T 1290.pdf - Pondicherry University DSpace Portal

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