The Fixer by Bernard Malamud

1334 Words3 Pages

An Intriguing Journey of Delusion to Reality in Malamud’s The Fixer

Twenty-first century is meant for revolutions. Revolution in wider spectrum, in every field of Science, Economics, Technology, Management, Engineering, Archeology and more specifically and poignantly in Literature. Twenty-first century is an age of revolution and counter revolution. It revolves with a notion that ideas govern the world. Man’s intelligence plays a vital role in every field but at the same time it drags the whole universe into a terrific situation. It also created a needless hate, callous cruelty and senseless violence and are vulnerably practiced by human being to impose the same on one another.
This article exposes the realization of mankind through the sanctification of sufferings. In today’s world everyman’s life is embedded with sufferings. The World in which we are living is crammed with angsts and existential trauma. It offers a paralysed hope for human beings, however man has to wrestle with his sufferings to attain a miniature amount of happiness and sufferings which mold us to be good human beings. The role of conversion would not have taken place without the act of suffering. This vital concept is powerfully handled by the Jewish-American writer, Bernard Malamud in his novel, The Fixer. The Fixer is a classic example for the existential ideology that catharsis of human being happens only through suffering. He proposed “Every man is a Jew” (94). He looks upon a Jew as a paradigm of human values and not a creature of a chosen tribe. His works intend that suffering and love are common to all men.
Malamud was born on April 26, 1914 in the United States. He was the son of Russian Jewish Immigrants. He is one of the most compassionate writ...

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...certifies that any human being with values, experiencing suffering in the world and transfigures out their tribulations can be considered as a Jew.

Works Cited
Astro, Richard and Jackson J. Benson. eds. The Fiction of Bernard Malamud. New Delhi:
East-West press Ltd, 1992. Print.
Freidman, Allen Warren. “The Hero as Schnook.”Bernard Malamud and the Critics.
Ed.Leslie. A. Field and Joyce. W. Field. New York: New York University Press,
1970.

Hassan, Ihab. Contemporary American Literature: An Introduction. Newyork: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co, 1973. Print.

Malamud, Bernand. The Fixer. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1966. Print
Shapiro, Gerald Eds. American Jewish Fiction: A Century of Stories, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998. Print.
Zacharias, Ravi. Can Man Live Without God. Tennesse: Thomas Nelson Publishers Nashville, 1994. Print.

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