T 1290.pdf - Pondicherry University DSpace Portal

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