Analysis of Novels

The Assistant

The Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner, Bernard Malamud, is one of the very famous American authors. Although he is particularly famous for his novel The Natural, his second literary work The Assistant was no less a success. The novel was published in the year 1957 and was received very well by critics. It is a story of a grocer named Morris Bober who, lives in Brooklyn. He has only one dream in his life - to provide the best for his family. Majority of the important characters in the book are all Jews. The only exceptions are Ward Minogue and Frank Alpine (Malamud, p. 204).

The desire for getting something better is very intense. He is caught by two robbers. Later, the man hires Frank Alpine as his assistant. This poor chap has a broken nose. The novel takes on a turn when the character Frank Alpine falls for Helen Bober. While he has a thing for the lady and he has a strange reaction towards the Jews, he engaged himself in the habit of stealing from the store and this he does at a very rapid rate.

The story suggests that the life of the central character is bitter but it is also unsuccessful and noble at the same time. However, it is not Bober's life that catches my attention. It is the transformation in the life of Frank Alpine. It relates that human life is nothing but complex (Malamud, p. 204). It is full of pain, defeat, triumph and ambiguity. This is the jist of human life and there is no escaping it.

Conclusion

The novel suggests that there are situations in human life which are beyond our control. They are not beyond out control beucase we did not cause them, but they are beyond our control beucase we are unable to decide rationally. We become slaves to our emotions.

The Pair of Tickets

The short tale penned by Amy Tan reveals the story of a bereaved Chinese woman who is nursing the grief of the untimely death of her beloved mother. This is where the real story of her life begins. She is June May and she travels thousands of miles with her father to go back to her country of origin. She has always lived in San Francisco, America and knows nothing of her ancestral town. The only knowledge and perception that she has ...