T 1290.pdf - Pondicherry University DSpace Portal

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