T 1290.pdf - Pondicherry University DSpace Portal

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