwedpregnant daughter holdlng up a copy of NationalGeoqrawhic to ward off her enraged father; animmigrant hash cook who holds his Canadlan passportIn front of his face a6 a Mountle shoots him.. . .reveal the shlftlng of contlnents. (Cooke 1989,268)After moving to the Unlted States Mukherjee underwent atransformation. Seeing herself in the tradrtlon of Ellis IslandAmerican writers (parkness is dedicated to Bernard Malamud) thereader can notice the change that came upon her rathersuddenly. The newer stories make up for these lapses. "Angela", "A Fatheru, "Saints", and just about all the stories in ThgMiddleman are as subtle as Tiser's Daushter, and evenSharper-either Mukherjee is now confident that she caninterpret to her new countrymen, or she's writlng for herself.MUkherjee is aware that she is addresslng people she knows

arenrt really listening, hence, she has to raise her voice and&out a little to be heard:Well, after a point, one is not comfortably bicultural-Iwas when I wrote Tiqer's D a u m ;now I am no longer so and America is more real to methan India. India especially the Hindu religion-hasgiven me a way of looking at things, but India ispart of the past that I am proud of but my life ishere. I need to belong. America matters to me-ratherAmerica transformed me. The letting go of India wasvery traumatic, but to hang on willy-nilly to anoutdated image of the country you've left is toInsulate yourself. As I move from campus to campus,young immigrant Indians are experiencing a seriousgenerational conflict. (Pate1 1989,129)Mukherjee's characters, especially the ones in her laterbocks, have urgent, rivetting volces. They speak In thecomtemporary idioms as immigrarts handle lt, each richlyreflecting the cadences of their original language on whichthey have grafted a new distinctive regional Amerlcanness. Shecredits her flawless ventriloquism to a very good ear thatunconsciously picks up nuances of languages. More importantlyit 1s havlng married an Amerlcan, Clark Blaise (a wrlter) who"has cpened up for me an America that is normally closed toimmigrants".(Carvalho 1991,9) Mukherjee's material is new,Surprising and vital. This confrontation between the Thirdkorld and the First has somehow escaped the attention ofAmerican authors. But with motel-owning Patels, grocery StoreowningKoreans, illegal West Indian domestics and refugees from

~~tjr merica, the Middle East and Afganistan-all pouring intoAmerica at an increasing rate-the subject of the book could nothave been more timely.The new immigrantion laws have also whetted Americancuriosity about who these people are and their life in theunited States. True, the daily press has documented thephenomenon of tne new immigrant. ~ u t for the first time,Mukherjee's short stoeies make these motley characters come soall>* t'lat one can alnost hear txlr accents and smell theirMukherlre's refined manners reveal her sophisticatedlndlan upbrlnginq. But. her questing, restless spiritsnd illdependence of mir.;l are undoubtedly of Americanorigin. With wit and compassion, she has trackeddown her alter ego in Mayas, Pannas, Jasmines andother characters who careen through her hectic,raunchy stories at breakneck speed, even as sheherself joins in the celebratlon of the arrival ofanother India-born great on the American literaryscene. (Pate1 1989,129)It would be tnle to say that T&Middleman is the end-result of Mukherjee's on-going love affair with America-theenergy of the country, its people, its language-remade in herown inage. And as a by-product of this romance with her new-CsUPt:sy,she is quire passionate azout the need for the writerWho has choser,, either voluntarl;$ or lnvoiuntarily, to leavehls native lard behir,d, to put his past Ilfe behind and get on

with the new. And this means absorbing whole-hearted theessence of his or her new country. n~ like to say that"observes MukherjeeI'm re-inventing the American Landscape and I'm repossessingthe American language, making it my owninstead of slavishly copying it. I write aboutstates of feelings or moral dilemmas that strike avery clear chord in me. They are not me, they arenot autobiographical but, like Flaubert inthey are alternate selves of mine. Middlemanfor example, is set in a ranch in Costa Rica where Ispent several months. So I'm writing not necessarilyabout real people but about those ghettos and thatgeography that I feel a real part of. (Quoted inPate1 1989,291In Darkness, Mukherjee drew her characters from many sub-continental classes and religions. There is a Pakistani Muslimengineer and his wife, a Maharaja, illegal restaurant workersfrom God knows where. In ThP Middleman, she goes even further,gathering protagonists from all over the globe; sometimes sheleaves out the Indlans altogether. Her wrlting has a newtoughness generated by compasslon-the violence both moreexplicit and more to the point. It's a departure, and a measureof her confidence.Mukherjee's latest novel Jasmine reinforces her own viewson cultural sublimation from expatriate to lmmigrant. WithMiddleman and Jasmine Mukherjee has stuck to the Eurocentricghetto of American mlnorlty literature. The exotica of theIndian llngo has just graduated into the American experience.

For herself, she has decided that the "United States is theembodiment of the openiress, iiberalism and freedom. A cultureof dreamers, a land of transformation, where an individual canreverse omens". (Purewal 1990,4)Black Amerlcan writers might not agree with Mukherjee'srose trnted view of America, but then she has a theory: shedlsmlsses the work of black writers like Alice Walker and ToniMorrison as another experience of "slave history" which has noparallels with Tte immigrant experience. Neither do theAmerican Indlans on reservations, penned away from the Americanmainstream, colour the polrtlcal world of Kukherjee. For her it1s simply a matter of "grabbing mainstream America by thelapels and tellirq it that we belong". (Purewal 1990,4). Sheseem to exhort the reader to forget about United Statesforeiqr policy, mclti-nationals. American imperialism which isnot the America she wants to write about.In thls careful co.istruct of Amerlca, then, she placesher Jasmines and her Dimple Dasg,Jptas like the sari thatBharati Mukherjee st111 wears despite her "transformedIdentity". Indian exotica is draped around her stories in theform of a village soothsayer or a veil, when her heroines areyouag an3 still llvlng in the natlve land. It 1s only when theycome to America that they are reborn free. Jasmlne, for examplediscovers her true self in the Amerizan midwest where she

ecomes an un-hyphenated American by marrying Bud Ripplemeyer,an Iowa banker. And to make Jasmine's experience suitably~merican, Mukherjee has him shot in the back by a desparatefarmer-" to capture the farm crisis in the mid-west". She alsohas them adopt Du, a Vietnamese boat child " to widen theimmigrant experience".(Purewal 1990,4)The mindless violence Mukherjee encounters is a bittercriticism of America but she persists in her quest of eluslvehappiness, a synbol of womankind and the new ploneers in theWild West. Shattered, Jyoti leaves for America on her own. Overthere her life turns upside down. Each stage brings a newname(from Jasmine to Jase to Jane) and a new lover, almost asif she passes through four incarnetions on her continuous tripWestwards. With Jasmine she emerges more confident, revellingIn her Intimacy wrth the Amerlcan idloss and her extensivefamiliarity with the landscape. She even generously adopts thepopular prejudices regarding the mysterious East and thelnscrutabrlity of the oriental characters. Jasmine appears tohave been written to a set formula. An up-to-date femaleprotaqo~lst, w h ~ though born to the veil, braved everything tosuccesstully szuqgle herself into rhe Unrted States and morethan everything ended up becoming smarter than the mostliberated of American women. Throughout it is compassion thatsustalns Mukher]eels characters while suffering in flight. Her

characters discover their self-hood through suffering andtrials.While Malamud consciously presents compassion as aredeeming feature in his novels and stories, Mukherjee does notconsciously do so. Actually, compassion is only implied in herworks. Mukherjee, on the other hand is content with presentingthe complexities cf the sjtuatiors thzt +rise in her novels andstories. Actually she deals with the suffering undergone by herlmmlgrant characters than with compassion which is not anImportant aspect of her world.

CHAPTERIVMyth : Passions And Purgations

CHAPTER IVAnd to all of these new elements in thespectacle before me, I had no longer the faithto bring which would give them consistency,unity, existence, they drifted loosely infront of me, haphazardly, without truth,containing in themselves no beauty which myeyes could have tried, as they used, to see asan intelligible whole .... But when a beliefdisappears there survives it and withlncreaslng vlvldness, to mask the lack of thepower which has deserted us of bringingreality to the new, sllperstitious attachmentto the olcl thlngs whlch belief had animated;as though it were in them and not in ourselvesthat the divine is present, and as if ouractual failure of bellef had a contingentcause-the death of the gods.- - proustTraditionally "myth" is perceived as a sacred storysystem whi-h glvee a sense ot security to human beings'religious and metaphysical concerns. In this study 'myth' isexplored in the contexts of post-modernism and post-Colonia~ism. Pcst-modernism involves a challenge to previouslyunquestioned *~certitudesU such as continuous history orCartesian rationality. A tr+dltlanal myth, viewed asimmutable, eternal and transhistorical would constitute such aCertitude. A sense of the "nation" is discernible here - in the

and literary interests merge and sometimes clash with oneanother. Myth has a truth of its own, distinct from that ofother cultural forms since the mythical mind 1s creative andgives expression to its own form of objective reality. It is anecessary stage in the creative expression and self-liberationof the human spirit.Myth holds communities and races more strongly thanlanguage, territory and government ; myth provides insightsInto the victories of life and death with a poetic richnessthat has startling truth and immediacy. There 1s no secularsubstitute for myth. In an age that wants everything capsuled,dlluted and quick-served, myth remains inviolate, demanding tobe experienced and appreciated on its own terms, refusing to besimplified. Fiction embraces both story and myth.It has been impllclt that the theory of myth is, for anyliterary consideratlon, a theory of fictions. Therefore, it isWorth considering the degree to which we think of myth as acompelling or somehow superior fiction from which a krnd ofacceptable or at least usable frame of reference can bedevised, if not for the understanding of life as a whole, atleast for the pursuit of certaln interested ends. And suchends constitute their own set of claims on "life as a whole".Sometimes the degree of overlapping in "story", "fiction" and"myt.hu, happens, whether in relation to what actually occured

or what might have occured. Very often the story permeates themyth so much that it is impossible to separate one from theother.Historian Paul Gaston has declared : "Myths arecombinations of images and symbols that reflect a people's wayof perceiving truth". (1970,9) They tend to be value-chargedappropriations of a people's understanding of both reality andthemselves. In the words of philosopher Karl Jaspers: " myth isa carrier of meanings". (1958,lS). Mark Schorer views myths as"instruments by which we continually struggle to make ourexperlence lntelliglble to ourselves". (1968,353) John Hellmannsays: " By myth I mean the stories containing a people's imageof themselves in history ..... a myth is our explanation ofhlstory that can also serve as a compelling idea for ourfuture". (1986,110)Stories may be in many degrees true or false. They mayorganlse events, impressions, perceptions to create an order.Depending on that orderIt is a moreintelligiblecertainly ofgeneral sense of the constructed andwhich informs theories of 'fiction'.the three terms 'fiction' implies thehighest-level of generality, whlle 'storyf and\myth1 a rather consequential and specializedextension of both terms. (Righter 1975,93)In early times myth and religion were indistinguishable.

elationship. Myth is an alternative to 'Mimesis'. It tappedalternative sources of creatlve power.Explaining ourselves to ourselves, drawing the portrait,flnding the tag, telling the appropriate story-all theseoverlap, or are in some sense interchangeable. And there can beatleast some degree of reference to primitive custom whenstories lnvolving. say, the totem anlmal, or another objectwith a symbolic ancestry, play a part in forming bothindividual and grcup identity. We can now look further at thosepowers over the self which relate to a wlde range of socialllfe: fashions, manners, loyalties, degrees of affiliation toone's own society or the sub-groups within lt, ideologies andrelated beliefs-all 3reas In whlch myth is used to relate theindividual to the age, areas In which one may now try tobalanca some of the senses of function with those ofexp:anarion.AThe Amerlcan myth demonstrates that lt 1s an amalgam ofseveral powerful, pervasive, cultural ideas. The "City on ahill" concept embodled the idea tnst the future Americans wereto be a "Chosen people", a new Israel dlvlnely ordained to be a"light to the nation''. This conceot to a graar extent exerted ashaping influence on the American mind. Closely related to thisbellef 1s the image of Amerlca as "Redeemer Natlon". The NewWorld country was expected to play a singular role in global

egenerationsprrading the gospei of democracy and freedom.The idea Of America as "Redeemer Nation" held a centralpos~tisn in the Americar. myth. So also did "the Frontier" andthe concept 0.5 "Manliest Destrny". The sense that Providencewasca-ling tile !,:>u,~g nation westward las the wildernessreceded further westward durlng early Nlneteenth century,lurlng pure and hardy pioneers towards its open spaces) foundits expression in the popular slogan "Manifest Destiny". Thusthe Frontier and the Amrican West became cardinal componentsIn a national mythic framework.Ine list of rliustrlous Americans who heralded what WaltWhltman called a 'Passage to India" 1s so lengthy that spacepermlrs the een':iJr# of only a few. In 1997 Hector st.John deCrevecoeur vc 1.c inq:the then comnun belief th~tbeglnning in China andIndia, civilization had f9llowed what was called the'Westwai-3 cnrae of empire', hintea that Americanswere 'the Western pilgrims' who would 'finish thegreat clrcle' by carrying the world culturaladvancements back to the East. (De Crevecoeur1957.3'3)Americ~ns t.avc found the central theme of their nationalmyth-that myth in which Amerlca serves not only as an exampleOf vlrtue to other natlons but aiso as an agent for redemptivemlsslon. This myth has shaped America's "self-understanding",Provlded d~rectlon during natlonal crises and often governed

=he nation's stance in foreign relations. As genuine myth thisbellef System has been a vehicle for meanlng and spring toaction in virtually every period of American history. To~mericans, unlike Asians, history is linear, and thus theirmyth is oneof creativity and progress, of a steady climbingupward into power and prosperity ...... Consequently,they erivision themselves "standing at the cuttingedge of history as representations for all mankind".America in contrast to EuroDe. never had its "driveto conquest and expansion' thwart by physicalrestraints or traditions. (Fitzgerald 1973,g)This study focuses upon how Malamud and Mukherjee blendmyth and reality into visible frctlon-flction which parallelscontemporary American society and mirrors ~ t s problems. Thestudy shows how Malamud and Mukherjee use their fiction as amedium and testing ground for their premises about manlwoman'sultlmate need for self-transcendence to dellver hlm/her fromhlsjher essentially myth-dominated existence, an existencewhich 1s part of the American Dream.The world Malamud depicts In hrs fictlon 1s a world whereman, Cod and the devil meet and interact. Malamud usuallysymbolizes the process of maturation from 'eros' to 'caritas'In terms of a character's learning KO live outside of the myththat has beer) controlling tlls llfe. Malamud ever expands theimplications of his controlling myths to a new life which

transcends the mlindano and extends itself into an area of themetaphysical that is pictured well by Hasidlc theologians likeMarc Chagall and Martin Buber.It is especially ironical that Judaism, which is reportedto be the flrst major religion in history to foster the conceptof a single, all-powerful God, traces its origin to thepatriarch Abraham, whose own father was a maker of idols in theclty of Ur, In ancient Sumer. Abraham must have worshipped thenoon goddess, the primary deity In Ur, untll he conceived theldea of 'Monotheism' the oneness uf an invlslble eternalCreator of the Universe and bequeathed lt as a legacy to hisdescendants, the Jews. So baslc and overriding a tenet ismonotheism to Judaism that the most important prayer In thereligion, and the one that every Jew 1s requrred to recite, ifpossible, at the moment of his death is the 'Shenna', whlchStates: 'Hear 0 Israel the Lord or God, the Lord 1s One,Blessed be Hls name whose glorlcus Klngdom is for ever andever'.The daily life of a Jew is regulated by 613 precepts inthe 'Torah' (the first five books of the Bible, beginning withGenesls) and the prayer shawl called the 'talsith' that hewears is woven with 613 threads, to remlnd him of hls religiousobligations. The 'Talmud' is anoth,al- important religious bookof the Jews, containing the fundamental code of Jewish civil

aqb rel-gious law 3s int.erpreted over ;he centuries by thelearned rabbls..Tucaism l.l]rsgreat emphasls on the importance of leadinga moral llfe and achieving salvation through meritorious deeds,rather than ascetrcism, celibacy or self-imposed suffering.And, it stresses that when mere observztion of ritual, howevermeticulous, substitutes for right living, then religion becomeshypocrisy. Tte Jew 1s: ilrged to be ir constant dlalogue with Godthrc,ugh a 5aii.i li..scipllne of prayer, the essence of which isto be thankful to the creator. Deep-rooted in ancient JewishLaw, the code of "Mentshlekhkayt" has slrlce become an lntegralpart of the "sht.etl" cultare of the Jews. In a world of chaosand sufferrng, this Jewish ethical code recognises the "human"elevent in nar and rs-infarces tha scrong sense of communitythat has traditionally been the back-bone of Jewish life.Every Jew is supposed to live his life in such a mannerthat he 1s ever ready to receive the Messiah, a saviour whoiould be born of Jews and whose arrival would rescue mankindfrom war and silfftiring and establish unlversal brotherhood. TheJews lrlok to a Mesr,ian not as a divlne or a supernatural being,but a Towerful human entity who wlll usher in an age ofunlversal peace.-- The Natural attempts the imaginative transformation ofhistory into nyth-the myth of "the ever-lastingly crucial Story

of mar". (Wasserman 1970.4')curious mlXtUrr 0:lriIn the process it becomes aIllyth,, fantasy, symbolism and realism. Thematuration Of Malar~dd's characters in terms cf learning to liveoutslde of the nyth ::ontrolling their lives is striking. Forexa,n~ple 17NaLUraL ROY Hobb's life is at first controlledby the myth of the Amerlcan Cream presented in terms ofbaseball, Amerlcd's "national gane". His malor goal in life isto be as he says, "the best tkere ever was in the gameu. (TN32) In POrtraYlnC Roy's quest for heroism in baseball, Malamudhas dl-3wr on rtle !1:8-'

hand confronting t.is fatner, with Achilles before ~roy, withyoung David Slaying Goliath and with Percival the rustic GrailKnight who saves the team waiting under the Fisher King. In~atural, tnough there are other mythlc associations, "thecentral myth is the pastoral, bringing together vegetationrites, th'z Fistler King motif, suggestion ot Grail Quest andperhaps most importantly, the relationship of youthful son andaged father". (Mellard 1957,6) The Fisher Klng reigning over adesolate wasteland IS, Pop Flsher, the veteran manager of theNew York Knights baseball team and Roy Hobbs 1s the heroic"youth" who revlves the team.Bas+bull has yiven hilo only an occaslon to representlarger human issuc~s and probe the "drama of moral issues"(Hlcks 1963,311 The Arthurian legend and Jungian mythicpsychology are use? to interpret the ritual that makes baseballlnto a symbol of man's psychological and moral situation.Malamud's prinary c:c:-tc.

appropriate to our predicament. It is thls which gives to his(Malamud's) work special authority and special richnessn .(fiedler 1963,105)ZTls NaturaL 1s divided into two parts- "Pre-game" and"Better-up". The first part presents the misfortunes andinherent weaknesses of Roy which are expanded in the secondpart. Sidney Richman finds in this first part " the mythicformula of Initiation, Seperation and Return". (1968,41) ROYbeglns hls career by outpitching the reignlng champion, theWhammer. But at the end he is outpitched by a young boy freshfrom the country, Herman Younyberry. The fertility cycle isthus renewed. Seen in this context hlstory becomes myth. Therltual of burying the broken bat 'Wonderb~y' marks the end ofRoy's career. Unable to stand the slqht of a broken bat, heties the pieces with his shoe laces before the burial. It is asthough Roy were plecing together his dlslnteyrated self. In theend Roy ylelds himself to the young player, Youngberry whobecomes hrs 'mythical son'. Malamud sees baseball history as"the distillation of American llfe". He used real events toavclc contrivance and to reveal baseball as the ritual forexpressing American life and its predicament. The myth of thebaseball here ;nThe Natural is an amalgam of the heroic mythand ~ t s democratic offsprlng, the HOrOfia Alger story. RoyHobbs is a failed hero because he cannot act within a mythology

while sinultaneously seeing beyond it in order to defend it.A W Uis is both an academlc satire and a~blldungsronanf khereinthe quest for new life of Levin isdepicted. In contrast to the 'mythic placelessness' of hisearlier novels, Nalan~ud extends the social. t.orizon with a morerealistic setting. In his search for a new life Levin makes along journey from Zast to the West-his manifest destinyc. Hetakes up the ohoser career of a teacher at Cascsdia and wantsto seek "order, value, accomplishment, love" In life. RobertBoven says "no othr81: American novel qlves as clear a report ofnormal State University llfe In the usual adminrstrativeprocedures of departm

,xperience on the faculty of the oregeon State College whichserves as the backdrop of the novel. His yearning for liberalarts and democracy is evidently the cause for which theprotagonist of the novel also struggles. Levin, the protagonistregrets very much like Malamud that the education system atcascadia miserably faila to teach "how to keep civilizationfrom destroying it.selfW. (NL la3j Leslie Fiedler remarks that A&)j Lif="isabout the Fifties almost as much as it is about theWest: the age of ldcCarthyism and Cold War". (Fiedler 1977,158)The evolution of Le,~in is ir-terpreted as 'love', 'agape','caritas'. Hyman 1r.te.rprets rt as " a classical progress from'eros', fleshly iove to 'agape', the spiritual love of one ofGuc's creatures for dnother". (Hyman 1966,34j After hisambitions and dreams Levin wakes up to the realization of thebitcer fact that love goes not with freedom but withentanglement and corrmitment.Transformed, Levln begins hls quest for new life afterbelng rejected by about flfty colleges including the Universityof Gettfsburgh before his selectron at Cascadia College. BothPauline and Levin confess their love for each other; oneflndinq rreanjnq in the other's nilme.'I love you, Lev. 'That's my nane for you. Sy 1s toomuch ILK@ sigh. Lev is closer to love. I love you, Iam sorry, you deserve br!t.ter. I deserve you' I:;hc:iult: ri#:,v?;- l-trlve let )".I tndt nay "n the woods. But

1 love th~ kind oL man you are, the kind I have tolove' I love you willingly, with all my heart? (NL19;).Eaving gone through the "Malamudian fire of passion andfrustration, sacriflce and insight". Levin finds true freedomin "Liberation from the prison of self'' (Solotaroff 1970,244)Although Levin leaves Cascadia he has not been a completefailure. He has been responsible for kizking out the boringtextbook-'The Elements' being taught for thlrty years. Hissuggestion of 'The Great Books Prcgran' for dlssemination ofgreat literat~re to one and all includlng the students oftechncllsgy is acceptec by the Dean. If L.evln has not succeededIn transforming tho college into a iibera? college, he has beenthe drivrng force behlnd the flexible attitude of theDepartment rodirds nurrlnities and literature.Levln learns certarn laws of polltics from his experienceat Cascadia-Political myth-1) Weak leaders favour weak leadersthemirror principle in politics 2)one becomes his victim'svictlm 3) Stand for something and somebody around will feed thepersecuted. Levin's 'Lawsf app:ty co his own life. Gilleybecomes the irictir. of I,ev;nrs love for Pauline, his wife. ButUltimately L,evln k,3coae.s Gllley's vl.ctlm i.e "Victim's Victim".Lev1:1 stancis fcr a good zausr

of the difficulties of undoinq the hold of a deprived andwasted past and then emerqlnq into freedom and control. Themythic pattern of rebirth is used here to drrve home themessage of a new life. Each moral act offers two good results-one for the world, another for the individual. But theredemption is lronlc since gracesufferlnq.1s accompanied by continualDelving into the human psyche and evoking pathos mostpolgnantly %is a problng study of the sufferrng of aJew at the hands of anti-Semites. The Beiliss case has givenMalamud "a way of approaching the European holocaust on a scalethat is 1mag:nahlysusceptible of fictional representation. Forthe Belllss case transparently holds within it the core of thecultural slckness around whlch the Nazl madness grew". (Alter1966,74)InTsar Nlcholas I1 is the ineffectual King. He1s symbolically confronted by the new hero, the Jewishhandyman, Yakov Bok. The father-son palr 1s Yakov and Shmuel,Yakov's father-ln-law. Because the central event of the novellands Bok In prison, there is inevitably less "action" than inthe other novels, the narrative lnterest focusing on Yokov'sablllty to withstand pain and torment In hls efforts tomalnta-n h ~ s Innocence. Bok's notinqs of the seasonal changescorrespond to the narrative movement of the novel. More

important than the seasonal rhythms, is the pattern of Bibicalmyth incorporated in the novel- the story coincides carefullyvlth the period cf Christ's ministry-Yakov leaves his familyand community at Lhe age of thirty, "ministers" to his peoplefor three years ard goes to his trial and possible death at theage of thirty-three. The Fixer opens and closes both in awastelandlwintry setting. In order to show ~ t s importance tohuman life, nature imagery is brought in through Yakov'smemory, during his imprisonment. We are told, for example thatYakov "felt the change of weather in his head" (TF 229) andimeqlned tne "scent of sprlnq" (IF 235)The accosation of "rltual murderM or what is termed"Blood Accusation" has not been uncommon rn the history ofJews. It could te traced back ts the superstltlous belief ofthe MedleJal ~eriod that the Jews kill a Christian male childon Passover and dse his blood as a spray over their Passover'matzos' (the unleavened bread Jews eat durlng thls holy day.)As Malamud hlmself has sald in an interview, "you see,for me, tt.e bosk nasa mythological quality. It has to betreated as a myth, an endless story, more than a case study. Acase st~dy coulin't be art". (1966,39)Deeply influenced byhls reading ~:,f Op~.noza, 60k has nevertheless been unable toreccrlz~le ais suffering with elther Splnoza'sinfinite,impersonal Go6, nor with the fahovah who spoke cut of

whirlwinds and burning bushes. "Nobody suffers for him and hesuffers for no one except himself" (TF 240) One insignificantman comes to stand for the six million murdered by the Germans,his suffering takes on symbolic overtones as the suffering ofall the Jews throughout all the ages.thatModern man is so very much smaller than his environmentsuch a quest is fore doomed to ludicrous and dismalfailure; instead (in Bok's case) something like thereverse occurs. The world thrusts itself againsthim, eroding his physical and spiritual resourcesuntil, stripped and shivering, he is reduced to aCartesian minimum: I suffer therefore I am"'(Friedman 1968,930)Like Job, the Jew is awed by the magnlfrcence and powerof his God Yet he knows too much about unjust suffering and hisown relatlve innocence to blot out the experience of the world:"Though he slays me, yet will I trust in him: but I willmalntain mlne own ways before him4'(Job, 13:15) In transformingfacts Into fiction, Malamud does not limit himself to mere"factual reportage". He seeks the "lmagrnative effect". In hisinterview with Haskel Frankel, he explains: Fixer is notfactual reportage. As a writer I seek the imaginative fact. YouCan't make a thing more real than it is but you can make itseem more real through imagrnative fact" (1966,391 Malamudtakes llberties with certain facts and turns history into a

myth, 'an endless story in order to "disinvent history"(prankel 1966,39) Yakov Bok, the fictional counterpart of~endal Beilis~ hecomes a "potential Vanzetti" for Malamud(stern 1975,54) The suffering of Creyfus and in fact every JewIn the HOlOcaUst characterizes the suffering of Yakov. Malamudcould relate "feelingfully to t.he situation of the fate of theJews 111 Hltler's Germany". (Field and Fielcl 1975,lO)InW the central metaphor of Malamud coalesceswlth the action of the novel in its depiction of Yakov'stravarls rn prison and hence the poignancyiircoght. byof the tale.nord din ate suffering Bak attalns the necessary"gr.lae Jnder pressure" through his evolution from isolation andescapi!;e to cclninitment and compassion. Comparing Yakov Bok withYacha Nazur oi Isdaa Bashevls Slnqerfs The Maalcian efEnopp iinds "si.sllarity of moral evolution as both the heroesrno\*\: from scc!ptlclsm to acceptance of the ways of God and ofI.h.2 ilit? I:[ ~.,:br-l.~airtl: dtid res~c~nsibj lity tc tls fellow ma3".(Krtl?pp 1975,115)i:Leis modern not only in technique but also intheill?. 'Phe Yiddish atmosphere and the East Ellrnpean flavour areIUSXh.tckgr:>ulid lor a modern fdtle ahout Jews caught in theIavs of history. The novel focuses on the alienated man and hisre-~r~teqra t.ion into society. One man's suffering is dealt witheXCruc14:ingIntensity. The resultant changes which take place

that suffering strips away, open its victims to knowledge.yakov Bok's sacrifice goes beyond the personal to the politicaland social.Malamud has worked sequentially on the theme of theconflict between myths and the outer world. Appearing first inNatural, Malamud's progresses with his central concerns ineach successive novels a BssistaG, A W U and a EiXBT;vegetation myths and rituals, seasonal and pastoral rhythms andImagery; symbolism of vegetation myths and Grail quests in thefour novels can be traced of which Themay be consideredas hrs finest expression of the pastoral. Principles of lifeand fertility in Malamud's novels are associated with women andtheir mammalian traits. Women associated with infertility anddeath, therefore, have "sick breasts" like Memo Paris (mNatural) and Avis Fliss (A pew Llfe) or very small ones likeHelen, Pauline and Raisl before they are revltalised by theirlovers. Full- breasted women llke Irls Lemon and ZinaidaLebedev seem always to offer the promises of life.Three symbols consistently used are birds, fish andflowers. Roy Hobbs dreams of fishing; Levin has a dream ofstruggling with a fish and pulling its tail off; Pauline dropsa tuna fish in Levin's lap; Gilley is the avid fisherman; FrankAlplne is associated with St. Francis and pigeons; the names ofAlbert 0 Birdless and Harriet Bird; Levin was a bird watcher;

Doubleheaded Eagle of the anti-Semitic Black Hundreds and thebomb like "black bird"; the wooden rose that Frank carved; thetossed flower given to Helen by Frank and more.In pictures Qf Tidelman and The Tenants, the Apollonianand Dionysian prlnciples are presented in terms of theconflicting demands of art and life. In the latter novel, thetwo attitudes are embodied by the two writers, Harry Lesser andwlllie Spearmint. Arthur Fidelman's bid to achieve bothperfection of lire or~d perfection of art is rather ironical inthls context. His uneasy odyssey through the different townsIn Italy seems to suggest Fldelman's achievement of oneattltude at the exclusion of the other. Consequently in "TheLast Mohlcan" the unposed involvement wlth Susskind, with lifeand history, yields an insight whlch renders the art student'scareer a hopeless failure.In the quest for the realization of hope Fidelman'ssltuatlon becomes as precarious as Levrn's. In the fourtheplsode In pictures ef Tidelman called "a Pimp's revenge", theartlst clalms that he is a moral man only in his art, and inllfe he commits the immoral act of depriving Ludovlco the pimpof his rightful share of the prostitute Esmesaldais earnings.Similarly, Ludovicors living off the proceeds of a girl's body1s certainly not mdch of a moral thing to do. (PFE.104) In thelast episode "Gla$;s Blower of Venice" Fidelman must content

hlmselr with beinq a craftsman. Glass-blowing is less perfectan art than painting through which Fidelman had tried to stopthe flow of time. First of all, what Fidelman finally blows inglass is a bowl, a container, a practical thing. Secondly thebowl does not stay long, it vanishes the text day and what wascreated to stay independent of time is swept away by thec~rrents of contingencey. The resultant inference is that lifelaunches continuous assault on art and on morality. And the jobof aorality and art is to organise life and to give it form andmeaning.This continual dialectic of art and life, of theAppollcn:.a? ar3 Diorys;an pr-nclple ;s dramatised inE m . Harry L8esser 1s all for ?romotiny the book he writes.He ;s for form and art. as a result of which he is shut off fromthe ,world o,.tui3o. Willie Spearmlnc on the other hand careslittle :orfsriu. His vrlting which grows out of hisovaspower:.ny lova of his people deplcts the dynamism andvarlcr.::, c! the life he has ilved or imagined. Harrypartic~pates LII the lives of others and cannot write his booktowards its conpletion. W~lly tries to practise out, to giveforu to his 3drnit ..mpressions and exepriences of life andloses Irene Eel l, his love in the pro-ess. At the end Williechops c,ff L,ass~!r's 1,al ls and Lesser whacks up Willie's brain.Ihe-r r,,.ar.ual desrrdctlon is also rhe destruction of passion and

thought, life and art of Dionysius and Apollo.Malamud begins to look at life now, more from anaesthetic perspective than from the ethical. The tension now isbetween life and beauty, the ebullient processes of experienceand aesthetic form, a tension for the first time fore-shadowedin W U, when Levin had spoken of the "moral aesthetic".~hls perception seems to have been the basis of Fidelman'squest in trying to unify the duality of the Apollonian andDionysian. While both the Apollonian and Dionysian modes areoperative in the single person of Fidelman, they arerepresented by two different individuals in Tenants. Inthese two later novels Malamud attempts to integrate the twomodes. In pictures ef Fidelman and Tenants Halamud islooking beyond the merely ethlcal towards an aesthetic,philosophical and even a religious reality where the art-lifeparadox would cease to be a paradox.The Apollonian-Dionysian dialectic operates in pubinnsalso. Obsessed with the writing of his book on Lawrence,Dubin initially ignores the needs of hls family and friends,for which Kitty repeatedly blames him through out the twentyflveyears of their married life. He hardly cares for his wifeand children who invariably get alienated from him. It is onlyunder the influence of Fanny that Dubin gradually realizes theimportance of participating in life and recognising the needs

others. Halamud tries to resolve the art-life dichotomy once,gain, by shrewdly choosing as his protagonist a biographer,and Lawrence as the subje: of the biographer. Dubin's motto ist~~verybody's llfe is mine unlived. One writes lives he can'tlive. TO live forever is a human hunger". (DL.LO) His severalwalks represent his moving away from his own limited self asman and biographer in search of more adventure and life. It isnot, therefore surprising that during the worst period of hisdepression, he realizes that llfe is larger than language, formand art. AS for Lawrence, his works are less known for theirformal perfection of art than for the dynamism and vitality oflife.The lonqest of Malamud's novels 1s filled with"mechanically turning wheel of seasons, depressions, deaths,and rebirths, the monotonous cyclesunrrer,of logging, Lawrence,Farm>, winter, aglng, impotence, spring, jogging,Lawren::e, summer etc." (Bell 1979.74) So the success andfallure of pubin's Lives as a novel may be attributed to itsDionysian rlchness and energy.God's Grace differs from other Malamud novels as itemploys fantasy as technique. The novel evolves the atmosphereof l'me 9;ble. ~ob~ns0r, crusoe and (Sinclaire1982,1158) It also draws comparison with Nevi1 Chute's On&A.Qwhich proqnosticates the deadening effect of atomicradiation in an "electronic paradise" (Iyengar 1984,17) The

"ovel is not an attempt to justify the ways of ~ o d to men butto indict man's irresponsibility to man, and ~ o d comes handy asa symbolic agent to unravel this truth. The myth of the ~loodand Noah's ark recurs with a difference. The chosen few, thistlme only a man and a few animals are condemned to be free, butthey hasten to bring about their own ruin. Cohn's attempt toinspire nobility in the animals through Jewish religion fails,making lt clear that religion can be of little use in theabsence of intuitive self-responsibility and fellow-feeling. Tocall the novel "Malamud's A aide to the Per~lexed is to takethe novel for a religious tract whlch it is not " (Epstein1982,53) In pointlng out the lacunae of modern civilizationMalamud lends primitivistic setting to God's Grace. Hesymbolically recasts this Hesiodic and Ovidian prophecy bylnd~cting man for destruction in the imaginary war betweenDjcn~s and Druslies and the Second Flood of God. He emphasisesthat the cause of destruction was man's self-betrayal "and notGod's wrath (GG 17) God roars at Cohn through the bulbouscloui: "Man after failing to use to a sufficient purpose hisposrrbllltles, and my goodwill, has destroyed himself" (GG 12)Fe c:,mg:.alrls 2f destruction by meri of everything natural and50011.They have destroyed my handlwork,the conditions oftheir s1.1-viva1:the sweet air I gave them to breathe;

the fresh water I bless them with to drink and bathein; the fertile green earth. They tore apart myozone, carbonlted my oxygen acidified my refreshingraln. Now they affront my cosmos. How much shall theLord endure?I made man to be free but his freedom, badly useddestroyed him. In sum the evil overwhelmed the good.Tne Second Flood, this that now subsides on thebroken earth they brought on themselves. They hadnar liv,ed according to the Covenant. (GG 12-13)nalamud gives us another "noble savage" in George, thegorilla. The silent, inoffensive, serviceable gorilla alsobecomes a symbol of Jewlsh endurance in contrast to the noisyand naughty But. He names it George after hrs late wife'sfarher, a dentist who fixed peoples tooth for nothing. Cohn hasto argue a great deal to canvince Buz that there is plenty ofviolence and blood in The New Testament and that Abraham hadnever cut the bcy's (Isaac's) throat: in his place he offered aran) as sacrifice. AS the tribe of the Chimpanzees on the islandIncreases, he usurps the role of z teacher by establishing a'schuoltree'to Impress on the brutes the need for ethicalrestralnt. Cchn's consummation with Mary (the femalechmpanzee, marks his complete identification with the animalslik*! a primit:.virc. It dlso results in the birth of a newspecles of uhunarliod ~nfant, or chimpar.tee-human baby". Cohnhopt!,:. that 'she may some day be the mother of a newer race Ofmen" (iG 165:. As a Malamud herc cohn's only hope could be tosave atlest a single soul before dying. One should remember

that Malamud is not interested so much in the act of atomicdestruction of the human race as in the portrayal of itsterrible consequences. That is the reason why Malamud describes-the trauma of the Flood and the thermo-nuclear war quitecryptically in the begining.Bernard Malamud's use of the medieval myth of the Grail-Quest in Natural. is part of the broad mythic pattern ofreblrth employed in T& Assletant and & 4Ffg. Hisprotagonists (schlemiels] struggle against a bleak,unfavourable world and thelr own bad luck and ineptitude.Normally the world deprives them of material goods, but theirauthor endows them with courage, compassion and humanity.Leaving behind their human misery, they are reborn as secularsalnts.Assistant portrays the complexity with which thisreallstlcally presented redemptive pattern 1s reinforced withmyth-symbol and a philosophy remarkably similar to that ofMartin Buber. InAssistant the "Waste land" is the lowerEast Side of New York City. The weakened and desslcated ''KingU1s the youth who replaces him and brlngs new life to the femaleBobers.Frank Alprne has never known love, success orsatlsfactlcn. He 1s a born loser "with me one wrong thing leadsto another and it ends in a trap". (TA 36) In this case, thetrap 1s Morris's grocery. Alpine ashamed of his part in the

and sorry for Bober, returns to help the old man, tobecome Bober's assistant. He has conflicting feelings aboutgoodness. In the orphanage where he was raised Alpine had beentaught about St. Francis of whom he says:He said poverty was a queen and he loved her likeshe was a beautiful woman.. . Everytime I read aboutsomebody like him I get a feeling inside of me whichI have to fight to keep from crying. He was borngood, which is a talent if you have it. (TA 31)Attracted by Bober's endurance in the face of calamity,by his acceptance of llfe with all its hardships, by hiscompassion and religion, Frank asked Morris "What it is to be aJew?" The grocer replles:.... The important thing is the Torah. This is theLaw-a Jew must believe in the Law.. . .This means todo what is right, to be honest, to be good. Thismeans to other people. Our life is hard enough. Whyshould we hurt some body else? .... We ain'tanimals .... This is what a Jew belleves.(TA 124)That Frank should have himself circumcised andformally convert to Judaism at Passover- Easter timeis highly significant: it is the season of Nature'srenewal of life in the spring and coincides with theresurrections of Christ, Attis and Adonis. It isalso the time of redemption (resurrection) of theJewish nation from Egyptian bondage. And that Frankshould drag himself around during these holidays isalso significant, for 'pesach' the Hebrew word forPassover, is etymologically related not only to\pasahuf an Assyrian word meaning to propitiate, butalso to several Hebrew words meaning lame or

hobblins. Thus Malamud has used consciouslv or notre1igio;s and mythic allu*io&, ao-&ii~~~bb~~ousi;purposeful seasonal changes- the novel move twicefrom ~intery fall to warm spring-- to mark thepattern of death and rebirth. (Hays 1970,222)Frank goes through the rite of initlation begun at Morris'qrocery store culminating in his descent to the grocer's graveand by hls Cir~~m~iSi~n. Impressed by his conversion from aspiritually empty life he experiences resurrection whichprepares him for a new life. Frank's "redemption is madepossible by his uncompromising love for Helen- which provides .the impetus for his commitment to the store". (Baumbach1965,456) Frank's commitment to Judaism is quite evident here.Frank was strongly attracted to Judalsm and to Helen, andwlshed to "belong" to both. The Spartan Moon-goddess was called"Helen", and marriage to her made Menelaus a King. Her name isetymologlcally related to Helle, bright goddess of death andresurrection, To the extent to whlch Helen has redeemed Frankand brought him to his goals, and could bring hlm to others,she remalns a fertility goddess. To emphasize this role ofHelen, Malamud frequently has her described in terms of obviousSymbols of fertility; flowers (harbingers of Spring's renewal)and birds (roosters, the doves of Noah, Aphrodite and Christiansymbolism: the Thanksgiving turkey). Morris thinks Helen "looksllke a little birdU(TA 20) and when Frank sples on her in the

athroom he thinks of her "breasts like small birds in flight,her ass like a flowern(TA 75). And like Aphrodite, Helen leavesa floral fragrance about her in the air (TA 184)Many readers have stumbled over the 'similarity in names-Martin Buber and Morris Bober, one the Hasidic theologian andthe other the grocer in 33s Assistant. There is a distinctsimilarity not Only in the beliefs expressed and acted upon bythese two men, but also in the phllosophy one can infer fromthe novel as a whole. Bober is not an orthodox Jew. He does notobey Mosalc dietary laws, nor does he regularly attendrellgious SerVlCeS. Similarly" ... Buber does not regard theJewlsh law as essential to the Jewish traditlon..He contraststhe false desire for security of the dogmas of the law with the'holy insecurity' of the truly rellgious man who does notdlvorce hls action from intention. (Frledman 1955,261) Buberhlmself has sald in Between Man and Man, "I have given up therellgious" (1975,69). For the grocer, the key to a moralexlstence is personal responslbilty for others- "A Jew mustbelleve in the Law.. . This means to do what is right, to behonest, to be good. This means to other people. Our life ishard enough. Why should we hurt somebody else?"(TA 124)Aocordlng to Buber, a moral man 1s one "withresponsibility for the action of those who act, since he iswholly defined by the tension between being and 'ought to be'.

1" grotesque and hopeless courage he casts his heart piece bypiece into the insatiable gulf that lies between them" (Buber1957,108). Suffering for Frank because of what he has doneagainst Morris and then, through relation with Morris, takingover the grocer's very suffering is a path to personalredemption. Frank is defined throughout the course of the novelby "the gap he is aware of between what he is and what heought to be, and so he casts his energy, hls endurance, hisprlde and his heart in 'grotesque and hopeless courage"'. (Hays1970,229) In fact all of Halamud's protagonists from Roy Hobbsto Yakov Bok to Calvin Cohn fit into 'the gap between themfwithgrotesque and hopeless courage. Frank does not become whathe thinks he ought to be-rich, powerful, a "big shotq'-but hisefforts do allow hlm to become what Buber and Bober would sayhe ought to be- a man., moral and responslble. Perhaps thetreatment of 'relation' and 'dialogue' is the greatest commonbond between the philosopher and the grocer's creator,thenovelist. Malamud has exemplified Buber's precept of the I-Thourelationship -which means what denying 'relation' causes andwhat allowlng the same to exist achieves. According to Buberthere are two forms of existence: the I-It whlch is a subjectand oblect, person and a thing, orqanizlng, arranging,advantage-taking relationship, and the I-Thou, which is aninterpersonal, mutually addressing, mutually exchanqing one.

Wholeness and integration of personality, depends on eschewingthe I-It impersonal for the I-Thou: 'Entering into relation isan act of the whole being-it is infact 'thef act by which weOUrSelVeS as human"'. (Friedman 1955,89)Frank achieves I-Thou instead of I-It and because ofthat relation he becomes an Assistant for the third time inthe novel-first to Ward Minogue, then to Morris and finally toHelen and her mother. Buber deflnes "every approach toanother's 'thou' as an approach to God, the eternal 'Thou'; forhis relation is essentially triadic, lnvolvlng Self, Other andGod" (Buber 1957,108). Therefore, Frank's entering intorelatlon with the Bobers is by Buberrs definition, an approachto God, a religious act. This prepares Frank for his conversionto Judaism.To endure suffering with as much dignity as possible is avlrtue; to continue to strive to do right and to suffer forothers is a mark of humanity. When Frank Alpine learns thislesson from Morris Bober he redeems hlmself and approaches astate of secular sainthood close to St. Francis of Assisi. ThusBernard Malamud hy tactfully rnlxing rellgrous allusion,Mediterranean mythology, sacrlflclal rights and fertilitylmagery has propounded a philosophy of existence very much likeMartin Buber's. He has created a modern parable In the form ofa naturalistic novel, a story of redemption which expresses

perennial realities Of psychological and philosophical truth.since Malamud is committed to the defence of life, he likes tobring out the possibility of understanding between man and man,especially under pressure of pain and suffering. Thosesituations in which pain and suffering are focussed areInformed by the employment of myths. The amount of love a man1s able to give life is the measure of his grace in Malamud'suniverse.Mukherjee's wlll to slnk into an allen culture, asdlstinct from remaining a member of a self-conscious minorityin a more pluralist society lrke Canada or the United States,has inspired many of her stories. Meltlng Into America, hercharacters are plagued with confusion and brutality. Indiannessbecomes a metaphor for a partlal, painful understanding. Thenewcomer's feelings about the West span a spectrum fromstranded expatriation to vibrant identification to momentarynostalgia for old homes. Mukherlee also uses the element ofmyth to create her stories that are complex and ironic.Protagonists actually try to come to terms with therr complexinheritance and to have roots. They try to belong bylntegratlon of the dlverse experiences, psychic needs andmyths.Tara In Bharati Mukherjee's The Tiser's Daushter finds itdifficult to relate herself to her famlly, city, culture in

since her marriage to an American, Her western.,iucatiun has nade her an 'alienated' westernized woman.is a dramatization of the resulting ambivalences.TheTaramakes a despurate attempt to reconcile the two worlds : thewestern one vith its secular orientations and the Brahmin onein ,,il..~.:h a3,r

pint of view, of all the aspiring immigrants who want tobetter their own selves and lives. The mythical Tara wasworshipped to ensure a safe passage from birth to death. In asimilar arrangement Bharati Mukherjee's heroine is presented asan archetype of the young Indian woman wishing to be rebornagain as the citizen of the new born world. The wish to crossthe sea is a universal phenomenon and the mythical functionof Tara Banerjee is fulfilled when she crosses the ocean toreach the Unlted States of America.A malor difference between the Indian conception of thegood life and the Western conception is in the "quality" of thelndlvidual's relationship with the world. The Westerntradition exhorts man to make a mark on the world and leavehis foot prlnts on the flux of time. The "India ethos"commends world orientation which conslsts of engagementwithout involvement during our sojourn in this world in ourpilgrimage to eternity. The recognltion of and provision forthe distinct nature of each life-phase 1s another significantfeature of the Indian conception of the good life. This iscalled the "ashrams" scheme of life. This scheme with itsphases of brahmacharva. srahastha. VanaDrasatha. Sanvasa &mvan mukti ensures the synchronisatlon and harmonisation ofbiological and psychospiritual development. This schemeautomatically minimises roll confusion and identity-crisis,

"Karma' may be described as the law of conservation ofthe moral momentum of man's actions. It is an attempt toreckon with the problem of evil-the perceived discrepancies inthe moral order of the universe. The law of Karma seeks toglve a rational account of the fact that sometimes the virtuoussuffer and the wicked prosper-without implicating God in thematter. The doctrine of "rebirth" is the corelate of the lawof Karma. Throughout the years of recorded history, woman hasbeen the weather vane, the indicator, showing in whichdirection the wind of destlny blows. Similarly, BharatiMukherjee's w ' s Dauohtec and portray the odysseyof a young woman's search for her identity. From the mythicalpoint of view, the plight of Tara can be looked at in antoherdimension. It is based on the popular myth prevalent in ruralIndia, especially In the states of West Bengal and Kerala.This popular myth relates to the predicament of the stupidbravo who mounts a tiger/catches a tiger's tail. The plightof such a person becomes absurdly dangerous. Caught in atricky situation his/her dilemma restrains him/her from movingforward or backward. Though it could appear a littlestrained, the comparision between Tara, the Tiger's daughterand the stupid bravo of the popular Indlan myth is inescapable.In the novel Tara Banerjee is like the mythical goddessDurga (so popular in Bengal ) - "an attractive woman riding a

fierce tiger". (Knappert 1992,97) Tara has mounted thehmerican tiger - her Indian tradition forbids her fromcontinuing the American type of life and at the same time hernew status with a "mlecha' husband prevents her from going backto her Indian way of life. It could be argued that Tara'ssituation is the modern version of the old mythical/proverbialperson who had mounted a tiger.In Mukherjee's second novel the protagonist Dimple1s sure that marriage "would bring her freedom, cocktailparties on carpeted lawns, fund raising dinners forcharities.. . . (and) love". (m 3) She waits for real life tobegln. Dimple Dasgupta embodies a disturbing account of theconflict of Western and Inidian cultures; of modern and oldfashioned traditions of female destiny. The tension betweenher actual helplessness and forms of freedom suggested to herby the changing Indian culture have made her sick. Depressedabout her flat chest she thinks of suicide. The only hope ofadult freedom she has 1s to win the love of her unknownhusband. She daydreams, entertains movie stars... "because shetakes the myths of her culture for literal truths, life isalways betraying her" (Sandler 1975,75-76) When she is married,she finds it totally different in the United States of America.When the couple attend Indian parties in America, Dimplelistens to gossip regarding the relative merits of India and

~merica and about the horrors of New York. Faced with anIncomprehensible culture and intense loneliness, Dimple losesthe small degree of confidence and sense of self she had inCalcutta. Losing sight of reality as she sinks into the worldof television, she contemplates suicide. Employing violence,~ukherjee makes Dimple kill her husband Amit. Hers may be thepredicament of an, Indian wife-out of tune in an alien milieustruggling for identity.Dimple wanted "a different kind of life- an apartment inChowringhee, her hair done by chinese girls, trips to Newmarket for nylon saries- so she placed her faith In neurosurgeons and architects" (w 3) Like all adolescents herpsyche is formed by fantasies of advertisment. She seeks adviceto rectify an undeveloped bust from Miss Problem- Walla c/oEve's Beauty Basket, Bombay. Her ideal husband is a combinationof several beauty ads: "She borrowed a forehead from an aspirinad, the stomach and legs from trousers ad and put the ideal manand herself in a restaurant on park street or by the side of apool at a five-star hotel". (Wife 23) Dimple's predicamenttranscends that of the individual caught in the vortex ofculture shock. She tries pitifully to pull through an affairwith Milt Glasser. Even Amit is wanting ; his "tragedy was helacked extravagance ; he perserved in the immigrant virtues ofcaution and cunning" (Wife 195) is the story of a woman

caught between two cultures and who aspires to a third,>magined world. Living in her social vacuum, Dimple isuprooted from her family and her familiar world. The mediabecomes her surrogate community.The mythical pattern of Jasmine can be traced with thediffering roles performed by Jyoti/Jasmine/Jase/Jane, relatingherself to the splendourous many-faced goddess Durga celebratedin Bengal as the all-pervading divine spirit. According tothe Indian concept Durga is the many-splendoured archetype ofthe different functions of the woman in society. She iscreator, protector, provider, destroyer, mother, wife,daughter, consort - all rolled into one. Bharati Mukherjees'sBengall sensibility must have provided the seeds in theportrayal of the character of Jasmine. Jasmine performs manyroles in America. Like Durga she has to fight her battles,perform the role of a consort, glve birth to a child and whendrlven to the extreme she has to perform the rather unpleasantrole of the destroyer when she kllls her victlmlser, Half-Face.The Indian myth about Durga envisages that life is a battle andone has to fight against all odds, single-handedly for whichDurga is celebrated in Bengal. Consequently, Jasmine's life1s from this mythical point of view an eternal battlefield.Jasmine is the tale of a liberated woman. Mukherjeecontinues to operate, rather elaborately on the theme of

derelicts. She emerges more confident revelling in herlntimacy with the American idiom and her extensive familiaritywith the landscape. She even goes to the extent of adoptingthe popular prejudices regarding the mysterious East and theinscrutability of oriental character. Though born to the veil,her protagonist Jyoti braved everything to successfully smuggleherself into the United States. Jyoti/Jasmine/Jase/Jane withan equally large choice of surnames through marriagefliaisonnever ceased to dazzle and delight her American admirers andbenefactors with her linguistic and intellectual attainments.Jyoti is the daughter of the villager from Hasnapur in Punjab,Jasmine is the wife of Prakash Vijh, Jase is the consort ofTaylor and Jane is the mother of the child of Bud Ripplemeyer.Llke all orientals, Jyoti too had to fulflll her destinytransmitted to her from time to time by her stars. Indianmarriage ceremonies (horoscope astronomy, rituals etc) stillremain a myth to Westerners. Utilisiny this situationMukherjee has Jyoti Vijh widowed by a bomb concealed in atransistor by a Khalistan terrorist. Unable to go the UnitedStates when Prakash was alive, she is bound by honour tofulfill her dead husband's ambition and so she goes to Americawlth the dead man's suit as though the suit would compensatefor the man,. Throughout her journey and in America sheencounters sex and violence. Jyoti slashes her own tongue

(paying respects to Kali?) before she kills Half-Face (whorapes her) with a penknife. She gets pregnant by a paralysedman who is old enough to be her father (Bud Ripplemeyer).Mukherjee gives the subject of assimilation and multiculturalisma different twist in her collection of shortstories Qarkness. The stories are a direct reflection of thebigotry she faced in Canada. In all but one, the centralexperiencing character is of Indian or other South Asianorlgin. The basic problems are those of making contact and oflearning the right behavioural signs that will help one totransform. "Tamurlane" arouses much passion when it tells of afatal encounter between illegal Asians and Canadian police andImmigration Officers. In the story "The World According to Hsu"the protagonist Ratna is not afrald of the violence that keepsher and other guests locked inside their holiday island hotel.She is fearful of Toronto where recently a Bengali woman wasbeaten and nearly blinded on the street; an eight year oldPunjabi boy was struck by a car announcing on its bumper ''KeepCanada Green. Paint a Paki". (Darkness 47) In Toronto, Ratnawas not Canadian, not even Indian. To Canadians Indians werealso Pakis and Toronto was hell for Pakis. ResemblingJ.D.Salinger's protagonists, Mukherjee's adolescents with morecomplex ~nheritance are engaged in a search to find theWholeness. The attraction to sainthood, violating all norms of

Social behaviour, is an indication of this search. "TheImaginary Assassin" also has a young male narrator attracted tosaints - a Sikh born in Yuba City, California in 1960. Whileother American kids "had their rock stars to make lifebearable"(parknese 190) he had his mythic stories of familymembers. His grandfather explains why he wanted to killandh hi-because of the brutalization of the Sikhs duringpartition."Visitors" is a re-working of the novel m. The storydeals with the undermining in America of the myths andillusions about marriage with which an Indian woman is broughtup. In both novel and story a man comes to the home on theEast Coast while the husband is out at work. In both cases thewlfe's mlnd is influenced by the romantlc notions of wifehoodconsidered along with the Indran concept of the United Statesas paradise. While in the novel the male is a white Americanwho becomes her lover, in the story the male is a young Indianwho wants to become her lover. Mukherjee attempts toprovide balance to an unbalanced situation. "IsolatedIncldentsu deals with a white Canadian woman in her latetwenties working for the Human Rights Office. Having lunchWith her old friend Poppy, now 'Peppi Paluka' Ann finds thatthe restaurant represents her dreams. We see the immigrantmythifying the callousness of the white Canadian, without

seeing her problems as an individual. Here it is a differenttype of violence - Ann is leading a life of quiet desperation.The complaints within the story of discrimination against~ndian and other immigrants are balanced by Ann's problems asan individual. Tacit acceptance of "male exploiting female''weakness as part of any culture continues mainly because ofattitudes to the woman's role in the family and society whereman's authority and the rhetorlc of male support have remainedunchanged and unchallenged. The stories in Darkness revealBharati Mukherjee's attempt to present myths about masochistic,crazy, uneducated, low class, minorlty women from India,Pakistan and Canada. Considered more socially vulnerable andphysically unable to fend off attack, these women represent theidealised recipients of paternal caring. Law and orderenthusiasts stress that a major benefit of law abidingsocieties is the protection of its women from crime.In all these episodes involving Jasmine death is aprevailing factor. Yama is the god of death in Indianmythology. Villagers in India invoke him when they see death.They say when "a clay pitcher breaks.. . the air inside it isthe same as outside... .. Vimala set herself on flre because shehad broken her prtcher .... We are just shells of the sameAbsolute" (Jasmine, 15) The myth of the pitcher appears againwhen Jasmine's father is reminded of his Lahore days: "But that

is broken.It is the same air this side as that.He'll never see Lahore again and I never have".!Jasmine, 43)jasmine's passage to America was not easy: She encounteredthreats and violence all the way. After murdering Half-Facewho assaulted her she sets the suitcase (containing her husbandprakash's suit) on Eire. Yama and the pitcher are recalledagaln- "I thought. The pitcher 1s broken. Lord Yama, who hadwanted me, who had courted me, and whom I'd flirted with on thelong trip over, had now deserted me". (Jasmine, 120)Considering the numerous appointments Jasmine had withdeath she may be compared to the sun-goddess Savitri in Indianmythology. The mythical Savitri, daughter of King Ashvapatifell in love with a simple man called Satyavan, married himmuch against the warning of the sages who warned her that hewould die in a year. (Knappert 1992,218) Although Savitriloses her husband she follows hlm behind Yama, the God ofDeath. Similarly Jasmine follows the dead Prakash's (herhusband's) wlsh and lands up In America. The villageastrologer had warned her in Hasnapur that she would become awldow early in life. Reconciling to her fate Jasmine bravesdeath to follow her dead husband's wishes.Hasnapur, the village from which Jyoti/Jasmine comesechoes the mythlcal Hastinapura, the capital city of centralIndia in the days of the great war of the Mahabharata.

Hastinapura was founded by Hastin, son of Bharata the firstruler of India.There also appears to be shades of similarities betweenthe mythical Sita and Draupadi of the Hindu mythology andJasmine. Sita is the model for all Indian women : pure,affectionate and faithful. She loved her husband and followedhim. She wanted to enter the firelpyre but the fire god Agnirefused to hurt her. Jyoti/Jasmine also wanted to commitsuttee - (the Hindu practice of burning to death on thehusband's pyre) and prove her puritylloyalty to the deadPrakash Vijh.The mythical Draupadi, daughter of Drupada, King ofPanchala was "a woman of great beauty and of fierce spirit.. .she was the Helen of the Indian epic" and by a turn of eventsbecame the wife of the five Pandava brothers. While "Helenand Draupadi had flve husbands each". (Knappert 1992,94)Jasmine had four relationships - with Prakash, Taylor,Rlpplemeyer and Half-Face.Lord Ganapati figures in the novel on a number ofoccasions. "A bus load of Hindus on that way to a shrine toLord Ganapati was hijacked and all males shot dead at pointblankrange". (Jasmine, 64) Believing that the god with anelephant trunk could safeguard her on her journey to AmericaJasmine says, "I keep my sandalwood Ganapati hidden in my

purse, a god with an elephant trunk to uproot anything in mypath" (&mine, 102) In Florida when Half-Face lifts Jasmine'sbag on to the bed....."Out came my sandalwood Ganapati(m, 113) Resisting Half-Face's assault on her she "triedto keep my eyes on Ganapati and prayed for the strenght tosurvive, long enough to kill myself" (u,116) Prakash hadtouched her Ganapati then "I had protected this sari andPrakash's suit through it all. Then he had touched it. He hadput on the suit, touched my sari, my photographs and Gnapati"(Jasmine, 121) So when his suit 1s burnt she "said my prayersfor the dead, clutching my Ganpatl" (Jasmine, 120).Hinduism imposed certaln restrictions on widowhood: "As awidow I did not participate". (in match making for adolescentcousins or younger siblings). "Re-marriage was out of questionwithin the normal community" (Jasmine, 147). Not even normalfood, "as a widow she should not have eaten onions" (Jasmine,47 1Carrying her faith all the way to America, Jasmine doesnot forget the religion she learnt in her childhood: In factshe goes to the extent of teaching Americans with whom she isclose inspite of her transformation: "In our three and a halfyears together I have given Bud a new trilogy to contemplate:Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva" (-, 8)Hinduism like all other religions states that if one can

transcend desires, egoistic nature and the dominance of 'I, meand mine' one can remove the frictions in the thought processand lead a life of happiness. The question is how to go aboutlt. In particular Hinduism offers its followers a variety ofchoice in selecting individual ways towards self-realization,Bhakti, Karma and Gnana depending on their inclinations. Thealm of Hinduism is to make man not only a civilized being butalso a self-sufficient being. Along with other immigrants,Bharatl Mukherjee, focuses on Hindu immigrants from India inher later writings.In Middleman and other Stories by enlarging hergeographical and social range, Mukherlee has noticeablysharpened her style of writlng. The Immigrants in her new bookcome fresh to Amerlca from Vietnam, the Carribeans, the Levant,Afganlsthan, the Philippines, Italy, Srilanka and India. Mostof the stories are monologues spoken by immigrants who are inhurry (to settle down) and who do not have the time to indulgeIn the luxury of the retrospective past tense. Eng, theVletnamese chlld rescued by her American father from Saigon andcarried home to Rock Springs trles to mutilate herself bypressing coins into her flesh to protest her forced exile inher father's land. For the young Eng, "to be an immigrant isto be invaded, conquered, colonized; she is Salgon, cruellyencroached on by an alien.. .. The great lesson that the

immigrant has to teach the born-and-raised citizen is thatbeing on the run is a native American condition". (Raban1988,23). This turned out to be the myth for young immigrantlike Eng.l& Biddleman is a consummated romance with the Americanlanguage. It is also a romance with America itself. Mukherjeeonce again exploits America's infinite geography, its license,sexlness and violence. 'Orbiting' is the story of a ThanksglvlngDay dinner glven by an Itallan-American glrl as anoccasion to introduce her Afghan boy-friend to her family.Rindy's mom and dad are also immigrants like Ro who comes fromKabul but he is llke a being from another planet to others. Thecultural clash/crlsis comes when it is time to carve theturkey-father or boy-friend? "Loose Endsu deals with a Vietnamvet worklng in Mlaml as a hired killer and a blonde Swamileviating on a prayer mat. The flying Swami who is airborne for"two or three minutes" is eventually caught by the police.In "Jasmine" an illegal immigrant from Trinidad isobsessed wlth her visa. She has "no visa, no papers and nobirth certificate". (MOS, 138) In her anxiety to live inAmerica, the "Flower of Ann Abor" as she comes to be known iseven prepared to make a compromise on her sex, morals andethics. Only in America she can make herself up as she goesalong. Jasminecs type of neo-Platonism, her capacity to create

and inhabit her ideal republic is typical. The journey to~merica has turned people like Jasmine into chronic travellerswho live as travellers do, from minute to mlnute, dangerouslyfree of both past and future. America offers an lnfinitevariety of fresh beginnings for these birds of passage as theykeep surviving on luck and grace.Mukherjee's stories focus on the creative possibilitiescontained in people, the ability to give up fixed worlds and tobreak out of cages and relate to a complex, multiculturalworld. Discarding the protective distancing cynicism ofNaipaul, her novels and short stories are sympathetic attemptsto break the barrier of restrictive culture and class. Within"Courtly Vision" (Darkness) . . . There is a clue to BharatiMukherjee's writing;Give me total vision, commands the emperor His voicehlsses above the hoarse calls of the camels. YouBasawan, who can paint my Begum on a grain of rice,see what you can do with the infinite vistas thesize of my opened hand. Hide nothing from me, my cowanderer.Tell me how my new capital will fail, willturn to dust and these marbled terraces be home tojackals and infidels. Tell me who to fear and whoto kill but tell it to me in a way that makes mesmile. Transport me through dense fort walls andstone grilles and into the hearts of men(Darkness 199)The artist has penetrated below the surface found the realityand told the truth on several grains of rice.

Thanks to the United States, with her powerful writing inAmerica, Mukherjee has transcended lnto the world of.power and passion".Had she stayed back in India, her darknative land, one doubts whether she would have been a writer atall, in the first place. Even if she would have been one, shewould have been rather tame, demure like Jane Austen. Somepeople are meant to be American even if they never leave theirnatlve land. At heart they are American. It's a desire formore,more,more. ....The United States is the embodiment of openness,llberation and freedom, where an lndivldual can reverse omens-aland of transformation, a culture of dreamers (the AmericanDream)-by transcending myths. For Mukherjee as much as forMalamud lt 1s simply a matter of grasping "mainstream America"by the lapels and telling lt that we belong. Though thematerial Malamud and Mukherjee use is new-they are in thevanguard of a whole generation of first and second generationlmmlgrant wrlters who are discovering that to write aboutpeople like themselves makes sense.Notwithstanding the American foreiqn policy,multlnationalism and American imperialism, America has helpedboth the writers to purge themselves (and through them theircharacters) of thelr native, cultural, social and religiouslnhlbitions, ventilate and give full and free flow to their

passions and ultimately assinilate into the >mainstream' of thenew land as "immigrants".Malamud's and Mukherjee's protagonists are the archetypalbumblers in a strange land forever saying or doing the wrongthing. Tney grapple 'nianfully' arid 'womarlfully' with unfamiliarslang and occasic,nal ethnicity, all the while dreaming of aparadi.se on P.n%!riPan earth. 8utl.l writers have used 'myth' toembellish their writings-their novels and short stories. Bothwrit.ers succeed In nakinq their characters translate themselvescontinually ":rou# soclal scapegoats to mythic redeemers". WhileMalamud's characters speak out the message of their mythiccharacters througk. dialouqes, Mukherlee delivers the message(of her mythic characters) through description and narration.The conflict between myth and realism sustains Irony in Malamudwhereas myth becomes an extension of realism in Mukherjee.Whlla Malamud employs myth to reafflrm hls fa~th in apat~~rnallstlc sot-ety Mukherlre dlspells any notlon thatAmerjciir~ sor:let,. m1:jhi:be an!rtl..ing but paternalistic. Finallyborh Malamud and Mukherjee have revealed that they can seebeyond myths, without at the same time losing slght of them.

CHAPTERVTradition : Roots - Within or Without 7

TRADITION: ROOTS-WITHIN OR WITHOUT?I am an American, I'm a Jew and I writefor all men...MalamudTradition for me is a speeded up processof remembering and forgetting. And I amnot afraid to forget. ... I have myroots in AmericaMukherjeeThe American mind exposes a characteristic ambivalencewhlle cons~dering Indian culture. It shows keen enthusiasm andsincere respect for the spiritual thought of India and hermetaphysical tradition. Yet it appears to entertain~ntellectual as well as moral reservations and a high degree ofcircumspection, prejudice and disbelief. The sceptical reactionstems from certaln naive but universally held popularassumption entrenched in the Western folklore about India as aland of strange and occult practices and customs, primitivesurvivals and irrational life-ways. consequently, Americanwrlters have recorded a paradoxical attitude in their works.There is for instance, "a Whitman who hears the Hindoo " in hisown prophetic soul as well as a Melville who is appalled by"tllo dark Hlndu-half of life". There is, it seems,"an Uncle

to every Emerson and a Catherine Mayo to every Emily~~ckinson.....There are the humorous agonlsts like Mark main(who, during his sojourn in India, wished he could be asdecorouSly attired as a chaprasi) And there are too, spiritualdrifters like Henry Adams (who preferred to ... drift betweenthe Buddha and Brahma)". (Raghavacharyulu 1978,30)The best df American fiction has been essentially moresub~ective than objective, more symbolic than realistic. Forthis reason the great American writers have tended to iqnorethe approaches to realistic fictions which were perfected bythe Nineteenth century European masters, electing to worklnstead within frame works made usually out of the experienceand folklore that were most immediate to them. In the recentyears, writers have been reallslng that the wrlter of fictionneeds some institutionalized framework of social stresses andharmonies, automatically recoqnisable to his/her audiencewithin whlch he/she can cast hls/her own visions of truth. Thewrlter of fictron is automatically commited to at least aminlmum of surfact! reallsni in the depletion of hls charactersand his milieu. Speaking generally, the writer's degree ofsuccess in presenting a convincing "slice" of simulated lifewl! determine the cogency of his symbols:The problem of a 'tradition', or a 'usable past'has long been recognized as one of the salient

difficulties confronting the serious Americanwriter. It was a problem which forced Hawthorne into'romance', and Henry James into an eventual Britishcitizenship; and it is a problem which to a certainextent yet sustains the strengths and weaknesses ofthe bast of the twentietn century American fiction(RoVit 1910,3)If this pXoSlem 1s enormous for the American writer underthe best. circurrsCanc~.s, understsndablir, it 1s many times moreIn maynltuds for the writers cf airlcrity groups-the AmericanNegro, the Je'dish, the Catholic and Asian-Ind~an. Somehow eachwriter nut 1:1:n,e t.0 I:LIIIIL k'1t.t. t.lh p~obles of setting downhlsjher own partl'zular mllreu and of frndiny out his/her owntechnlque for comu.~inlsating thelr VlSrCC atfectlvely.If Bernard tfalamud can move his readers easily, it is theresult of a number of literary strateyles. Most importantly, heconvincss because he has regained in his works the tragicvlsl3r1, dhl-h tias hr!(ar central to Jewish expression for ages.Whilo lt may no? be proper to place an author so receptlve tothe currents of fictional technique In any slngle tradition,there are sufticierrt grsunds to believe that Malamud doesbelong in the tradrtion at East Pu:opeanYiddish storytelling.The conceprion c'f ckaracrers I ~ K E Morrls Bober, the grocer orLeo Finkle, the Yeshivah student has evoked the settings andtenslons of thr "literature of the pale" reminiscent of suchWriters as Sholor Aleichem and I.L. Peretz. In the

pages of ills &d&x& and many of the stories inZh$2 @$& Barrnl a kind of timeless New York ghettostands guard against all attempts at assimilation;and it is in most particular only another instanceof the Pale; that now lost world of small villagesor 'shtetls' in Eastern Europe where the Jews,forced by law to abide in daily insecurity anddenied access to the larger world, managed tomaintain and develop a cultural and communaltradition based upon adherence to Talmudicprinciples and tested in a crucible that demandedboth the tragic vision and the tragic affirmationwhich has sustained Jewish expression since thedays of Job (Richman 1967,25)The use of elements of folklore In fictlon is the rulerather than the exception. Story-telling is probably the oldestand most attractive vehlcle for folklore. And heterogenousAmerlca, with lts many regional differences and its polyglotancestry, has characterlstlcally drawn into lts literature thenatlonal legends of its peoples, as well as their differingdlalects and styles. Remaining impervious to literaryassimilation the Yiddlsh tale stood apart:. - . .Whether because its ~svcholoav and situation is toorqanlcally East European, or whether because itdepends too intimately on the absorbed nuance ofdialect, it has generaily been true that the Jewish-American writer has been unable to exploit the vastmine of Yiddish folklore in a way comparable to MarkTwain's or Faulkner's use of Southern folklore. Andwhen he has trled to, he has usually succeeded onlyin adding a pale Americanised imitation of SholomAleichnm. (Rovit 1960,5)The three alternatives before the Jewlsh wrlter offlction were:

1) TO exploit the Jewish background by concentrating oncatching the troken accents and mores of the Jewish immigrantIn America. 2) To ignore the Jewish background completely andwork within an individualized or abstracted framework. 3) Toutilize the Jeuish-American background as a fictional framew~thout adoptlng the stances of the local colourist. Malamudchose the third alternative because it attempted to fuse theworld of Yldcdish folklore with Zewish life in America. Anentire generation of Jewish-Amerlcan wrlters has managed in thespace of about twenty-five years to create for themselves acentral place In American literature. The Jewlsh-Americanauthor has suddenly emerged at a time when he has few problemsto bother about.Racral amrcy is no longer the myth which many Jewishwrlters yearEed for in the past-"having won his long strugglefor a place in society, the Jew is as free as any man to writeas an Amerlcan and not as a minorlty figure". (Richman1967.20) The theme of his writings and the trappings of hisformer clienation have pushed the Jewish writer into prominenceat a time when he has seemingly disappeared as a separateentity. 'Alienation1 was the single most important ingredientIn denying the Jew an essential voice In hls adapted Country.Faced wlth the possibility of an end to the torments ofalienation which America presented, the Jewish writer has in

the main devoted himself to advancing the possibility.In establishing his identity, the only alternative opento the Jewish writer was a literature of adoption. Jewish-American writers began to treat literature as a mode ofexpression to establish public relations in America. That theirefforts met with success is undeniable. Capitalising on thesuccess which greeted the stories and novels of Singer andBabel with the attempts to capture the truth of Jewishexperience in America by Abraham Cahan and Henry Roth, Malamudhas succeeded in pushing the tradition further into mainstreamAmerlca. His creations live on in the multitude of identitiesthrough which the Jew was turned lnto neat and conformingAmericans-the younger stream of wise bumblers, pious bookstoreowners, gentle savants and loquacious but loving mothers.Malamud looks upon a Jew as a paradigm of human valuesand not as a creature of a chosen tribe. Roth accepts thishuman~stic premise in Malamud: "What it is to be human, to behumane, 1s his subject: connection, indebtedness,responsibility, these are hls moral concerns". (Roth 1961,169)Padhoretz remarks "you would not go to Bernard Malamud for abalanced and reliable plcture of the East European immlgrantJew, but you would go to hlm for profounder truths about humanbelngs than mere observations can yleld". (Podhoretz 1964,177)Assimilating into mainstream America with the rigorous demands

of modern fictional form, Malamud has been following atradition followed with varying success by Saul Bellow, PaulGoodman and Philip Roth. He has steered clear of Jews likeHerman Wouk or Jerome Weidman (who exploited exclusively theJewlsh background) and Nathaniel West or J.D. Salinger (whoworked within an abstracted framework). It may not be out ofplace to recall Leslie Fiedler's acidic remark here:unasslmilatedCertainly we live at a moment when, everywhere inthe realm of prose, Jewish writers have discoveredtheir Jewishness to be an eminently marketablecommodity, their much vaunted alienation to be theirpassport lnto the heart of Gentlle American culture.(Fiedler 1967,72)Malamud'speople are drawn from the intenselylives of New York clty-flrst and secondgeneration American Jews. They are presented in the crampedprlsons of themselves-in dark and small stores; inoverfurnished and underllqhted tenement apartments. Thwarted bythe fatal lrmitatlons of human existence and rmprisoned evenbeyond that by a sense of being "alien" in a Gentile world, hisMorris Bobers (m Assistant)are human and humane to the core.Malamud seems to inslst that there is a way of escaping thefatal limitations of the human condition. He must accept thefatality of his own ~dentity-be lt Jew or Gentlle, success orfallure. Working withln that identity, he must learn to

transcend hlmself and get out of his prrson. The followinglines from "The 8111"(m W m) states thisph~losophy:He said that everything was run on credit, businessand everything else, because after all what wascredit but the fact that people were human beings,and if you were really a human being you gave creditto somebody else and he gave credit to you. (MB,~~o)To fail to give "credit" to another human being-even whenyou know that the credit is undeserved and even if repaid inhatred-is to deny the humanity In yourselves, to extinguishvlthin your own being the light which has been given you. ~t isthis denial which dries up the humanness in Julius Karp (mAssistant) transforming hlm from a man lnto the owner of aliquor store. It results in the punishment of Henry Freeman ("The Lady of the Lake") whose refusal to credit himself with hisown ldentlty causes him to lose his chance for love. InMalamud's stories over and over again is echoed the agonizedstraln of Job's unanswered question: "Why is light given to aman whose way is hid, and whom God hath hedged in". Thisexplalns whyMalamud's characters are dumped in dark crampedplaces welghed down by poverty, commercial greed and naturalcalamity. " Light" is given to them llke Job's man, along withfreedom of an existence without barriers.Whether it is, as wlth Moris Bober, a felt-sense of

the law, or as with Leo Finkle, a romantic illusionof love, they all have enough light in theirdarkness to know their ways are "hid" .... Thisglimpse gives them a contagious strength ascharacters, which can be seen in the effect thatMorris Bober's inner security has on Frank Alpineaneffect which leads to Alpines conversion toJudaism. This also invests the characters with acapacity for evoking pathos, as with Kessler, theegg-candler, whose glimpse of light awakens in himan acute sensitivity to the wretchedness with whichhe has lived his life. (Rovit 1960,8-9)TO treat and present Judeo-Christian traditions as twoslightly different brands of the same wonder-working drug isnot sound reasoning. As a humanist, Malamud is commited to aposltlon that is neither wholly Jewish, nor Christian, norexlstentlal. As there is no statement or reference to God, wemay conclude that he does not believe in a supernatural deity.Nor does " his work fall withln the Greek and Christiantradition of tragedy. However, in his writing Malamud draws onhls understanding of all these traditions". (Hershinow1980 b,135-136) His fiction suggests that life is a search tomake unavoidable suffering meaningful, atleast to the good andhumane people. All his eight novels deal with the conflictbetween human freedom and human limitation. He stresses on thelimitations of his protagonlsts- Roy Hobbs (W NatuTal), FrankAlpine (m Bssitant), sy Levin (AL&), Yakov BOk (T!Eu) Arthur Fidelman (pictures of Fiedelman), Harry Lesser(a-) William Dubin (pubin's Llves) and Calvin Cohn

(w-)-all of whom struggle to escape an unfulfilling~ast. They are in search of a new life and fulfilment. All theeight are defeated in their ambitions. Roy Hobbs fails to turnaway from his suffering and succumbs to materialism byaccepting a bribe. Perhaps Iris Lemon could help him to begin anew life. Frank Alpine assumes the responsibility of thedeceased Morris Bober's family by running his store - out ofa sense Of commitment that is the mixture of a sense of guiltand a vague hope of winning the love of Morris's daughter.Levin sacrifies his career for the principle of love andaccepts responsibility. Yakov Bok prefers prison-life torelease for the sake of all Russlan Jews. Fldelman learns themeaning of love and compassion through self-sacrifice. Lessershuts himself off from humanlty to achieve artisticsatlsfaction of life. Dubln learns that obligation to wife ismore lasting and meaningful than promiscuity and Cohn becomes avlctim of hatred while struggling to lnfuse a sense ofcommunity rnto anlmals.The theme of redemptive suffering in Malamud's works hasthe effect of suggesting a Christian view of salvation.Actually his vislon has its roots in the Old Testament, whilethe Christian idea of salvation derives from the New Testament.Th~s 1s quite essential and fundamental to theUnderstanding of Malamud's writings. The questions that he

epeatedly asks in his fiction Point to the question found inthe old Testament:- "why do good men suffer while evil menfrequently prosper? Why should we be good when there is noreward for goodness? Why should we love if our love is met onlywith scorn? HOW can we have faith when there are no signs toconfirm our faith? Malamud's perspective on these age-oldis heavily influenced by the somewhat fatalistic OldTestament story of Job, a pious man who suffersunjustly without ever understanding why. He knowsonly that It 1s God's will that he suffer. To theman who suffers without any apparent reason, ~od'sways seem harsh and unlust, but Job does not attemptto rationalize this ~njustlce;rather, heacknowledges this as part of the mystery of life. Itis simply the way of the world; the sun shines asbrightly an the wicked as lt does on the good andjust. (Hershinow 1980 a.140)Malamud's overall view is that goodness is its own reward whileevll Inflicts its own punishment. He 1s not merely sentimentalbut learns from hard-headed reallsrn. He is really concernedwlth the terror of exrstence ln the Twentleth century:The horrors of Verdun, the Great Depression,Dresden, Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Vietnam- the world's"uncertain balance of terror", as President Kennedyexpressed ~t in his inaugural address - these havetheir counterparts in Malamud's fiction. Backdropsof Depressron hardship, symbolrc landscapes ofgarbage-filled back alleys and collapsing buildings,McCarthyism and anti-Semitlc injustice on a massivescale - these settings cast their dark shadows overall of Malamud's fictional world" (Hershinow1980 1,141)

The importance of the family and the primacy of familyrelationships is another relevant aspect of Malamud's Jewishtradition. The supremacy Of the father 1s emphasized again andagaln in his fiction. Many of Malamud's protagonists areorphans. They are U ~CO~SC~OUS~Y searching for the male parent,they lost or never had. Alpine, Levin, Bok and Fidelman - allare benefactors Of wisdom or companionship by accepting asurrogate father. Roy Hobbs rejects the fatherly influence ofPop Fisher and Suffers. Although many cultures have legends andmyths about orphans in search of fathers, Malamud's stance has~ t s roots firmly entreched in the Old Testament. Thepatriarchal monotheism of the Jews derives from the conceptionof their God if they would agree to worship him alone and toobey hls commandments. This covenant was first entered Into bythe patriarch Abraham and later renewed by his heirs, Isaac andJacob. God's high ethical standard brought frequent punishmentand suffering to the Hebrews. As a result, the Jewshistorically developed a very special relationshrp with theirGod and none else but they(Jews) would accept his Commandments.In "Angel Levine" Manlschewltz must set aside hisprejudices to enable the black angel to perform a miracle - isPart of the Biblical influence. Frank Alplne, ~evin, Bok,Fidelman, Lesser, Dubin and Cohn obtain a new ethical meaningand identity to their lives by re-enacting Abraham's entry into

a sacred covenant. America has made it both possible andimpossible for ethnic groups to trust each other and to treat,ach other as equals. Sustained by ancient traditions andvalues, by the promise of American freedom , the Jewishsettlers in America reacted differently in the country of theiradoption. Malamud'sprotagonists respond differently toalienation, prosecution and suffering. The interaction of JBWSand Negroes in Malamud's work reveal an ambivalence aboutBlack-Jewish relationship.Bernard Malamud describes in a letter his childhoodimpressions of Negroes who lived In the nelghbourhood. Theyoung "basketball players (appeared) vital, vigorous, skilled,a laughing kind of people (who) enjoyed their game and made mellke it". (Hershinow 1980 b.140)As an adult in the late 1930'sMalamud taught English and creatlve writlng In Harlem. Here onestudent Alexander Levine, a black Jew "provided material forthe short story "Angel Levlne". " I llked the concept of ablack Jew", Malamud wrote in the same letter .... "Perhaps itwas then I thought '~ll men are Jews, though they may not knowlt'. (Hershinow 1980 b,l4l) ~ hls remark has been grosslymlslnterpreted by critics. He never intended to Suggest thatall men (Jews, Blacks and Italians among others ) are identicalin behaviour and culture. The fact remains that beyond a commonVulnerabilityto misfortune and suffering, people have

distinctive traditions, Personalities and destinies.P.lthough Halanll?d sdmires black grace and vitality(qualities lauded by Saul Bellow and Norman Podhoretz) heseldom mentions anything respecting blackachievements. His "Black Is My Favorite Color" andintellectualTenanteemphasize the Jewish charity and g~idance which antagonizes theblacks. The two works illustrate the difficulty of fosteringrespect and Fr~endeh.~p bet.deanlndivlduals of differentcult-ures, histories and status. Only "Angel Levine" come closeto realizing a balanced relatlonshlp between the twomlnorltles. Thls tale is differert ErJm "Black Is My Favouritecolor" and :.b-! Tenant-s cn two ccunts. Firstly, theconfrontation 1s betwe6.r a tvli!fe arid a kslack Jew who sharecertaln cultural similarltles. Secondly, the storysurrealistic, because Levine 1s both black and Jewish, asynthesis of two experiences occur. Interestingly, it 1s stillthe ,yedish tradition which ever in fantasy that dominates andoffers the poshitlllt'j of salvation to boxh characters.Gc3.Mdnls~lcevlti:, a pl::,:istal:.ar, has beon severely tested by.hr. emot1c1n311y and xaterially damaged man - he has losthls shop tbrough fire, his son In war, his daughter to a"loutv8.(mga;sl n~.43: In additlon, the desperatetallcr 1s burAi!ned by backaches and an ailing wife.Desperatelv worried abcdt .,is surv:va? the taii.or is i~ need Of

help. At this point, instead of simply creating a blackbenefactor, Malamud makes the tailor wait: Though desperate,Manischevitz refuses to believe a Negro can be an angel: "Isthls what a Jewish angel looks like ?... . If God sends anangel, why a black? Why not a white that there are so many ofthem? " (MB.47) Levine's own survival is dependant onManisctievitz's ac:crptance. Each has what the other needs.Disappointed through bigotry Levlne departs for Harlem.Malamud has the Jew (Levine) sent to a Negro(Manischevltz) to seek hls assistance on the latter's terms inhls place(Aar1em) tnereby enabling thelr relationship todevelup. Once the tallor professes faith, the miracle canoccur. Levize chanqrs into his old clothes, sheddlng the Harlem~dentity. A flutter of "magniflclent black wlngs" and a fallingwhlte feather indlcate that Levlne too has been rewarded,accepted 11-to heaven. The story ends on a posltlve note withboth ch~racters prospering. The Negro is accepted Only when hesheds hls black ldentity and assures a Jewlsh one. Jewishnessdominates, submerging blackness. There apgears to be no room inheaven for .black' angels as e.$idenced by Manischevitz'sassumpt Lon th,at t hc? hsdveniy feather, llke tne Heavenly Father,I t di.,it.8i:~.t?t.!; I!, aesoclated ~wlth salntllness; blacknesswlth Qecaderce.Malamud appears rc have recognized thls fallacy in lack

lB ny Favcrite Color" and The which examine black,,sentrnenttowards Jewish superiority. Society itself haschanqeri since the late Fifties when Malamud wrote "Angel~evine'~ NO lcnger are blacks interested in the acceptance atthe expense of their identity.Tensions, conflict, and angry rhetoric have takenover as Jews and Negroes battle eacll other in thestruggle to survive in the urban jungle. a Tenantsis faithful to these contemporary events.Set in NewYork City, it explores the interaction of HarryLesser and Xillie Spearmint, a Jewlsh and a blackwriter. The encounter embraces more than twoindividuals. It is a clash of two traditions: theintellectual and the sensual: a debate between twoaesthetics: the rational and the radical. Theprotagonists enact roles assigned them by centuriesof condrtioning. (Avery i979.103)The self-disciplined, passive Lesser 1s thequ1nxes:senrlill .:edloh victim, sufferinq and sacrificing forart, his religion. By contrast, the passionate, irrational,splrited Spearnirt is the black rebel, actinq impulsively,demanding imnediata gratification. Althcdqh both are writers,thelr llterary attitudes, abll:.ties and experiences areStr!.klngly dlfferrnr. Lesser preaches the iagortance of "forms"('r?.;?) and discipline, which Spenrmlnt rejects in favour ofraw enlotion. In addition to their aesthetic and Stylisndlf f,?renr:es, both have different literary oblectives. Lesserseek; love and meaning through writing while Spearmint desires

wealth and status. All that prevents the two from immediatelydestroying each other is the recognition that they also needeach other. Apublished author wlth a little money, Lesser canoffer advice, guidance and shelter to the untutored andlmpoverised black. In turn Spearmint introduces the Jew to sexand then to love, allowing him temporarily to blossom as a manand revitalize his writing. Both represent extremepersonalities and can benefit by adopting some of the other'stralts. Unfortunately the friendship is never reallzed.The Cultural differences between blacks and Jews are muchgreater than those between the Italian and the Jew in aAssistant, for example. Also Spearmint is not Alpine or AngelLevine, who willingly embrace Judaic tradition. Dependencybreeds self-hatred, exasperation and ultlrnately violence. LikeRichard Wright, Harold Cruse and Imamu Baraka, Willie rejectsJewlsh benevolence and tries to assert hls ldentlty. He evenchanges his name to Bill Spear in a pathetic attempt to assumea new, more militant and dignified self. In the end bydestroying that which threatens them, they also destroythemselves and the possibility of harmony between disparatePeoples and cultures.Richard Wright's Native son shook the literary firmamentOf the United States on its appearence in 1940. It highlightsthe differences between Afro-Amerlcans and ~ewish-~rnericans

make ernpatb.y -mPssslbla. Wright's ambivalence towardsjews is develcpecl most. fully In m. IE Malamud'ssuperior posit~on hindered his assocrations with Negroes,Wright.'i EUt,3rliirdt~ 10Sit~3n ;,re3.entedcompletely comfortable with Jews.hlm from feelingHis biography reveals his~ntlmacy witt GeWS and his dependence on them. Twice he marriedJewlsh women whose oeauty, rntelligence and sensitivityappeaied to him. Like Baldwrn, Wright realized that Jewsoccupled a precarious positlcn in Rnerlca. In the eyes ofWrlc:llt atd his ycunj fr-ends, Zews hao commited theunpar:l~:,r~aole sln: They had murdered theLord. A ditty sung byyoung iirl.rjht ar.3 t;s friends echced the sentiments of antl-semlrl. ixitr C-~r..stiar,s:Bloody Christ KillersNever trxt a Ze'dBloody Chrlst KillersWhar won't a Jew do'(Blazk Bov il)Nalamud has n x succumbed to pesslmisn as many blackwriters have dr:,ns,. Farlicsr InTenants Lesser dreams of*~:lling the two ,:l:ituras. 01. a remote Atrican Isle tworn,irl:..a~~e.s tzlie pla::t!: ile~rr:, Lssecii and Mary Kettlesmith(Spearmint's blacl: friena) and wlllie spearmint and IreneBellasky (Lha ne,.lrotic Jewish glrl). The traditional rabbistres.ses at the werid ~rlq ceramony. ". . . . mutual trust, lnsight

lnto each other, generosity .... character (and sacrifice)."(TT.216) The rabbi can pray thatn God vill bring togetherIshmael and Israel to live as one people"(TT.26) Malamud'svision is Jewish-the union of Negro and Jew under a God, "thecolor of llght" (TT.216) may be offensive to blacks. But it isthe Jevish liberal's appeal for universal brotherhood.Separated Lrom his ancestral home, enslaved physicallyand spiritually, the black rebels, forsaking passive suffering.The Jew on :he other hand becores a vlctim of circumstances,accepts hls burdens and elevates pain to a moral virtue.Ultimately, ln an lncreaslng machine-dominated, materialisticsoclety, both rebels and vlctlm reject conformity and celebratetheir freedom. Tney seek to affirm the worthiness of the"human" material. Kalamud attempts to fuse the world of Yiddishfolklore and Jebl:;h :lie in Xmerlca wlth tne rlgorous demandsof modern flctlona: form. The two stories and the moral inparticular emphasize the pervasive bltter-sweet conflictbetweet-, the orthodox and the "new" values of Jewish behaviourin modern American life - the strange, dazzllng quality of EastEuropean Yiddish story-telling.A sense of the 'haves' Conspiring against and victimizingthe 'have-nots'not cnly pervades the fictional world Of Malamudbut ~olours the Lhinklng oi hls characters. The similaritiesand differences between these works and the proletarian novels

of the Thlrtles serve as an effective introduction to thepec.jple ard t:ie dOrld rtalamud has depicted In h1s novels andshort stories. Malamud has assimilated into his work some ofthe tradltlonal proletarian themes and patterns and synthesisedthem remarkably to serve his larger humanistic concerns.Class, ideology and dissidence are bound to be catchwords in any discussion of the proletarian novel. The Marxistwas poatJlata3 as the chief characterlstlc of the genre. Thecentral characters were drawn from the working class. It isinteresting to note that Malamud's protagonists resemble thoseof the proletarian no~~el nf the Thlrtles. Actually theproletar133 1spuLse goes beyond the conception of theprotzqonlsr arlc' cx':~?ncs t.0 the very tone and temper of hisnovels. The Depression mllieu of a Assistantand the pre-Bolshevlc content of The Fixer polnt to the proletarian impulseof the Jewlsh inteilectual of the 1930's.?ne central cnaracters cf Malamud's novels are a baseballplayer, a grocery st.ore assistant, a-drunkard-turned-college-teacher, a pc:,:fl:c~r >an, a tailed artlst, a weak wrlter and abloqrapi~er. or t.he soclo-econosic plane, they are all marginalmen and poverty is their common lot. Most of them are orphans,drunkards, thieves. MalamudProletarian nova1 of the 1930'shas vsed severa, motifs of thein his writlngs. Himself avlctln cf bepression cne sees ~ t s Influence In everything he

has writte?. The eight Ma?.imud':. prordgonists fall lnto twocategories: ROY Hobbs. Frank Alpine and Yakov Bok arepoletarians who come from the lowest wrung of socio-economicladder; S. Levin, Fidelman, Lesserrnubin and Cohn are marginalboUrgeOlS figures. Essentially, each one of them is an "avatar"of the down-trodden cnes of the Thirties.Two truths energe from the ascouct of the past llfe ofthe Malamud protagonist: poverty end subsequent alienation fromsociety. Money or lack of it runs as a recurrent motif in hisnovels. The Initla1 ambltion of Frack Alplne, Levine, Bok andthe rest 1s t'2 make ttelr fortune, to rise a llrtle high up inthe soclo-economic sphere. Each pursues his cwnway- as ballplayer, store assistant, college teacher, handyman, painter-sculptor, novelist,biographer, and reformer - but the ulteriorend 1s the same.The motif of education or enlightenment 1s another mOtlfthat informs the form and content of Malamud's novels. Eachnovel describes a yradunl progress ot the protagonist'sawakening to a fresh and different sense of self, soclety andlife ln qeneral. Each protagonist 1s made to lose his soulflrst, then flnd ~ t , and flnally enter soclety inorder todlscover his true indivlduality/idenrity. Hence, all the eightnovels of Malamud are "educationu novels- tracing the painfulprocess of growth of the protagonists (not qulte young) towards

and moral maturity.At the social level, the proletarian or bourgeoisprotagonists champion a struggle against repressive andannihilative forces. While the Capitalist~c Society was theenemy in the poletarian novel in the Thirties, the Malamudprotagonist fights two enemies-one within himself and theother, the society lnto which he is thrust. He attains hiseducation" through thls two-fold struggle. Yakov Bok suffersbrutal imprisonment and humiliation for a crlme he did notcommit. He keeps on struggllng agarnst the Tsarlst officialslust to redeem the names of all Jews In antl-Semitic Russia.Fldelman, Lesser, Dubin and Cohn - all frght against thecircumstances In whlch they are placed.Malamud'sAntl-Semitisin and Neqro-White relations also figured inrmplicatlons ofworks. The fixer is a thorough study of theAnti-Semitism and Negro-Whlte relatron which1s the maJor theme of 'rhe Tenants. The slmllarltles between thetheme and motifs of the proletarlan novel of the Thirties andthose of Malamud's point to the question of how a contemporaryAmerican novelibt discovers a "usable past" in a body ofliterature that has apparently lost rts relevance andusefulness. Much more talented than most proletarian writers,Malamud enlarges the scope cf the proletarlan novel toacconodate h ~ own s deeper concerns as an artist.

None of Malamud's protagonists believes ininstitutionalized religion like the protagonist of theproletarian novel. Alplne's conversion to Judaism at the end ofAssistant 1s not qulte motivated by religion as by thefatherly, humane ethics of Morris Bober. For ~ o k in !J& w,~ o d is always " In the outhouse, that's where he is ". (~r.16)Malamud's consistent and extensive employment of the comic inhis novels, llke the symbolic and mythlc elements, resemblesthe form of the proletarian novel. An agnostrc humanist,Malamud has unflinching faith In man's abllrty to choose andmake "hls own world" from the "usable past". Thls constitutesthe Malamudlan transmutatlon of the revolutionary optlmismderived from the traditions of the proletarian novels of the1930's.The traditional Jewish folk flgure-the "Schlemiel". thewell-meanlng bungler, the intrinsic loser, the chronic victimand sufferer has been successfully used from the days of thegreat Ylddish writers of the vanished East-European ghetto -Sholom Aleichem, Leibush Peretz and Mendele Mocher Sforim tothe recent eodern Jewish- American writers such as Saul Bellow,Philip Roth, Bruce Jay Friedman and Isaac Bashevls Singer whowrites In Ylddish. Bernard Malamud resembles most in respect ofhls characterization Sholom Aleichem. What Malamud's characterhave in common with Aleichemis is the problems of poverty, the

capacity for suffering and ill-luck. With ironic self-scrutinythey are able to sense the irony in their plight. Aleichemwrote of people living in an alien society often so desperatethat the only recourse they had was to humour. The Jews feltthemselves Powerless and so they discovered the formula forconversion of disaster into triumph through lauqhter. Aleichemdlscoverd the "schlemiel" as the vehicle for this.In Malamud's novels, the "schlemielv protagonists do notposses the strength of the East European forefathers. They arealso not so much the oblects of thelr own laughter as ofothers. Unllke Aleichem's gentlles who lived outslde the Jewishpale were obiects of fear as hostile forces, Malamud's gentileprotagonists, Roy Hobbs and Frank Alplne, are as much harassedand as vulnerable as their Jewlsh counterparts, Levin, Bok,Fldelman, Lesser, Dubln and Cohn. For Malamud the 'schlemiel'isinterchangeable with the ldea of belng a Jew and to be a Jewmeans to assume a moral stance in a world full of rebuffs,absurdities and humillation. The typical Malamud protagonist isa middle-aged-man wlth an ignoble past. The characteristicproperties of hls past Ilfe are economlc deprivation, sociallsolatlon and fallures at different levels. All of them haveSuffered lndiginities in some form or the other. A11 of themare losers, unlucky , unloved and wounded by clrcumstances. Thestruggle to establish unity wlth some unacknowleged centre of

one's personality, a quest for lost roots becomes the drivingforce of Malamud's Jewish heroes. The Morris Bobers, Levins,yakov Boks, LeSSerS, Dublns, Fidelmans and Cohns in Malamud'sfictional world succeed as men paradoxically only by virtue oftheir failures in society. They achieve manliness and greatnessIn the end - victory through defeats.Interestingly, unlike the Jews In Malamud's fictionalworld, Indlans with deep-rooted traditions have not been ableto establish unity wlth thelr personality, Wore particularly,Indldn women whose voice remalned feeble as they were relegatedto the background by their men.The Indian woman was "invisihls" because no novelist hadyet beell able to ccgard her existence In ?.raerica ani glve voiceto the peculiaritlrs of that particular ExlsLence till Bharatltl,.ikIl!!: jl!e descc!ndad on ttlc scene. 'Ptle tri~dltlorlal restrlctlonsplar:,%c upon the Indidn adolescant qlrl, ths unwrltten but rigidcoees for malntainlng modesty and decorum in social gatherings,especially in the presence of males, and the very heavilyprescribed att;tu$e,s available as coritrnls In the famlly arevcrrr different from that to which other soc~al groups have beenexpi~ssdIndian wcarn have of 1 s t ~ moved away from saris (as themen have abandortad dhotis) f o ~ Western forms of dress. Economicfactors zlone may probahly be suificit!nt explanation for this

ut the motivari3-6 is more I:ompl~v than that. Living in anIndian CJltural .iitlstic.t~ ahera hnglop;?i;e and Americanizedattitudes and values are taught to be desirable, the movementtowards "assimilation" aqd ".4mericanisationU was inevitable.Gradually, rep:esslveIndian attitudes towards women are beinglettisoned alonq ulrh sther items of cultural bagagge and arebeing replaced by other equally repressive though differentattitudes wtich prevall In the zlominant culture of the West.The change in dress and behavlour has made room for a freeassertion of the individual personallty which 1s visible in theSoclety at large. Evidence 1s now accumulatinq from historicaland soclolcglcal studles that the prevalent notion of Indranfemale personallty as sunbmlsslve, sty and tlmll 1s a fallacyand that from the earllest waves of immlgratlon, the majorityof the women made the journey independently, scme legltimately,others illegitimately. Earller Indlan women were less thanpassive recipients sf an unendurable fate. Some of them hadbeen forced by circunstances lnto widowhood and many others,yourg q1:is and uidows were forced into prostitution on accountof early widowhood or inadequate dowries. They came voluntarilyor were sent, as a kind of banishment, to flnd new lives in anunknown land. So the picture of Indian womanhood whlch emergesfrom contemporary nove!,s like Ahmad Ali'e Ocean of N.idIL(1964);Anlta Desal's c.ryL the Ee.~c.~c:.!! (1963); Ralachaadra Ra3an's WQ

M th.e i& (1961); Kamala Markandayars D Nowhereand Nergls Dalal's U fmr? Overseas, which as acomposite of compliance, obedience and domestic virtue, is farfrom complete. A more vlgorous and psychologically excitingtale is needed to deal with the truth of thls experience. TheIndian Woman who exists in America today from the figure whichappears in the religion's art is more varied and complex thanthe type and has llke other human beings, a normal allotment ofinsecurity, fear, deslre, neurosis, obsession and all the otherqualities which render human beings interesting. Yet, the fact1s that thls person is not yet vlsible rn Amerlcan fiction.The Indlan community In American literature continues togrow. It is a large and dispersed community, attended byseveral discomforts of recently liberated colonials, uneven inlts abllltles to accomodate to the demands of a plural societyand surprlslnqly mostly male, if one is to ludge by itsliterary output. In Indla the Indlan woman 1s located in alargely peasant, village culture, firmly attached to thetraditional values of home and seeklng no actlve inter-actionwlth the external, non-Hindu world. Safe In the ascriptions Ofthe female Hlndu role, she llves as an extension of thedomlnant male figure In her environment, and she transmutes allher needs into those whlch he can fulfil for her.The character of Jasmlne 1s one of the most closely

easoned fictional representations of the dilemma faced by the1ndian woman whc seeks more from life then her animal,procreative role In tht! Ilovel. Her individual personalityimprints upon the reader's perception. The character's dilemmabecomes the author's. With such an interesting build-up of goodmaterial to work through, she plunges into melodrama. Thefictional search into the psyche of women uncovers motivationswhich are basic to the undersrandlng of this type ofrelationship. As the writer's view of her craft expands, she isable to generalize and to select from experience, the necessarydetalls-the exact illustrative item whlch is so much moreeffective than the painstaking reproduction of the actual. TheIndlan female, seen at an earlier period through ritualized andindirect perception remained frozen ln that frame. Theresurgence of lnterest in the early hlstory of Indianimmigrants provides actual evidence of this. The simplifiedfictional accounts of Indlan fleeting glrlhood are not equal tothe demands of the complex plural society whlch Americansinhablt. It means that the novelist's capacity for insights andexploration of human nature has not been turned upon theImportant relationship between Indian men and women, whethersexual or otherwise, and between the Indlan woman and thepresent reallty.To understand the origins of the antlthesls of spiritual

~sia and materialistic America one must look primarily to thedisparity in their economic development - and to its corollary,the nature of the ends that Eastern and Western societies havesought from one another. For the culural and spiritualguidance, Asia still relies on her own traditions. Forpolitical and scientific techniques she turns to America. ~t ishardly surprising, therefore, that for many Orientals there isa profounder contrast - the confrontation of matter and spirit.For the tradltlon.11 East, reallty 1s essentially immaterial,rmpalpable, Ineffable-a spiritual ground beyond belng and non-belng and quite Incapable of translation into human terms. Forthe modern West, on the other hand, reality is materlal,concrete, capable of being analyzed In the laboratory andexpressed In matlrmatlcal formulas. Whlle the Asian tries toldentlfy hlmself wlth a reallty beyond the unlverse, theAmerlcan endeavours to harness the unlverse to serve his ownneeds. The former accorrplishes his end through denial, thelatter through d

elationship, to marry, to have children, and to want the bestfor them.But, in contrast with marriage in the early Twentiethcentury, contemporary marriage is a less central fact in aperson'slife and, therefore, it is not crucial that it becompletely Satisfying on every level. This sentiment would haveseemed scandalous in the perlod from 1950 to 1970 (Even today,it is upsetting to older people with long, intact marriagesvhlch are central to thelr lives). As people lowered theirunrealistic expectations, many became cautiously optimisticthat they could have relatlonshlps that were rewarding andworthwhile, even lf they were not perfect.Famlly life today 1s dlverse, and most people arerelatively tolerant ut those whose values and behaviour aredifferent

lesbian community agreed that privacy in sexual matters is thebest policy when they were unable to get laws passed that wouldguarantee homosexual rights. The media coverage declined.previously controversial topics such as abortion, sexualpreferance, and orgasm count largely dropped out of casualconversation. Today most people discuss these matters privatelywith family and close frlends. Rather than demand that sex, bedenied, hldden, or persecuted (as dld some gays and swingers inthe 1960s and 1970s), most Americans today treat sexuality as aprivate matter. As a result publlc controversy about abortionand homosexuality has dlminlshed in the last ten years. Thepolarized debates of the 1980s between the self-appointed "Moral Ma]orityl' arid therr opponents gradually turned into amore constructive search for some klnd of broad national moralconsensus to which all Americans could subscribe. The dlalogue1s often gulded by the solgan: "In essentlal matters, unity; inunessential matters, dlverslty. In all matters, toleration,patience and good humor". (Thornton and Freedman 1983,33)Indlvlduals who can see their llves in a larger socialcontext are more likely to have realistic expectations fortheir most Imporrant relatlonshlps. They are less likely toblame themselves for the events beyond their control. They mayalso be tempted to use social forces as an alibi when theyaught to accept rcssponsiblllty for maklng sltuation better.

soth Mukherjee and Malamud have done their best in projectingthe immigrant sensibility aganist the American tradition.~hrough their novels and short stories the private and familyexperiences of both the writers are reflected and theircharacters are shaped by the social world around them and bytheir Cultural inheritance. As Mukherjee acknowledges:As a Hindu I was brought up on oral traditions andeplc literature In whlch animals can talk, birds candebate ethical questions and monsters can changeshapes. I believe In the existence of alternaterealities and this belief makes itself evident in myfiction.(Carb 1990.35)Dark skln and religious belle€ of the Third world do notconform to those OE Judalsm or Christianity, Mainstream Americaresponds differently and unpredictably: " My fiction has toconslder race, politics, rellqlon, as well as certain nastinessthat other generation of white immigrant American writers maynot have had to take into account". (Carb 1990,36) In herflction Mukherjee depicts the problems faced by Indian andother Thlrd World immigrants who attempt to assimilate intoNorth American llfe styles. Employing an understated proseStyle replete with ironic developments and witty observations,she focuses upon sensitive protagonists who lack a stable senseof personal and cultural ldentity and are victimlsed by racism,sexism and other forms of social oppression. While Darkness

focuses primarly on the problem between Indians and Whites inNorth America, her next collection of short stories, Theyiddleman Q!&x Stories projects the experience in theunited States of immigrants from Europe, the Carribbean andother parts of Asia as well as India. Some of these stories arerelated from the perspective of White Americans. It chroniclesboth the experience of the Third World people adjusting to anew culture and the reactions of members of their adoptedsoclety. Polly Shulman observes "In Mukher7ee1s books, everyone1s llvlng in a new world, even those who never left home. Astraditions breakdown, the characters must try to make lives outof the pieces". (1988,19) In Tlser's Daushter Mukherjeepresents a satirical portralt of the Ind~an society from theperspective of Tara Banerlee Cartwrlqht, the young expatriatewho 1s not yet accustomed to Amerlcan culture, yet is estrangedfrom the morals and values of her natlve land. John Spurlingstated :the book's strength and oriqlnality comes from itsauthor's subtle use of her herolne, the way she ismade to register the frailties and contradictions ofher ancestral way of llfe, so that the reader, awareat first only that he 1s observing somebodydisoriented and flounderlnq, gradually discoversthat it is not so much she as the world around herthat 1s crumbllnq. (1973,26)Dlmple, the protagonist in Mukherlee's second novel U, is

aised to be passive and dependent according to traditionalIndian standards of feminity. Mukherjee depicts thedisorienting and dehumanising effects of urban American societyand indicts Indian cultural values that discourage selfrellance in women. Dlane Johnson remarks:You may have noticed Indian wives at the market ormovie, always looking rather cold in their thinsaris, ACrilan sweaters, ankle socks and tennisshoes, You may or may not have thought about themand wondered what they talk about among themselves,but after you read (Wife) you will know, and it willgive you pause. It 1s a funny but upsetting accountof thf confllct of Western and Indlan cultures, andof modern and old-fashioned tradltions of femaledestiny as embodled 111 the llfe of Dimple Dasgupta,and tcld wlth a klnd of dead-pan comic ferocity thatpartakes both of the tradition of the Engllsh novelof manners and of the fatalism of Indla. (1975,3)Mu'kherlee f:.cmt.s to terms with Nortl', Amerlca with hershort story collection m m. While she says she has becomea Ncr-ch .?.rrr?rl::an wl.ite~, actually .as she has beccimes wrlter of f;L* U Rmerica, the America ignoredbv the so-called mainstream : the America thatembraces all the peoples of the world both becauseAmcrica is ~nvolved wlth the whole world and becausetha whole world is in America. Her cast ofcharacters include immigrant Indians,whiteAncricans, Vietnamese, Ztalian-Americans, whiteCanadians, i~nrrigrant Lebanese, non-white Canadians,Americanized Indian chll.dren, American children bornof ont! h'hite hnicrlcan and one Indlan parent, etc.The Tndlana lnclude Slkhs, Bengalis, Goans,Bangladeshis, Gujarathls and so on. Among the whiteAmericans there are New York professisnals, workers,bus boys, Iowa farmers, John Dnere engingeers,

adicals.....The Canadians include white womenbureaucrats, pop stars, academics, and the MountedPolice. These characters interact with one another.Precisely because her canvas is wide, her storiesare short. Through short stories, she is able totake on the world and to provide multipleperspectives. (Nazareth 1986,185)Continuing t.0 elaborate on the theme of derelicts, manyof them Indian origin, languishing in alien climates, bothunable and unwilling to shed their unwanted selves, Mukherjeeenrlches her latest novel Jasmine with the flne sensitivity anddelicate artistry she possesed whlle writing about immigrantswhose past haunted them. She emerges more confident enloying inher intimacy with the Amerlcan Idiom and her knowledge of thelandscape. She even generously adopts the popular prejudicesregarding the mysterious East and the Inscrutability of theorlental characters. Her novel "appears to have been wrltten toa set formula wlth all the inevltablc stock-in-trade ofHollywood fllms of the Forties and Fifties. Instead of acha~cter llke, say sab~, there 1s a much more uptodate femaleprotagonists, who, although born to the veil, braved everythingto successfully smuggle herself into the [lnlted States and what1s more, ended up becomlng smarter thar the most liberated OfAmerlcan women" (Nambiar 1991, 3)Americanization has been the acquiring of many differentpersonae, while for most of them lt has been the process oflettinq go, or lnsing, thelr past Before she dons these

different personae, Mukherjee is Indian enough to enter thepsyche of the new immigrants in America and capture theirthrills, tribulations and traumas in the New World. All herstories reflect strange dichotomy of spirit and attitude. Whileon the one hand her protagonists experience the essence ofexhllaratlon and freedom at their unsheltered and unculturedlife styles, on the other hand they are confused by the coldopenness of outlook and spirit everywhere. They are truly"strangers in a Strange Land" to use Kuckreja's own title forhis stage production. The stories Kuckreja chooses for hisDelhi theatre group, "Ruchlka" are "The Lady from Lucknow" "AWife's story" an6 a "Management of Grief". Kuckreja defines aplay as " an Idea between an actor and hls audience and so"Strangers In a Stranqe Land" shares several ideas with theaudience. "Mukherjee's storles have plenty of drama and can beeffectively translated on stage, as Kuckre]afs script proved".(Shankar 1991,9)Anuradha Ch2pra records: "in a recent lntervlew she(Mukherjee) was reported as saylnq 'I have my roots in America'(Chopra 1990.7) As Mukherjee herself confesses :1 was DO!-n into a Hindu Bengali Brahmin family,which means that I have a different sense of self,of existence and of morta1it.y than do writers likeMalamud. I believe that our souls can be reborn in3nother bocly, so the perspective I have about asingle character's llfe 1s different from that of an

American writer who believes that he only haslife. (Carb 1990,35)It asm mine is far from being the archetypal Indian immigrant,it is because she has no struggle wlth her past. Actually, itIS the Nirmalas and Professorjis who live in the little Indiasor expatriates In the United States and whom Jasmine encountersenroute to liberation, that Bharati Mukherjee has littlesympathy for. They have no real cultural identity, instead onlya cowardly fear of change.The lmmigrants Mukherlee writes about are not timidobsequious ones who have established themselves as the greenhornsand stereotypes; rather she celebrates the fighters, theconfident ones, those who were born to take the money and run.Mukherjee's choice of subject makes a lot of sense if for noother reason than that rt is virgln territory. And there is nodoubt that she 1s unlquely placed to wrlte about the newAmerican, because she is one of them. An extremely articulatewoman, she wrote recently in the &K XQ& Times Book Reviewthat as an ex-colonial she had a great legacy- the ability,to be two thrngs simultaneously : to be thedispossessed as well as the dispossessor .... Historyforced us to see ourselves as both the 'We' and the'other'.... It is this hlstory-mandated training inseeing myself as 'the other' that now heaps on me afluid set of rdent~ties denied to most of mymainstream Amerlcan counterparts. (Davidar 1989,5)

~harati Mukherjee emphatically places herself in the literarytradition of three major contemporary American writers-Bernardmalamud, Raymond Carver and John Cheever. In what respect hercharacters strike parallels with the New England Yankees ordispossed smallto'wn Mid-Western Asericans In their novels-~ukherjee leaves it to the readers to find out. She simplyannounces her llrerary context.Mukherjee IS 1lk.r V.S. Naipaul from the Ttlird World butunlike hlm she left India by cholce to settle in the UnitedStates. She viers herself as an American author in thetraditlon of other Amerlcan authors-immigrants like herself.Llke Malamud she wrltes about a mlnorlty zammunity whichescapes the ghetto and adapts itself to the patterns of thedominant Rmerican culture. As she herself has acknowledged sheconsiders hersel< to be ln the literary trdditlon of IsaacBabel. Josspt, ?onra,J dnB An'ran Ct~eXhov. Perhaps we could traceher tradltlon back ro the same roots-Homer from where T.S.Ellot and Virglnja Woolf trled to trace then orlgin. Americanshave a healthy curiosity about new writers and new ideas.Amerrcan publishing tbous~s have been far more considerate andwilling to accept arid receive her writinqs than have suchpublishing companies in Canada or India.Tracing her roc.ts from her Irish convent days of herupper-class Belrg~li upbringing which was mcre-Eurocentric than

~ndian-she is equipped with the best of the two worlds.Althcdgh Malamud's roots were steeped in Jewishness in thebeginning, he has slnca come a long way and merged withmainstream America. 1nsplt.e of hukher.jse's claim that she isparc of Amerlca, some readers are not quite sure about herroore. Courtesy Llnited States-tradition fcr her was a speededupprocess of reaembering and f?:gettiny. Bharati Mukherjee hasalso come a lony way and mainstreaneo 1.? Aserlca. Having livedin the United Pates (and Cancioa) for Tan)' ye.3.r~; married awhite AmerlcaR (Canadian) and named her sons Bert and Bernard (after Halamud) she has picked up the American language (withits dlction, idiom and pace) shedding most of her Indianess.She has lndeed caught-up with America even much faster thanwhat many ~merieans'thought she would do.

CHAPTERVlConclusion : Moral Centre - Two Modes ofAffirmation

CEAPTER VICONCLUSION: M O W CENTRE-TWO MODES OF APPIRMATIONTo be good, then evil, then good was nomoral way of life, but to be good afterbeing evil was a possihllity of life.Bernard MalamudI write about states of feelings or moraldilemmas that strike a very clear chord inme.Bharatl MukherjeeAmerican inunigrant writing, particularly that of East-European Jews and Asian-Indians since the 1950's and 1970's ischaracterised by a. tone of affirmation combined with protest.The Jewish-American novelist Bernard Malamud and the Indian-American novelist Bharati Mukherjee have expressed their senseof affirmation in their writing in differing ways-thusproviding contrasted racial consciousness. While Malamud's callis for a universal affirmation through commitment to certainfundamental human nnd social values in life affecting theentire humanity, Mukherjee'c search for identlty assumes theform of a protest-based affirmation or assertion achievedthrough a commitment to confrontation and vrolence. Malamud'sconcern for general humanity- that includes the welfare of bothblacks and whites reveals hls broader humanism, while

nukherjee's commitment for the liberation of the colouredimmigrants exposes her coloured Third World radicalism. Being awriter in the accomodationist tradition of the 1960's inAmerica, Malamud relegates elements a:: protest to a postion ofsecondary impartar.ce, concentrating on the individual problemof Jewish striving to enter the mainstream of American life.His protagonists do not directly challenge the authority of thewhite gentiles but merely try to adjust themselves to thespecial problems created by a hostile world. On the othorhand,the angry Third World writer Bharatl Mukherjee expresses amilitant assertion by giving expression to racial or ethnicprotest. Mukherjee rejects completely the accomodative andpassive resistance programme as it appeals to the whiteAmerican conscience in mild and supplicated tones expecting afavourable response from them. She advocates violence andmilitancy as a means of achieving immigrant Asian-Indianidentity leading t.o s coloured immigrant awareness in herwritings.Malamud's views on racial confllct are particularlystriking and they form the theme of his novels. His novelslaunch a double attack against both the outrage over specificinjustices handed out to Jews and his outrage over humanity'sgeneral capacity for viciousness. Malamud remains a uniquenovelist in that his vision encompasses a commitment to black

liberation too. Malamud's universalism that defines his work,grows out of a deep encounter with the speclfic terms of humanexperience as it occurs for the blacks, whites and other groupsof people. He engages such issues to find the essentialhuaanity rhat lies ber~eath. Mukherjee's perspective is not sowlde-ranging since she deals with only one aspect, namely, theproblem of immigrant identity, particularly Asian-Indian, in awhite world. Since the vision of these two writers are totallydifferent, their approaches are at variance with one another.Malamud's response to the human condition is sensitiveand is born oi a compassionate understandlnq. Llfe for him is adrama of moral Issues, whlle words like conscience,responslhilrty, love, suffering and compassion have anIntrinsic value. He recognizes that man is a compound of goodand bacl, who yet has the potentiality to change for thebetter. Malamud's Interest in fiction is on man in the processof changing his fate, hls life. Hls protagonists struggle for a'new llfe' whatever be thelr gullt-rldden past. Suffering andcompassion become instrumental to this process oftransformation to new life.Malamud proves t.hrough his investigations into the humanpsyche that man has sufficient physical and spiritual staminato foil the deterministic forces of society and to flnd avlable system of values. Initially, Malamud's characters are

completely unanchored, groping for a workable set of morals anda desirable mode of living. Rut never do they run away fromtheir problems, no1 succumb to their weaknesses. Malamud'sprotagonists are fighters by nature, they make persistentefforts to bring about a change ln their moral outlook bylearnina from their failures. In Halamud's view, man is alwaysamenable to moral growth through his struggle and suffering.Therefore, his characters acquire a new moral awareness as theyintensify their struggle for survival. Their changing outlookhelps them to develop a pattern of llfe i>phlch ensures themhumanity, identity and dlgnity, for Malamud belleves that manis always changing and that the changed part of him is allimportant.Spurning the gloomy state of affairs in the modern world,Malamud professes faith In humanity. He strikes a note ofafflrmatlon in hls belief that "we will not destroy eachother.. . . we will live on".The world view projected byMalamud In hls work 1s thus qualified by a moral vision. Anintense reverence for man and his dignlty informs his vision.It is in defense of the human that his fiction prescribes thevalue OF compassion revealing "what lt is to be human, to behumane". (Roth 1961, 229) Art for Malamud tends towardsmorality and morality in his own words, "begins with anawareness of the sanctity of one's life". (Quoted in Stern

1975,56) He believes that art celebrates life and gives us ourmeasure.In Malamud's novels, the element of protest is alwaysparadoxically implicit or indirect and it is very effectivelyprojected in the context of the novel. Particularly striking ishis sense of protest at the Jew's suffering, which is highlycontrolled, never assuming alarming proportions. Violence isalways hlnted at as a way out, but is never resorted to insolving the Jew's problems in America. But Mukherjee's writingsare marked by a protest that becomes more and more direct,explicit and very specific. Violence 1s not only hinted at,but resorted to increasingly as a way out of achieving acoloured identity in Amerlca. Mukherjee's writings arecharacterised by violent protest and trace the progression ofher coloured consciousness. This progression of herconsciousness becomes a movement from a state of despair to asense of ethical totality thereby showing a continuous movementtowards affiramtion of her own coloured identity.Mukherjee reverses conventional connotations of"blackness" and "whiteness" glven by the malnstream Americanwriter and arrlves at new interpretations to the metaphysics ofcolour. In America, the colour equation matters, especially foran immigrant. White colour is not equal to black or lightercolours. Especially for the new comers the colour of the skin

"fixes" their Status and acceptability. Her advocacy ofviolence has to be seen and judged in the context of hermetaphysics of ColOur. Mukherjee's advocacy of violence is toput an end to racial discrimination and violence functionswithin the context of her novels, as it had in Richard Wright'spative S a as a means of discovering an identity.Mukherjee takes Camus' statement "I rebel therefore Iexlst" as a basic premise and her novels establish a pattern ofrevolt and rebellion. Mukherjee's heroines, who have a sense ofalienation from the larger community are driven to revolt andthey have to be seen and evaluated against a non off-whitepersepectlve and off-whlte necessity. Traditronal heroic modelshave no relevance to Mukherjee's herolnes. Traditionally, aheroine is one who supports her society's version of moralityand order, one who does not question the values of the societyof whlch she 1s a part. But Mukherjee's heroines have to beseen as rebel-heroines or anti herolnes characterised byisolation and estrangement from the dominant white community.These rebel herolnes establish a heroic model through theirspeeches and actions based on ethnic necessity.Affirmation through negation constitutes an importantfeature of much of American writing in the Twentieth century.Richard Wright in pative S m explores the possibility ofexpressing anger and frustration of Bigger Thomas through

violence and murder. Bigger is the germ of the black militantwriters of the 1960's and Mukherjee follows the tradition ofRichard Wright in expressing her coloured identity throughresorting to anger and violence in her novels. While Biggervents his anger and fury at each and everything that he comesacross, Mukherjee directs her attack on whites and white-oriented blacks with restraint and discretionIn contrast, Malamud provides a melody in a different keyIn that he tries to resolve the contradictions of lifeusing a dralectic which lends a positive approach towards life.In his first two novels,byNatural and The Assistant he hascaptured the sad dilemma of the Jew and White alike (withoutlapsing lnto the bltter hatred and vlolence of Richard Wright).Bernard Malamud shares Bellow's affirmative vislon, Roth'spsychological and moral concerns, and Salinger's quest formeaningful human relationship. Unlike Bellow, Malamud agreesthat Jewlshness has been a source of his moral and imaginativesustenance. He Proclaims:I am an American, I'm a Jew, and I write for allmen, .. I write about Jews, when I write about Jews,because they set my imagination going. I Knowsomething about their history, the quality of theirexperience and belief, and of their literaturethough not as much as I would like. Like manywriters I'm influenced especially by the Bible,both Testaments. I respond in particular to the EastEuropean immigrants of my father's and mother'sgeneration. (Stern 1975,56)

"Jewishness", according to Alter, is short-hand for a set ofmoral abstractions; Jewishness is equated with an ethic of hardwork, integrity, acceptance of responsibility, forbearance indistress, and so forth. Ironically, these very qualities havealso come to be known as American qualities, and this isperhaps one reason why the contemporary Jew can speak so wellfor Americans in general. In a world of shifting values, whennovelists cannot rely upon a comfortable structure ofunquestioned religious, ethical, philosophical or evenpolitical varieties to shape thelr work, but only a vast seriesof questlons without answers perhaps the Jews can offer "afruitful image of the moral anxiety haunting members of theirgeneration" (Stevenson 1963,309) or as Malin and Stark say intheir introduction to a collection of Jewish writing: "It isnot so much that the Jew has caught up wlth America, Americahas at last caught up with the Jew. His search for identity 1slts search. Its quest for spiritual meanlng 1s hls quest".(1973,2)In Saul Bellow compassion becomes a subtle form ofexpression of his affirmative vision with ~ts distrust of thecult of the ego. The moral problem of the writer, according toBellow, is to find ways to break the isolation of the self. Heasserts further that if the wrlter canconvlnce his readers"that the existence of others is a reality, he can then proceed

to higher moral questions, questions of justice, questions ofduty of honour". (1978,421 A struggle to overcome egotism withuniversal love characterises the ordeal of all Bellow'sprotaganists. Joseph in The Danalinq llEn fails in his attemptto find answer to the vital question of "How should a good manlive: what ought he to do?". (Bellow 1944,39)Malamud also starts with a victim hero in his firstnovel, The Natural, and comes to wrlte about a survivor hero inhis fourth novel, Fixer. Between these two novels,Malamud's vision of life undergoes a subtle and progressivechange. The emergent view of the human life is neither pitchblack nor dazzling bright; it is "predominantly moral". (Rajan1977,3) In Bellow's novels, the anarchic social conditions takeexpression through certaln individuals who push theprotagonists into a "psychic dilemma". In Malamud's novels, thesoclal evlls explolt the personal weaknesses of theprotagonists, creating a "moral predicament" for them. Bellow'sprotagonists struggle with social compulsions to protectthemselve from spiritual debasement. Malamud's protagonistsfight against thelr own moral perversions to save themselvesfrom human degradation. Therefore, Bellow's protagonistsundergo a psychological transformation whlle struggling againsttheir circumstances.And, Malamud's protagonists witness a moral growth while

attling against the flaws in their own character. ThoughMalamud's protagonists are the products of a mass society,susceptible to human weakness like sex, fame and fortune, andvictimlsed by demeaning living conditions and unfavourablepolitical forces, they do not suffer from the sense of doom ordegradation. Malamud refuses to accept the assumption thathumanity and selfhood have altogether vanished fromcontemporary society. As a consequence, all the chiefcharacters in his novels, except Roy Hobbs in Naturalassume a flrm moral stance agalnst the adverse social andpolitlcal forces which tend to thwart all their endeavours fora meaningful survival in the present day world. Morever,Malamud thinks that art "tends toward morality". It valuesllfe. Even when it doesn't, it tends to.Malamud's heroes do not lsolate themselves from theworld. Malamud believes that man can reallze his existence onlythrough hls acceptance of the society around hlm. For thatreason, Malamud's prtagonists are always bent on finding a newidentity and with it a new rapport with society. They areactive individuals who often out-smart their predictable fatesthrough a stubbornness which is beyond the reach of worldlywisdom. A Malamud character is someone who fears his fate, iscaught up in it, yet manages to outrun it. This is because inMalamud's opinion man has an innate strength which always

prompts him to fight for the preservation of his life and moralessence.This "hidden strength" prompts Malamud's protagonists tosuffer and struggle against the demeaning conditions of societyand enables them to pass beyond the dehumanizing odds of life.To Malamud, the living of life including its struggling andsuffering is not simply the fate of man but the privilege ofman. Malamud's characters do not suffer passively; nor do theytake recourse to desperate measures to escape suffering. Theysuffer sllently and peacefully, knowing that sufferingilluminates the truths of llfe. Roy Hobbs, in Malamud's TheNatural, does not realize this fact and therefore ends in€allure.As is apparent from the above discussion, Malamud'sprotagonists "struggle" to save their life and morality; they"suffer" to secure a human status at par with others and theylaugh to make their going easy through the intricacies of humanexistence. These attributes in Malamud's characters carry thembeyond their racial boundaries, into the larger, more secular,domain of humanity. Actually, Malamud's view of life iscompletely secular and, therefore, one finds it ratherdifficult to distinguish clearly between a Jew and a Gentile inhis fiction. For instance, Frank Alpine, a Gentile inAssistant, discovers at the end of his struggle for moral

etterment that there is a Jew in him. And, Morris Bober, a Jewin the same novel, suffers for all the Jews and Gentiles alike.similarly, Yokcv Bok, a Jew in Ths F ' , continues to fightagainst the v.~ctimization of the innocent Jews until hetrarscends the, t,arriert8 of his racial hisrory and emerges thechan~plon of all the inrrocent victlms in the world. Also, in the~0n~lJOi:l~ I l:le:i a1 "Angel I.evi ne" Manischevitz tells Fanny :"A v0ncer:ul thlng f'anny. .. beliebre me, there are Jews everywhere". In his ncvelo Malamud thus rxentes a "secular humanism"based on those human values that are common to all humanbeinqs, -rrespeati\'e of their reliqion and nationality. In thisway, Malamad brings the Jews and Gentiles so close to eachothe? 'ihac the one appears to be the alter ego of the other.And, at the end, they always realize that their commitment tohuman rrlatiuns'.ljp is more important than their religiousprejud1,:es or racial co~rflicts.Granting that Malamud is a writer with a powerful moralglslsn t.tat he la of Jevrsh background arld frequently writesabout Jewlstr characters one might conclude that he is arellgio~~s writer-one primarily concerned with a Jewishframework of 1.ife. Sucti a conciusior. would be fallacious.Malarrdd is 3 sec111ar Jew whose Jewi!;hness 1s an ethnic identityand moral perspective far more than it is areligiouspersuasion. Utrai. ~ril'u~e 111s writlng are the aspirations,

$;t:u'q~lles, lat. icrl. Yt!t, tley posse,nt; institlct~ve diql:ity andinb~cd hiinanitar~anism. The) errlress themselves in aYidd:a,IilLedi:ncll~st. that may lack el.,:lancr but somehow conveysa strong senur! of identity. In aFfect, tnen, Malamud'scharact#?re LEflO:::oppressed people who somehow manaqedthe experience cf last Eur,:rpean Jews as anlo survive centuries ofhumiliation and peral?cut.ion wrt.'~crut losing their liumanity.Malamlld uses Jewi~t1os!:i. 3,s an atb,ica:. symbol. In his worksthe Je,d becomes daietaphor for the goodman striving towlthst.and the deh~i-lanl.! ,!19 prei;!:.ureu (1: 1.k.e modern world. Hischaracters hold their ethical st.an8:r:s out of a sense ofhumanit,,, and this hilnt.,nity is only i:td..i~ctly liriied to theirrel1g10u.s herlta:ls,.Desplte tl'a Q1verslt.y of technlques, subjects andsettinq,; in his f>c:ion, Malamud creates a unlfled moral vlsionI:,iiati:l upon the valuer, of humdr~is~ which !lavebeen central tokrtis: ern clvllisation since the ar~cicnt Greeks. As a writer,he st.al.l..;by assuming certain shared valiles In the primacy ofh~rnu-I asplrartlon, the gor$er of ?eve, the transcendentpot~nt.lal of mean~ngful sufflil-iny dnd self aazrlfice and the

eauty of the human spirit.This humanistic vision wasespecially influenced by the Judeo-Christian tradition and theold Testament, pacrticularly the Book of Job - the result of~alamud-s eariy family lice amonq Jewish immigrants.711 li-3 ..~I~I~x~LI~::~Lo~ io sl:arlet w, nawthorne saysthat tt.e problent confronting the American author is to find " aneutral terrircry, romewhere hetween the real world and thefairyland, where. tlle Actual anm3 imaginary ma,, meet, and eachimbue itself with rhe nature of the other".Hawthorne ::ctrrceiv&d crfIn other words,the field of actlcln as a state of mindrat:lrr t.Pa.1 .I !il;lr:

Bharat: Pukherjee is also ~iot far behind in stressing themoral cn ?ha way to ~ialicjhtinq the readers while teaching themiessons in faith and human behaviour.characters in the latest American social llfe,the new (in~migr2.nt) Americans wtu ,areIn writing about theshe focuses onnot willing to wait fora generation or two to establish tnemselves - they are workingfor themselves and t.heir children, while they are not preparedto sacrifice t.heir lives for tha future's sake.now lived in America for more than twenty ilve years.Indians haveTodayone sees a whole range of cha?.lenqes affecting the Americanborn crill3ren :>f 'desia' as t i ~ y moveirom one stage toanother. :a::l? fdrrily goes through lts own search of theoptic.31 qrc,tl,'!d whrlre the unit can flnction wlthin its internaland external etivlronment. Americ:asociety cspic-.rl;yis a great leveller offor those of Tndian orgin who live there.In Inljia thsy rarew up in a structured erlvlronment but inAmerica they have no existing hiearchy to fellow.They justcreate their

very often these Indians in America are caught between 'IndianValues' and 'American Values' . In trying to evaluate Humanvaluesf the lndian in America is confronted with those Indianvaloes ir. In3ia as different from the Trdian values in Americawhere each ~ndividual/family is in a state of flux. Indianparents,like other new immigrante, are quite afraid of the'immoral' American environment. Not having grown up in Americathey don't know the system . They learn as their child grows.Thelr vlew of America is as seen through the television tube,drugs, alchotrol,snoklng,teenage pregnancy,dating, premaritalsex, marriaqe,divorce, old-age retirement homes and the like.By keeping away from tile mainstream society without socialisingfor some rsassrl or the other and consequently havlng limitedinteractlon vlth them, the phohia of the 'American values'becores even more ~prn~ounced.Decls-ons are not made by the famlly but by theindividual himself. Parents are not used to dealing with thefreedom America cl:ers and, by and large, don't know how tomake indivi3..1al dt!l:,~siorls. In P.merina, you don't have to followlust a few accrtited professions soc~ety encourages you to beyoursel!-to ! ilicl r,l~at you like and to excel in that. You canbe a disic jockey, a zoo keeper,slnger, even a doctor-anythingyou wznt. to be. Thehrt! are no taboos in choosing a profession.The lor~qer ore :ives there, the more 11: a'zcepts and imbibes

the expression of freedon which makes up the fabric of thesociety.The Indian society did not allow for a naturalinteraction between the two sexes. Until 60-70 years ago, itwas the norm to not even see the spouse prior to marriage. InIndia, Indians are not conditioned to evaluate what they wantin marriage but to accept what the 'elders' decide because theyknow life nettor.111dians are a product of a society whichcalls for harmony of the entire community, not necessarily atthe individual level. They are taught to adjust and adapt andaccept what llfe brlngs to them because that is their 'Karma' .This indeed is a noble thought and helps in sustaining acollective community but at the expense of the individual. Itis here that the dliference between Indian and the Americanvalues begin.Indlans view fenalesfrcilr many different angles-as a"devl", mother, seductrese, whlla essentially from apatriarchlcal stance. It is the natural tendency of an Indianto prstect fen.!.les .rnd shield them from the "junyles" Outthere. However, in this process, the females are made weak andlooked upon as ~ncapable of maklng their decisions.In themodern world, the role of a woman is still being defined.Whllr the debate 1s on it is seen that they play not lust onerole bur a diverse portfolio.The world will have to allowthen the- lireedorr. to choose their own destiny in all aspects

of their life.In ~merica, Indian women have to face the hurdle ofracls. difIerences In language, accent, mannerisms etc.they deal with the outside soclety.asIt 1s only when theyovercome their fears, become comfortable with thenewenvironment, realize how much of an asset being an Indian inAmerica is and look beyond the difference, can they accept theunlqueness of the soclety they are placed in.'The I>cSic rer;pcnsiblity of an artist is definition, thecreation of that unique inevitability which is the work and towhich there 1s no alternative . ShelHe may write in the endfor an audience but shejhe cannot wrlte as she/he does merelybecause an audience exlsts, wlth an earlier structure ofresponses and expectatlons, The contract between the writer andhls work is an individual, not a social contract.Socialcontract cannot be a requirement in the beginning, though somesocial significance may be achieved in the end. The beginningmust be where it has always remalned-in the creativeconscience of the artists and in the struggle for deflnltionwhlcl? in ,3aoriditlan 01 that conscience. In the dialoguebetween East and West the Indian (Asian)- American can speaktor neither. participant. The presence of two cultures in one'smind forms a wide and saner basis on which to originate thequest for identity.Perhaps one can go further and suggest

that a man with mixed allegiances is contemporary Everyman.The Inwardness of Indianness cannot be captured by alanguage essentially foreign. The subtlest and the most vitalmeasures are accessible only to a living speech with its rootsin the soil and in the organic past :If that language happens to be English the creativechoice must be respected and one should judge byresults rather than by dismal prophecies of what theresult must fall to be ..... Let me add that languageIS both a frrend and an enemy, as the soil is andthe elments are. The resistance one encounters init may be a promise of creative strength ; it doesnot necessarily mean that one should turn to a moreviable alternative. (Poirier 1966,9)Immigrants have fascinating tales to relate . As an immigrantwrlter Bharatl Mukherlee naturally assumes the role of aspokesperson for her fellow sufferers.Murlel Wasi opines;"Bharati Mukherjes is intelliqent, strrkingly energetic, hasdiscovered a style of wrltlng native to America that has pace,vigor and urgency.Perhaps most lmportant of all, she knowswhat she wants to say wlthin that idicm." (Wasl, 1990,37).Unllke other Indjan-born writers like R.K.Narayan or AnitaDesal, Mukherjee does not write in Indlan Engllsh about Indiansllving in India.Her view of the world and experiences areunlike 1:hen. Salman Rushdle dnd V.S. Naipaul write from thevantage point of an Indian expatriate llvrng in perpetual exile

without the chance of ever having a home.In Mukherjee's books,everyone lives in a new world, (eventhose who never left home). As tradition breaks down, thecharacters must try to make lives out of the pieces. Newcompositions, suspicious but brave, they run off into the"alien American night", expecting shame, disaster, and gloriousriches. They get them, too, though never quite the way theyimagined. Immigration for Mukherjee needn't mean assimilation."The melting pot, yes, but it's the lumps that interest her.Assimilation implies forgetting, blotting out the past, but thepast is what the present is made of. If she weren't still anIndian Mukherjee wouldn't be the wonderful American writer she1s". (Shulman 1988,19)When Bharatl Mukherlee dedicated her last collection ofstories about immigrants, Darkness, to Bernard Malamud, she wasboth saluting an old friend and aligning hereself down in atraditlon. In modern Amerlcan flction, the immigrant hasclassically been Jewish; writers from Abraham Cahan throughHenry Roth to Malamud himself, have re-worked the facts oftheir history into a rich body of llterary mythology. InDarkness, Mukherjee successfully planted her own experience asan Indian on to that of the American Jews. Now, in ThpMiddleman, she hijacks the whole traditlon of Jewish-Americanwriting and flies off to a destination undreamt of by its

original practitioners.Her characters have a gre.bt deal in common with theirJewish counterparts; they're haroes/heroines to themselves, asize larger than Ilfe, yet they ale tired, huddled or evenpoor: they own motels, work scams, teach in coilege and breezethrouqh on priv+f:f funds. Theil- diaspora 1s a haphazard,npepper-pot dispersal". (Raban 1588,221. They have beenshaken out, singly, over a huge territory, from Toronto in thenorth down to a :steaming Central Amerlcan republic. They arein Ann Arbcr, ICedar Falls. Rock springs, Flushrng, Manhattan,suburban New .le:.sey, Atalanta srtd Florida. With no LowerEastside to keep the manners and morals of the old world alive,they are on thelr own and on the move.The stories in The Mlddleman are far ahead of those inDarkness. ;Tine as that collectlor. war., not only has Mukherjeevastly en!.arged her qeographical and soclal range (the~mmiqrant.r ..n he: nimh hock come fresh to America from Vietnam,the Caribbean, the Levant, Afghanistan, the Phillippines,Italy, Srllanka, as v#?ll as frnnl Tr.dia), but she has greatlysharpened her style. Her wrlting here is quicker in tempo,more conficlsrlt and more sly than it use? to be. There's noslack in it, as there was In some of t.he OaL&XSg storles.~ost of Lhe stories are monologues, spoken bycompulsively fluent t3lkers whose lives are too urgent and

mobile for them to indulge in the luxury of the retrospectivepast tense.They hit the page In full flight, and they movethrough the stories as they move through the world, at speed,with the reader straining to keep up with them. Throughout thebook, "the idiom of America in the 1980's is handled by MS.~ukherjee with much the same rapturous affection and acutenessof ear that Nabokov, another immigrant, brought to the idiom ofAmerica In the 1950's in w". (Raban 1988, 22) On onelevel, 23s Middleman is a consummated romance with the Americanlanguage.America is a place " where the laws of physics aresuspended, where people can defy gravlty, where magic is anunremarkable part of everyday life. Ms. Mukherlee's charactersare leviators who float clean over their tawdry circumstances".(Raban 1988, 22). The journey to America has turned theimmigrants lnto chronic travellers who llve, as travellers do ,from minute to minute, dangerously free of both past andfuture. Mukherjeemay be writing from first-hand experienceof what she calls " the process of immigration" yet she writesas naturally as on.? horn not lust to the language, but to theculture . Every story ends on a new point of departure.People are last seen walking out through an open door. ..planning an escape , or suspended on the optimistic brink of ablissful sexual transport. For these birds of passage, America

is a receding infinity of fresh beginning. They keep going onluck and grace.The great lesson that the immigrant has toteach the born and raised citizens is that being on the run isa native American condition.The Americans are constantlybeing awakened to their restlessness and fluidity by the newcomer.While Mukherjee's concerns are racial and social,Malamuds's concerns are in addltion to racial and social,moral.Malamud 1s certainly the moralist, but he is themorallst who 1s capable of stepping out of his Immediate roleas morallst by oblectifylng hisllfted out of t.he world of allegory.character into an experienceMalamud fluctuates between reallsm and allegory.Siege1 feels that,And in sofar as Malamud's characters exist in a realistic milieu, theyare as :real as anyone can be: but the reality of a PinyeSalzean, of a Manischevitz, of a Mitka, and aXessler (not all of Malamud's characters have assuch of the caricature in them) depends far more onthe act of creation which extends beyond the realityof 'realism' into the peculiarly distorted reality(in the artistic sense) of the artist. (1963,69).In Malanud's a,a.nple this 1s the art of caricature. Thepolnt that Malamud's intention 1s perhaps highly moralistic -every significant writing is so ,which is perhaps one approachto a,zsess his pldce ln contemporary American literature.

Certainly a writer who sees the death or six million Jewsas the tragedy of our century - and not alone as Jewr but ashuman beings - cannot fail to have his work touched by thissignal fact. But beyond Malamud's moral - as disticnt from amoralistic scrutiny lies his importance as an artist.Ultimately, Malamud's status as moralist is inextricably boundup with his funct~on as artist - the function which Mark main, Shaw , Dickens, and Henry James fulfilled so splendidly asboth. While each ~ >f these novelists 1s a Joseph, a "Master ofDreams" thr! term dreamer can be most appropriately applied toMalamud. Each of hls novels is the work of a dreamer who hastaken upon himself the taskof trylng to keep civilizationfrom destroying itself. Conscious of art as a mode ofcelebrating llfe, he finds lt a source of affimation, which inits turn, is the informlnq spirit of all his writing.hls flctian is psl.vaded over by the positlve,Thus,making hisnovels Imaginative creations of man acquiring authenticity andmeaning in the world characterised by spiritual sterility,alienation, absurdity, etc.In this ret;pect Malamud's dreams are of distinctlydrfferent stuff than those of S.:.llnqei. Nalamud successfullyendeavours toobligations in tills world.make man more conscious of his duties andExistence thus acquires new lightand new depth in Malamud's fictional world, through the

moralistic purpose. Concerned with the anxiety faced by man, hetries to dedicate his art to restoring man to his originalsense of affirmation. The old pervasive optimism is perceivedeven when apparently the sense of despair is overwhelming.~ike Bellow, Malamud is concerned with conscience thatemphasise his moral purpose. Deeply involved with thesituation of contemporary man, thelr works explore man'sposslbillties and evaluate moral responses to experience. 60thlocate the cause Of existential anguish in the cult of the egothat men practise. Thus, their novels work towards thedevelopmerit of the protagonist away from the self towardsbrotherhood and aonmunity. While the purpose that informs bothBellow's and Malamud's novels is simrlar Malamud's novels areidea-centred wt.ile aellow's are people-centred.The Mala~udlan protagonist arrives at a new perspectiveof life by learnlnq to corelate wlth others in a meaningful andcommitted relationship. By appropriating Malamud's ethic eachprotagonist enters into a new experience in which the othergains i~portance. a3rt?r the self. Thus, he faces existence betterequipped to meet. sut'fering, the torture of dehumanising forcesor any klnd of existential crisis. In other words, inMalamud's dreams, love js a determinative flctor in existence.~t offele sa:,ratic.,l to man by inveetlng the Individual lifewith meaning and definititon and through a Process of suffering

and reflection, he arrives at a realisation of the miracle thatis life.Thus in Malamud's novels, even when the sense ofdespair is apparently overwhelming, a strong underhand ofaffirmation is perceived, because of the moral purpose thatmotivates all his writing,.It is therefore, difficult tocomprehend the sensibility that considers Malamud's novelslife-denying.Self-denial and not denial of life is at thecore of his works, and this, he believes, opens man to a widerand more meaningful existence.An influence on Malamud'swriting comes from thephilosophy of existentialism, which originated in Europe andwhich emphasises the existence of a meaningless socialdisorder. Although existentialism poses :the ijed that man 1s alone in a godless world, thathas no lnherent msanllg, one effect of this tenethas been to put greater emphasis on man's individualpotential. Sufferir.g, aiguisti, and despair in hislor~eliness-an universal condition-man mavneverthlcss become what he wishes by the exercise offree will. (Hershin0w.a. 1$80,3)For the exis:entlalists rather a universal system of moralorder nor The influence of society and soclal custom canprovide meanlng for an ~ndividuel's life. It be~omes obligatoryfor eac? individual to find inean~ng for hlmsslf. This cannot beaccomp?ished througn r.asonalone-love, compassion, and moralcommitnant are i11sc) r~e~$i'ssary. M~~rdlit)', according to theexlstenLlal,sts, has vslid~ty only when it results from the

individual's active participation in the difficult process offorging personal meaning out of universal chaos. "As a writerinfluenced by existentialism, Malamud demonstrates an implicitrespect for self. Hls protagonists characteristically transcendthe disorder that surrounds them, finding meaning in the powerof love and moral commitment". (Hershin0w.b. 1980,13)Malamud frequently uses a very special sort of doubleedgedcomic irony. He uses the ironic perspective as a means ofconveying the uncertainty and the ambiguity of life. He alsocasts irony within an unmistakably humanistic framework,prolectlng a sharp contrast between situations that are brutal,uncivlllzed and dehumanlzlng and ldeals that are noble, sane,and humane. From writers in the Yiddish folk tradition ofEastern Europe Malamud adapted the most singular anddistinctive tough Jewish humour (sometimes called Jewishirony). Jewlsh humour does not emanate from the religion of theJews-the old Testament and the Talmud being humourlesswrltlngs. Jewish humour derlves from the social sltuation ofEast European Jews as a minorlty precariously surviving withinthe larger Christian culture. They were the chosen people ofGod but also the oppressed people of the Polish or ~ussianvillage. Humour c'ame to be used as a way of bridging the gapbetween their spiritual aspirations and their actual materialsituations.

As faith in Judaism weakened and scepticism increased,the ~0ntraSt between the hope and the reality became more andmore ironic. The unwanted nexus between circumstance and beliefqave birth to the folk figure of the schlemiel, the goodhearted but ineffectual, comic, bumbler who habitually stumblesinto misfortune. As an ironic technique, Jewish humour provideda sort of double-vision, capable of sustaining hope whilerecognising despair. As an artistlc brush stroke, it provides aconsistency of tcne and mood that Incorporates both the tragicand the comic. As a moral perspective, Jewish humour combinesthe values of humanism with the grltty reality of an everydaylife that seems existentially absurd. Malamud's use of Jewishhumour PIovlde:; thti* key to understanding hot11 his attitudetoward tiunian existence and hls technique as a writer.The most important of the Jewish writers Malamud is parexcellence the explorer of marqinallty. As one of the bestJewish-American wrlters, Malamud did his best to change 'madcrusaders1 hop~ng for a transcendent ideal-art and potency-torepiace the tarnished ones they embraced in their youth. Thereis surczly somethlnq what Mvlamud cal:Ls his "moral esthetic"that is typically Jcwlsh and worlcs agalnst. allenation and themod~rn~st negatlve apocalypse. The "n~oral-esthetic" of thepostmodern J ~ writer ~ 1s ~ the s intelligence, ~concreteness, androugtl texture of tlieir vxit.inq. As a rule, their tales are

strongly and carefully Plotted; they write of happenings ratherthan of coolly objectified states of mind. The plot, in thesense of a clean line of action brought into being by somamoral energy typically emphasized the virtuousity of thefinished art work. The point is that literature is stillcapable of true moral thrust. Jewish writers have no monopolyon these qualiti'zs, but the degree to which they are exhibiteddoes make them a manifestation of the Jewish spirit in aSecular age. The result was a break-through and Malamud was oneof those writers at the vanguard of it. And Malamud's centralthrust was to wri'eemotions-the moral obligation to "qlve".-about the simplest and the most basic ofThe Assistant becomes an excellent plece In the study ofaffirmation of the human spirlt revealing certain humanqualities like honour, integrity and fellow-feellng revealedthrough varlous c'ldt.acters. Malamud In tbls novel goes to theroots in the search for ~dentity and hls protagonists bydrawlng on thelr Jewish heritage develop humanistically basedethical standards and try to live In a determined manner thatlends self-definition to their existence.T ~ novels E of Malamud demonstrates the clash Of dreams, aconf lic:t between generations, between men and women,motherjfather and sonjdaughter, black and white. This clashbet,deen variousof people is shown without anger or

militancy. Malamud'sprotagonists arrive at a sense ofaffirmation at the end of the novels and grow into realmanhood. Their affirmation in the novels arise out of an act offaith, out of a real commitment towards life, which speaks ofhuman grandeur that makes life more than a mere process.The way a person handles heights and depths of thechallenges is the measure of histher manhood/womanhood. Theyardstick 1s the continuum of experiences and each line ofmeasurement marks a challenge that lifeputs to theindividual. Malanud's and Mukherjee's view of life to someextent opposes the Amerlcan society's materialistic equation ofmanhood/womanhood and money wlth success. Both Malamud andMukherjee express; their affirmation with a commitment to lifebased on noble >.deals. Bymoving Into the hostile Russiannelghbourhood Yakov Bok shows his act of faith and affirmationof indestruct1b;llty of the human spirit. The flnal moments inthe novel The Fixer are very touchingly shown and lt once againhighlights the theme of growth and maturity whlch in itself isaffirmation. Levin's simple act of affirmation reflects in A- New Liff: his hex.olsm and direct reflection of the AmericanDream. Levln's rffirrratloi~ at the end of the novel, showing himclose to nie ~.oots, m.3):es him rot only a true ~ewish hero butalso a universal one.~ h ~ ~ Malamud ~ has ~ expressed h universal

truths by incorporating black characters and drawing them withsuch fidelity that they become true to the social, cultural andpolitical environment in which they live and by being so, theybecome universal. By doing this he has escaped race and classdistinctions and demonstrated the ultimate universality of allhuman experiences whether black or white. Dubin's Lives placesMalamud as a committed writer and the commitment of which hespeaks is one to llfe rather than death, hope rather thandespair and to kuman potential ln the resiliency of humanspirit and represents the positive side of the chaotic times inwhich we llve. The problem was to find some way to show andencourage the white liberal to stop being liberal and become anAmerican radlcal. Levin is concerned with the questlon of whatit takes to change an educational middle class Jewish liberalInto a radlcal. By this process Malamud not only probed deeplyinto Levin's liberation but also Into Levin's world-the Middleclass Amerlca of the 1960's where intellectuals were becomingincreasingly indifferent and insensitive to what was happeningaround them.Kalamud's ~lokels deal with the protagonists growing intotheir manhood. His heroes rlght from Xhe Natural to Wrace and the unfinished Peoole emerge heroic and expresstheir affirmation through a commitment for a fuller life andarrive at a new anderstanding of the world In which they are

placed. Dubin in Dubin's Lives by slowly overcoming fear,anger, shame, arrives i~t his manhood by an act of affirmationby going to his roots. In the sameway inena ants, HarryLesser slowly stumbles his way into his true manhood andarrives at a new commitment towards life by the end of thenovel and expresses his affirmation by showing care for thewelfare of both blacks and whites. Lesser grows mature andcommitted, through a process of learnlng by shedding all hisprevious lllusi0nS and expresses Malamud's belief in humanpotential with a call for universal affirmation. He criticisesthe illusory world ot in1:ellectuals whose life is governed byindifference and non-commitment. These intellectuals fail todistingursh th~good from the bad.Malamud is a novelist, who belleves passionately in thepossibility of change but he lnslsts that the change has to befundamental. In Malamud's last completed novel God's W hepresents the traglc intensity of allenation In the context oftotal annihilation of life. HIS was not an act of defiance butof wilful preservation. In an effort to protect civilizationfrom self-destructlon and from the horrible consequences ofnuclear war Malamud pins hls hope on compasslon as a means oftransformatlon and redemption. His God has not falled for himas had for ~ichard Wright. Malamud had in him theremarkable iron wlil responsibll~! forbringing art in

evolutionising changes in society.Bharati Mukherjee also believes in expressing heraffirmation through art. She has no faith in art that isconcerned with decay, destruction and death. Mukherjee is ofthe view that the artists should provide the right direction bywriting stories expressing affirmation through humanresilience. The supreme test of technical skill and creativeimagination requires the rendering of the infinite varieties ofthe human Spirit. Thus Jasmine and Middleman constitute a studyin the affirmation at different levels that shows Mukherjee'svision of llfe. Between the two worlds of her heroines-theworld of vlctimisation and the world of survival- (one in theirnative land and the other ln America) Mukherjee's vision ofllfe undergoes a fundamental and progressive change. Theemergent vlew of the human life 1s neither dark nor glitteringbright: ~t cr-ystalises as belng "predominantly moral" like thatof Malamud. The unavoidable soclal evils exploit the personalweaknesses of the protagonists, thereby driving them to acorner and creatlng a "moral predicament" for them.Mukher~ee's protagonists put up agalnst social compulsions inorder t.o fence t.hemstzlves agalnst spiritual debasement. Herherolnps struggle against their own moral perversions andprevent :l-emsel\,es from going down the drain of humandegradation. As a result they undergo a psychological

transformation while trying to get the better of theirenvironment. This change in them begets a moral growth whilecontending against the flarrs in their own characters.As Mukherjee herself has opined: "I write about states offeelings or moral dilemmas that strike a very clear chord inme". A11 the chief characters in her novels and short storiesassume a firm moral stance against unfavourable and sometimeshostile social, cultural, religious, ethical and politicalforces which come in the way of their serious attempts for ameaningful survival in the present rnaterilalstic world.Mukherjee's protagonists do not keep themselves aloof from theworld. I.lke Malamud, Mukherjee also believes that manlwoman canrealise the ineaning of hlsjher existence only throughacceptance of the soclety sround himlher. Hence, hercharacter:;, are deterrninecl to dlsco'rer their new identity andthereafter establish a new relationship with the new society.Very often they are smart individuals who outwit and overtaketheir fore-doomed fates through a burst of stubbornnessunccmn~on 11) most Immryrants. Pertlcularly, the Indianprotagonists like Tara, Dlmple, Jasmine, Panlla, 3aya etC., fearthelr fate, are caught-up in it, yet manage to out-smart it.This is a reriult of Mukherlee sharing Malamud's thinking thatmanjwoman has an lnnate strength which 1s always pushinghimjher forward to fight for the preservation of histher life

and to uphold the moral essence.This "hidden strength" urges Mukherjee's protagonists tosuffer and struggle against a society whose conditions aredemeaning and de-humanizing. Mukherjee's characters do notsuffer passively. They are not prepared to accept their fatessilently. Perhaps, back in India (in a male-dominated society)they had no other alternative, but being In America they wereon the threshold of innumerable alternatives and possibilities.They protest anc rebel-covertly, overtly. While Malamud'sprotag0niStS "suffer" and "struggle" to save thelr life andmorallty in order to secure a human status at par with others,Mukherjee's protagonists "struggle" and "protest" to carve outa human identity equal to others. Again, like Malamud,Mukherlee 1s not prepared to concede that humanity and selfhoodhave completely v~rliiihsd from contemporary ssclety. Therefore,although bet pr8:)taqonlsts are the products of a mass , modernsoclety, whereln they are susceptible or vulnerable to humankeaknesses llke sex, fame and fortune and glven a raw deal byunsympathetic social, cultural or political forces, yet they donot buckle under the sense of doon or degradation.Mukherlee is qulte conscious and allve to the baslcpremise sf ;~:e.the pz ivilege c: mdnjuonidn and the right tollve (wherever you are). These attitutes in Mukherjee'scharacters carry them beyond geographlca: and racial boundaries

into the longer, broader and more secular territory of mankind.JyotiIJa5mine of asmine, Dimple of u, Tara of Ticrer'spauahteb and Panna Bhat and Maya sanyal in theMiddlemuand Leela Lahjri and Nafeesa in Darkness and others discover atthe end of their struggle for moralhumanism" basedbetterment, a "secularon those human values that are common to allhuman beings, irrespective of their religions and nationality.They do not ask for more, but nothlnq less elther-than beingconsidered a normal human belng llke others rn America. Theyalways realize that their commitment to human relationship ismore lmportant than their religious prejudices or racialconflicts. Although, not a writer with a powerful moral visionllke >falamud.-Mukherjee too has a moral vislon that is clear andbrcild-haserl. !3bi! makes a stronq plea for the aspirations,etruqqles dncl in~l~gn~ties of her (and other mlnor) ethnic andcultur~~l sub..,3rcup immiqrants from 1n:lia and the Third Worldfrom a moral perspective rather than a religious persuasion. Inspite cf differ

including J%mh, reveals herself as a writer of penetratingmoral vision of universal significance who goes into the longerissues like the search for the roots, exploitation ofman/'doean, theexploitation of waman by man and the evlls ofcolonialism. Her stories provide an occasion for humanity tocome face to face with aspects of their own world and theirhistory which have a real hold on them.Jasmlne arrives at her affirmation revealing her lnternalwill, brinylnq about revolutlonary changes in the soclety. Thedecision to lnvolve herself in American affairs and her senseof afflrmatlorl gces beyond mere questions of colour orupbrlnglng or nationality. She becomes a real revolutionaryboth physically and Lntellectually and 1s even prepared toforgo her bodyand comfortable llvlng. By her involvementJasmine reveals the true qualltlrs of domanhsod and defines itIn approprlats terms. In arrlvlng at a flnal decislon she goesto the roots of her Indlan idenrlty and to her Americanexperience. By ber actlon, she shows that woman's life isinfluenced by mo~nentous happenings and that her hablt, career,marriage, a com.isrtable llving, a is,oaan has to sacrifice whenlt comes to a questlon of gett~r~g freedom. By her act ofaff lrr,atlon at the end of the nsgel, Jasmlne reveals anldeniity not only as her Faklstan-oriented father's Indiandaughtel but also as e real American daughter to meet the

challenges of time.Jasmine's declsion to migrate, involve and blend with~merica, lf viewed In a wider context, becomes a real victory,one of the most profound and heroic victories of modernliterature. Mukherjee through the character of Jasmine was nottellrng the coloured immigrants to kill the whrtes. She makesthe readers realise that one cannot escape history because, weIn a certaln sense are hlstory. Mukherjee makes every one ofher immigrants see thelr own world wlth much clarlty and truthand flnd out for themselves how their llves are intenselyIntertwined In America. Jasmine and Middlenao have helpedMukherjee to establlsh her name as an immigrant American writerwith a flerce commitment for Immigrant liberation and heroneness with the asplratlon of the Third World. Her vision ofllberatlon embraces all the oppressed, regardless of race,colour or ethniclty. Her characters tell the world that colouralone could not deflne human quallti.The earlier novels of Mukherjee, The Tioer's Dauahter andand the collef:.tlon of short storles, Darkness and thelater novel, Jasm~ne and the short story collectlon ofMiddleman and Other Storles reflect the transformation inMukherlee from beinq an expatriate to an immigrant. Darknessreveals the palnful dilemma of her mind struggling between oldconcepts of tradit.lon and the new idea of liberalism and

modernism. Jasmine's dilemma reveals Mukherjee's own dilemmaand it is revealed in her writingsfinterview given in June1990: "MY first novelTJE Tiaer's Dauahte~ has a rather British feel toit. I used the omniscient point of view and plentyOf irony.. . By the time I wrote parknee9 I hadadopted American English as my language... when youare from the Third World, when vou have dark skinand reliqious beliefs that do ndt conform to thoseof ~udaisrn or Christianity malnstream Americaresponds to you In ways you can't forsee. My fictionhas to consider race, politics, religion, as wellas certain nastinesses that other generations ofwhite immigrant American writers may not have had totake into account. (Carb 1990,35)Mukherlee is confident that the Third World material willnever be harshly received. "Your wlt and poise and delicatebeauty wlll always be warmly applauded". (Mukherlee 1988,3)Mukherjee's novels ~sTiler's Dauahtel, Wife and Jasmlne andthe ccllectlcns 0.' short stories In Darkness aridMiddlemanmake a number of slgniflcant affirmatlons. Despite being aHindu hy blrth, her material is not restricted to the themesand prototype characteristics of her rellglon and upbringing.It afflrrns that (Ilk. Malamud) she has In her the capacity tosurprise the reader;. Thls cert.alnly is an ab1l:tyqulte beyondthe scope of a mil.mzity wrlter. It also affirms that Mukherjeecontinued to be not only lnvolved but committed and devoted tothe suL-leer she "bs1ieves"-the wrlter must treat as her

mlssion-the greatness and richness of the human life and itsdevelopment.Mukherjee expresses her affirmation with a commitment tolife based on noble ideals. By movinglnto a hostileneighbourhood, Mukherjee's characters show their act of faithand affirmation of indestructabrllty of the human spirit. Thetheme of change, growth and maturity(as reflected inMukherjee's writing/works) is Itself an act of afflrmation.Mukherjee expresses universal truths by incorporating dark andcoloured characters drawing them with such fidelity that theybecome true to the social, cultural, polltical environment inwhlch they live and by belng so, they become universal. Bydolng thls, she has escaped race and clan dlstlnctlons anddemonstrated the ultlmate universality of all human experienceswhether coloured or whlte. Mukherjee's act of affirmationreflects her her3jnes (and that of her character)- a directreflection cf the Amerlcan Dream. Finally (as in the case ofher literary guru Malamud) it affirms thatwhether hertreatment be comic or serlous, her capablllties as an artisthave matured tremendously.Twentyfive years ago when American-Jewish writing was in~ t s t~~.y..d~ly, nut:) cl Liie drscussiori of ~ t prominence sturned upon the issues ol marginallty. Because marginality was anelastic concept In tne 1950's arid 60's, and because their

generational experience was fairly similar and clannish, manywrlters including Bernard Malamud could be brought under thecanopy of American-Jewish writlng and used to exemplify itsfresh, independent and heightened perspectives. The accounts ofthe bitter strife between immigrant fathers and accultured sonsthat marked the literature of the 1940's gave way to a morepositive evaluation of a Jewish heritage. The work of these newwriters relnforced the vlew that Amerlcan-Jewish writing wasshaped by traditions of moral centre, erudltlon, dialecticalthinking and vast reserves of self Irony. "There was noquestion that a breakthrough of sensibility was occurlnq, thatit was changing the cultural climate, that it was enablingJewlsh wrlters to feel they had a place as well as positions,and that their Jewlsh upbringing was no longer to bediscounted". (Solotaroff 1988,l) On the other hand the sense ofarrival, achievement and opportunity that the break-throughsponsored tended to exaggerate the significance of theaarginallty:After all, a margln that was broad enough to harbourRobert Warshow (an elegant fllm crltic) and MannyFarber (an intensely demotlc one) Stanley Kunitz andAllen Gihsberg, Bernard Malamud and Norman Mailer,Irving Krlstol and Paul Goodman was bound to bealmost as broad as the mainstream it was supposedlyset off from. (Solotaroff 1988,l)I: was nct untll the mid 1960's that such concerns as the

Holocaust and tho security of Israel began to compete withanti-Communism as the issue of the hour. The margin that~merican-Jewish writers actually occupied was so narrow that itis better thought of as an edge. However diverse they may havebeen in their points of view, they shared a common situation:they stood at an extraordinary polnt in Jewish history the endof the Diaspora mentality that was taking place in America.Instead of the burdens of the chosen people there were now theexhilarations of a choosing one. The main issue was alreadybecoming clear. It was pressing for expression: The American-Jewlsh writer recognized that he was less marginally Americanthan marglnally Jewish.The fiction of this era was ~haracterlstically a fictionof cons

their adult lives as hmerican novelists who happened to beJewish.Women have become pastmasters in story telling, thelullaby, songs of love, grief, gossip around the rural well orurban tap, the long chat on the telephone-all approximations ofthe narratlve lmpulse and its normative and sociologicalfunction. confident in culture rootedness, shorn of superficialgender ~~nfli~t, women must learn to storm the heart taken onafter Tolstoy, Dostoyesky and Scheherzade. And BharatiMukheriee has done precisely just that - stormlng the heart ofthe readers !particularly Amerlcans), confidently, minus thegender factor. Wlth wlt and compassion, she has projected heralter-ego In the many characters of her works. She has theabllity to be two things at the same tlme: to be the"dispossessed as well as the drspossessor". With " history-mandated tralnlng", she views the fluld set of identitiesdenled to most of her mainstream American counterparts. Thistraining rn the ethnic and gender fractured world ofcontemporary Amerlcan fiction allows her to "enter" all sortsof llves wlthou:much dlfflculty. And this was what mademainstream R,erlca turn towards Mukher]eels wrltlngs. Americafourld the nat.~vc, flagour of her lmmlgrant characters mix andbl~rld wlth ~ t s OWL c~~lture and llfe. Story after story, theyrellshrd-because lt suited their fancy, taste, and pace. No

wonder her stories and novels were received and accepted bymainstream America. The 1988 NBCC Award has catapulted her to aunique posltion as an immrgrant writer.Singh,Whether it is Mulk Raj Anand, R K Narayan, XhushwantAnita Desai, Vikram Seth or Bapsi Sidhwa, Mukherjeenever belonged to the tradition of journalist turned fictionwriter or exotlc ethnic writers. As Mukherjee herselfconfesses:I'm vrltlng about the here and now of America ...The Tndlan point of vlew 1s no longer appropriatefor pa nor the contemporary White American viewsaint. So T'm making my own new Americanlanquage". . Each character In the stories ofDarkness or Middleman.. 1s intended to show aunisue desree of confllct or coalescence... It hasan iptimi;tic vlslon. Many of the characters aresayinq that brashness the ability to take a risk,fors.lklng a predictable llfe and throwing oneself~nto a ne,d one, where one is likely to be despisedby others requires guts. It does get some of thecharacters Into trouble, but lts exhllaratlng forothers and the author as well (Krishnakumar 1992,6).Desplte the emiqratlon of thousands of Indians to Americaand despite India's fascination with Amerlca, the people ineach country generally have bizarre, inaccurate views of theother. Just as 311 Indians do not charm snakes, all Amerrcansdo not drive sports cars. Just as all Indlan men do not abusetheir wlves, al.>,ri~i,rican tes,naqers do not freely engage insex. Just as Swam1 Chlnmdyanand 1s not a typlcal Indlan, so is

George Bush not a typical American. Yet these distorted viewspersist in the American and Indian minds. If one 1s going tolive In Aaerlca, hershe need to contribute to its soclety, notonly to its economy. Arguing from a strong Americanperspectlve-this 1s a meltlng pot, so share your heritage. ManyIndlans perceive this mentality of mixing wlth others as athreat to their traditional way of life from the arranging ofmarriages to the sheltering of daughters. Indlans do notgenerally llke t.o lustify thelr culture and practices toAmerlcans. Thls practice may change with future generations,but today's settlers lust want to be accepted and left alonewithout havlng to explaln their ways to others.So when Indians In Amerlca fence themselves off, theyalso cut off the American's prlmary and preferred source oflnformatlon about a vastly different country and culture.Whether lt 1s America's dellberate iqnorance about India orIndia's myoplc vlew of the Unlted States, Amerlcans evinceinterest ~n "human interest" storles-about how people live,work, play and dle. Mukherjee's "human interest'' storles haveto a great extent brldged the gulf and they brlng Indians closeto Amerlcans.The present volumes of writlngs in American Literaturereflect the movement of b0t.h the marglnal Jew and the marginalIndlan into mainstream American writing. Bernard Malamud and

Bharati Mukherjee may represent the Pan-European, the Pan-Asianor Pan-American. The moral-centred vision of manlwoman inMalamud and Mukherlee lies In glving an ethical colouring tothe portrayal of the human psyche caught in the vortex oftransgressions, suffering and compassion. This would confirmour hypothesis that the dialectic of transgression andresolution is central to the vision of man/woman in the twonovelists, who have amply qualified themselves to move frommarginality to malnstream as exponents of the immigrantsensibility in modern American flction. The Researcher's itchmay pose the question: "Do Malamud and Mukherjee remainrevolutionaries 7"--Intellectually--certainly, without a doubt.They may be vlctims or rebels, but their goal is the same."The rebel denres wlthout saying 'No' to life, the victimsuccumbs without saylng 'Yes' to oppression. Both acts are, ina sense, ldentlcal, they affirm the human against the nonhuman". (Hassan 1961,331

Select Bibliography

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