"Take Pity" by Bernard Malamud (ePub)

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 collection
The Magic Barrel. Whereas stories like e.g. "The Magic Barrel" or "The
Lady of the Lake" were frequently discussed, "Take Pity" got only little
attention from the critics, although the story offers a wide spectrum of
possible interpretations and contains several stylistic devices. The main
focus of this term paper is the discussion of the realistic and fantastic
elements in chapter III.4 and the different dimensions of compassion
throughout the story in chapter III.5. The esteemed novelist and short story writer Bernard Malamud was
born on April 28, 1914, in Brooklyn, NY and grew up on New York's East
Side where his Russian-Jewish immigrant parents worked in their grocery
store sixteen hours a day. He attended high school and college during the
height of the depression. His family's experience was clearly echoed in his
fiction. Whereas the setting varies in his novels, in his short fiction it is most
often the East Side of New York. Malamud was also strongly influenced by
classic 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 addressing
Jewish concerns and employing literary conventions drawn from earlier
Jewish literature. He began his career in the early 1940s by publishing
stories in non-commercial magazines. His first major period of work
extended 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 in
fiction for The Magic Barrel in 1959. After Malamud had moved back to
Bennington College, his second working period (1961-1970) began, and
both his stories and his next two novels took a more cosmopolitan and
international direction. [...]