T 1290.pdf - Pondicherry University DSpace Portal

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