Introduction:

Malamud, a writer who grew up in the Jewish-American tradition, ‘‘The Magic Barrel’’

is one of the several stories he wrote which explore concerns and themes centralized

on the Jewish society. It’s a love story with amazing events and results which follow a

young rabbi who is fighting to define his identity and asks the religious demands of

how people (Jews and others) may come to love God. It’s human love that the story

answers first, and it’s a essential first step to reach God’s love.

Thesis Statement: Leo Frinkle is a complex character with his mind, his relationships

and with his own culture. After some analyses, I offer interesting comments.

I) Author Biography

Malamud begins to write recognizably just after the WWII, right during the time that

the drama of the WWII concerning the Jews was known by the all international

society. This event tends to have made the author more perplex on his proper

religious identity. ‘‘I was concerned with what Jews stood for,’’ he declared, ‘‘with

their getting down to the bare bones of things. I was concerned with . . . how Jews

felt they had to live in order to go on living’’ [ CITATION MER86 \l 1036 ]. In 1945 he

married a women named Ann de Chiara. And for Malamud’s parents (who were

traditional Jews), his marriage with this non-believer girl sounds as a unforgivable act

to them. Malamud also celebrated the mourning of his son which can be related to

the act of preserving memory of Salzman in ‘‘The Magic Barrel.’’ The couple moved

to America, more precisely in Oregon in 1949, where the author obtained a job as a

teacher at Oregon State University. It was there that the Jewish author created ‘‘The

Magic Barrel’’ that he wrote in the storage room of the same university.
 II) Themes

- Identity

Leo Finkle is a rabbi novice who is trying to determine who he truly is. During six

years of his life he is hardly studying for being consecrated as a Jewish religion

instructor. Alone and lack of passion are his main characteristics; he is also totally

detached from any human or spiritual emotion. In the story, Lily Hirschorn which is

one of the girl he met through the matchmaker, asks Leo how he realized through

himself that he will become a rabbi, Frinkle answers with frustration: ‘‘I am not a

talented religious person. . . . I think . . . that I came to God, not because I loved him,

but because I did not.’’ [ CITATION BER58 \l 1036 ] To reformulate, Leo believed that by

being a future rabbi he may understand how to accept himself and the other people

he knows by providing love. Leo is devastated after the talk because ‘‘. . . he saw

himself for the first time as he truly was: unloved and loveless.’’ When he takes

conscience concerning how he’s acting, he begins to desperately try to move on. Leo

decides to resolve himself and to breathe new life. He still searches the girl of his

dream, but this time without Pinye’s assistance: ‘‘. . . he regained his composure and

some idea of purpose in life: to go on as planned. Although he was imperfect, the

ideal was not.’’ His ideal in this example is love. Leo start to understand that through

love and especially with the feeling he had when he saw the daughter of his

matchmaker in the photograph, he could start over his life with a new vision, and gain

an identity based on a more constructive mind. Then, while is finally meets Salzan's

daughter he ‘‘pictured, in her, his own redemption.’’ Redemption, it is with this

emotion that the end of the novel guides us to believe that Leo’s revelation through

Stella is a new departure of an existence founded on love.

 - God and Religion

In the center of ‘‘The Magic Barrel’’ is the belief that to be attached to the lord, Leo

must primary love people. He seems confused by Lily’s inquiry because it is the

revelation which help him understanding ‘‘the true nature of his relationship to God.’’

He's also discerning ‘‘that he did not love God as well as he might, because he had

not loved man.’’ Despite of the devotion he made in his rabbi’s school, Frinkle’s

relation with the religion, as the novel tells, is cold, and full of studious conformity.

Without the capacity to love God’s human creation, Leo can certainly not have the

capacity to love God itself. And here also, the actor of break in Leo’s way to think

tends to be Salzman's daughter. The text clearly shows that by the love he feels for

Stella and also by accepting her, the rabbi will be able to reach the Divine. Past his

confrontation with his loved, Leo ‘‘concluded to convert her to goodness, him to

God.’’ By loving Stella, Leo’s real consecration will be allowed. It is his communion

through the access to God's love.

III) Style

- Point of View

The point of view in ‘‘The Magic Barrel’’ is made by the third person restricted. In a

third person restricted point of view, the narrator is not a actual personage of the

story, but a external figure who talks about Leo through ‘‘he". This external storyteller,

nevertheless, is not all-knowing, and he is restricted with the understanding of only

one personage. In this case, he views the story's events through the acumen of

Finkle even although is it not him who's expressing the story.

 - Symbolism

The arrival of spring has a crucial role in the symbolism. The story take place in late

February, ‘‘when winter was on its last legs,’’ and finishes in ‘‘one spring night’’ as the

rabbi comes to Salzman’s daughter beneath a lamp in the street. The evolution of the

story from the winter as a cold season to spring as a rebirth season is a direct

symbolism of the spiritual and emotional renaissance which Leo endures like he

attempts to become a creature of god.

- Idiom

People in the story speak different variation of languages. The narrator and mostly

the other characters in the story speak common English when the matchmaker in his

case speaks Yiddish. This language was the casual way to speak of a lot of

European Jewish communities [ CITATION Enc11 \l 1036 ]. At the time of the story, just

after the WWII, Malamud’s parents for example, would have read the prays in

Hebrew, speak to their friends in Russian, and does some business or household in

Yiddish. For example, when the matchmaker asks Frinkle, ‘‘A glass tea you got,

rabbi?’’; and also when he declares, ‘‘what can I say to somebody that he is not

interested in school teachers?’’; or when he complaints, ‘‘This is my baby, my Stella,

she should burn in hell,’’ We can notice an example of English-Yiddish speech or

mostly called examples of idiom.

IV) Historical context

The Historical references in the story helps the reader to indentify events from the

novel to a specific context, a fact establishes that Finkle’s first meeting with Salzman
were taking place approximately during the same time that the story’s publication,

which means in the mid-fifties. Leo is about to complete his six-year course of study

to become a rabbi at New York in a school named Yeshivah which was named

differently until 1945. By that, we can figure out that Leo had probably though about

marriage early in the 1950s. By asking help from a matchmaker to find a girl to marry,

the rabbi’s behavior is more like his grandparents (who were certainly immigrant)

than an American Jew from the 1950s. The Yiddish speakers who called the

matchmaker; “the shadchen” was considered as someone who was strongly

respected and in charge of the longevity of the Jewish families due to affording

marriages. As the modern way to love has erased the concept of arranged marriage,

the matchmakers had become less meticulous in their arrangements and became the

objects of insults and disrespect [ CITATION Rab04 \l 1036 ]. Frinkle, with asking the

shadchen’s help during the 1950s, shows that he is not only a conventional, but he is

also pretty outdated and an obsolete young man.

Conclusion:

Malamud’s ‘‘The Magic Barrel’’ is a remarkable novel because of its economy of

words to say a lot of interesting facts regarding specific faces of the world and how

people live on it. By using few strokes, the author achieved to create fascinating and

complex personage as Leo Frinkle. This main character is a person full of coldness

who comes to figure out that ‘‘he did not love God as well as he might, because he

had not loved man.’’ But after the first met with Stella, this rabbi apprentice has to

confront his own emotional and spiritual failings… He finally had fallen in love; with

his matchmaker’s daughter who is make him believe in his own redemption. We can

imagine that Stella is by imaginary speaking his key to the paradise.

(1571 words)

References;

Encyclopedia Britannica. (2011). The Magic Barrel. Consulté le 02 Tuesday, 2011,

sur Encyclopedia Britannica Online:

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/356706/The-Magic-Barrel

MALAMUD, B. (1958). The Magic barrel (American Short Story Masterpieces).

Oregon: Vell.

ROTHSTEIN, M. (March 20, 1986). BERNARD MALAMUD, AUTHOR, DIES AT 71.

New York times (Late City Final Edition) , Page 26; Column 1; Section D.

Wein, R. B. (2004). The Shadchan. Consulté le 02 Tuesday, 2011, sur torah.org:

http://www.torah.org/features/secondlook/shadchan.html#