ACADEMIC JOURNAL ARTICLEStudies in

ACADEMIC JOURNAL ARTICLE
Studies in Short Fiction
Horror and Ethnic Identity in "The Jewbird."
By Hanson, Philip
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Article excerpt

The resemblance of Malamud's Harry Cohen in "The Jewbird" to Poe's narrator in "The Raven," each with a desire to forget, is no coincidence. Malamud's interest in retracing Poe's nineteenth-century horror poem with his 1970 comic short story results from a desire to offer a twentieth-century redefinition of horror in Jewish ethnic terms.(1) The story opens up a dialogue with generations of Jewish immigrants whose traditional ethnic and familial values have undergone a marked evolution, an evolution that was accelerating in 1963 when "The Jewbird" appeared. While critics have discussed the story's anti-Semitism, the particular historical changes pertinent to the story and their relevance to Poe's poem have not been fully explored.

As one recognizes actions from Poe's poem in Malamud's story, the effect at first seems purely comic. Poe's "stately Raven," described as an "ebony bird" with "mien of lord or lady," is marked by "the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore" (Poe 366). Malamud describes Schwartz as a "skinny bird" flying into the Cohen family's kitchen on "frazzled wings"; "this black-type longbeaked bird - its ruffled head and small, dull eyes, crossed a little, making it look like a dissipated crow" - suffers from breathing problems and rheumatism, and talks like an early vaudevillean (Malamud 144).

What constitutes horror in "The Raven," however, points to a more significant connection between the two works. The Byronic clement in Poe's American Romantic mind-set emerges in his presentation of an ego freed from earlier Christian hierarchical constraints and able to occupy the center of his poetic cosmos. Poe's narrator's enlarged consciousness, once fulfilled by having found a female soul mate, becomes, after her death, vulnerable to hyperintense pain and psychological imbalance. From the perspective of the nineteenth-century American Romantic such a loss epitomizes an engulfing horror. After centuries of ethnic persecution and flight, and especially after Dachau and Auschwitz, Malamud finds horror in the denial and suppression of one's ethnic self and all that the loss of that ethnic identity entails.

The dispute between Schwartz and Cohen in "The Jewbird" over what it means to be a Jew exemplifies Bakhtin's assertion that "the word" in language "lies on the border between oneself and the other. ... [it] is half someone else's" (Bakhtin 293). The word carries traces of its own social history; a procession of previous users of the word have contributed to its meaning. Thus ensuing users find themselves in a dialogue with previous users. The disputed word in Malamud's story is "Jew." When Cohen's wife, Edie, asks Cohen what he has against Schwartz, Cohen answers, "He's a foxy bastard. He thinks he's a Jew" (Malamud 147). Examining Cohen's objection to Schwartz's applying "Jew" to himself clarifies the stakes in a dispute over fixing this word's definition.

At one point Poe's narrator cries out, "thy God hath lent thee - by these angels he hath sent thee" (Poe 368). His accusation reinforces the sense that the Raven represents the narrator's final fate. However, fate in "The Jewbird" is defined in more historical terms. Schwartz is in flight from persecutors. He finds an open window purely by chance: "It's open, you're in. closed, you're out and that's your fate" (Malamud 144). The inevitability of the Raven's fate becomes the luck of Schwartz's situation. Like many fleeing Jews before him, his fate will depend on the charity of another. Schwartz immediately makes apparent his claim to being an orthodox Jew and to being persecuted. His claim that he is chased by "Anti-Semeets" complicates the issue. Schwartz names his persecutors as "eagles, vultures, and hawks. And once in a while some crows will take your eyes out" (145). Edie points out that Schwartz appears to be a crow, making his persecutors his own kind. Such a significant distinction separates this story from the literature of Gentile persecuting Jew and places the question of ethnic identity, of defining "Jew," at the center of the story. …

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ACADEMIC JOURNAL ARTICLEStudies in Short FictionHorror and Ethnic Identity in "The Jewbird."By Hanson, PhilipRead previewArticle excerptThe resemblance of Malamud's Harry Cohen in "The Jewbird" to Poe's narrator in "The Raven," each with a desire to forget, is no coincidence. Malamud's interest in retracing Poe's nineteenth-century horror poem with his 1970 comic short story results from a desire to offer a twentieth-century redefinition of horror in Jewish ethnic terms.(1) The story opens up a dialogue with generations of Jewish immigrants whose traditional ethnic and familial values have undergone a marked evolution, an evolution that was accelerating in 1963 when "The Jewbird" appeared. While critics have discussed the story's anti-Semitism, the particular historical changes pertinent to the story and their relevance to Poe's poem have not been fully explored.As one recognizes actions from Poe's poem in Malamud's story, the effect at first seems purely comic. Poe's "stately Raven," described as an "ebony bird" with "mien of lord or lady," is marked by "the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore" (Poe 366). Malamud describes Schwartz as a "skinny bird" flying into the Cohen family's kitchen on "frazzled wings"; "this black-type longbeaked bird - its ruffled head and small, dull eyes, crossed a little, making it look like a dissipated crow" - suffers from breathing problems and rheumatism, and talks like an early vaudevillean (Malamud 144).What constitutes horror in "The Raven," however, points to a more significant connection between the two works. The Byronic clement in Poe's American Romantic mind-set emerges in his presentation of an ego freed from earlier Christian hierarchical constraints and able to occupy the center of his poetic cosmos. Poe's narrator's enlarged consciousness, once fulfilled by having found a female soul mate, becomes, after her death, vulnerable to hyperintense pain and psychological imbalance. From the perspective of the nineteenth-century American Romantic such a loss epitomizes an engulfing horror. After centuries of ethnic persecution and flight, and especially after Dachau and Auschwitz, Malamud finds horror in the denial and suppression of one's ethnic self and all that the loss of that ethnic identity entails.The dispute between Schwartz and Cohen in "The Jewbird" over what it means to be a Jew exemplifies Bakhtin's assertion that "the word" in language "lies on the border between oneself and the other. ... [it] is half someone else's" (Bakhtin 293). The word carries traces of its own social history; a procession of previous users of the word have contributed to its meaning. Thus ensuing users find themselves in a dialogue with previous users. The disputed word in Malamud's story is "Jew." When Cohen's wife, Edie, asks Cohen what he has against Schwartz, Cohen answers, "He's a foxy bastard. He thinks he's a Jew" (Malamud 147). Examining Cohen's objection to Schwartz's applying "Jew" to himself clarifies the stakes in a dispute over fixing this word's definition.ที่หนึ่งบรรยายจุด Poe ร้องไห้ออก "พระเจ้าของเจ้า hath ยืมเจ้า - โดยเทวดาเหล่านี้เขา hath ส่งข้า" (Poe 368) ข้อกล่าวหาของเขาช่วยเสริมความรู้สึกว่า นกกาแสดงถึงชะตากรรมสุดท้ายของโปรแกรมผู้บรรยาย อย่างไรก็ตาม มีกำหนดชะตากรรมใน "เดอะ Jewbird" ในแง่ประวัติศาสตร์เพิ่มเติม ชวาร์ตซ์จะบินจาก persecutors เขาพบหน้าต่าง โดยโอกาสแท้จาก: "คุณนิ้วเปิด ปิด คุณไม่อยู่ และที่มีชะตากรรมของ" (Malamud 144) ว่าโชคชะตาของกากลายเป็น โชคของสถานการณ์ของ Schwartz ชะตากรรมของเขาจะพึ่งกุศลอื่นเช่นยิวที่หลบหนีมากก่อนเขา ชวาร์ตซ์ทันทีแบบชัดเจนของเขาเรียกร้องความ เป็นยิวดั้งเดิม และการถูกแกล้ง เขาอ้างว่า เขาถูกไล่ล่า โดย "Anti-Semeets" complicates ปัญหา ชวาร์ตซ์ชื่อยาห์ เป็น"นกอินทรี แร้ง เหยี่ยว และนาน ๆ บางกาจะพาตาออก" (145) Edie ชี้ว่า ชวาร์ตซ์ปรากฏ ขัน ทำยาห์ชนิดของเขาเอง แตกต่างอย่างมีนัยสำคัญเช่นแยกเรื่องนี้จากหนังสือยิวอิสระ Gentile และสถานคำถามของเอกลักษณ์ชาติพันธุ์ การกำหนด "ยิว ศูนย์กลางของเรื่อง …