"e;Take Pity"e; by Bernard Malamud

Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,7 (A-), University of Paderborn (Faculty for Cultural Studies), course: Seminar: American Short Story, language: English, abstract: In 1958 Bernard Malamud published his first short story collectionThe Magic Barrel. Whereas stories like e.g. The Magic Barrel or TheLady of the Lake were frequently discussed, Take Pity got only littleattention from the critics, although the story offers a wide spectrum ofpossible interpretations and contains several stylistic devices. The mainfocus of this term paper is the discussion of the realistic and fantasticelements in chapter III.4 and the different dimensions of compassionthroughout the story in chapter III.5. The esteemed novelist and short story writer Bernard Malamud wasborn on April 28, 1914, in Brooklyn, NY and grew up on New York's EastSide where his Russian-Jewish immigrant parents worked in their grocerystore sixteen hours a day. He attended high school and college during theheight of the depression. His family's experience was clearly echoed in hisfiction. Whereas the setting varies in his novels, in his short fiction it is mostoften the East Side of New York. Malamud was also strongly influenced byclassic nineteenth-century American writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne,Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville, and Henry James. Moreover,Malamud's works reflected a post-Holocaust consciousness in addressingJewish concerns and employing literary conventions drawn from earlierJewish literature. He began his career in the early 1940s by publishingstories in non-commercial magazines. His first major period of workextended from 1949 to 1961 when he was teaching at Oregon State College. During this period he produced three novels and a collection of short stories. Malamud won several fiction prizes, including the National Book Award infiction for The Magic Barrel in 1959. After Malamud had moved back toBennington College, his second working period (1961-1970) began, andboth his stories and his next two novels took a more cosmopolitan andinternational direction. [...]