2 0 0 0 IR 『魔法の樽』試論 : 主題における螺旋上昇の構造
- 著者
- 新田 玲子
- 出版者
- 中・四国アメリカ文学会
- 雑誌
- 中・四国アメリカ文学研究 (ISSN:03880176)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- no.19, pp.48-59, 1983-06-20
Bernard Malamud carefully arranged the thirteen stories of The Magic Barrel in their present order. The arrangement depends neither on chronological order nor on the kinds of settings and characters in the stories. Ultimately, only the study of the contents discloses Malamud's intentions in the arrangement.The contents of the stories reveal an arrangement in which there is a certain structure with an axial line. The axial line is Malamud's ideal human relationship. Though each book uses different words for it, such as "sympathy," "love," "trust," "responsibility," the basic idea is that a man has to sympathize with other people's sufferings, share with them whatever little he has, and suffer and live together with them. The man who can practice this ideal relationship is often regarded as "a Jew," a word which Malamud uses symbolically, in accord with the general tendency in the States, after the Holocaust, to consider the Jews as moral men who have suffered.According to the idea of "a Jew," the stories are divided into four groups. In the first four stories ("The First Seven Years," "The Mourners," "The Girl of My Dreams" and "Angel Levine"), the heroes learn how to be "a Jew," but the brightness, purity and relief at the end of the stories soften unnecessarily the harshness and severity of life as "a Jew." Therefore, though the heroes seem to be rescued, they reach a stage generally and optimistically believed to be a heaven, which is, in fact, only a pseudo-heaven for Malamud. The second group of four stories ("Behold the Key," "Take Pity," "The Prison" and "The Lady of the Lake") are free from fair illusions of heaven but their heroes do not learn to stand up to the severity of the real world as "a Jew" and so remain in a spiritual hell. In the next three stories ("A Summer's Reading," "The Bill" and "The Last Mohican"), the heroes have not learned how to live as "a Jew," but there is an angel for each of them. Led by his angel, each hero struggles for his growth. It may safely be said, therefore, that the heroes live in a spiritual purgatory. The last three stories ("The Last Mohican, also included" in the third group, "The Loan" and "The Magic Barrel") are the most peculiar to Malamud. His romanticism claims that the heroes know, or learn at the end, how to live as "a Jew," while his pessimism predicts that their future is very dark. In the juxtaposition of his romanticism and pessimism, their softness and severity fuse into a "bitter-sweet" atmosphere. As this "bittersweetness" is the exact element which belongs to the life of "a Jew," the heroes reach a real heaven for Malamud, however different this real heaven looks from the ordinary idea of heaven.In conclusion, The Magic Barrel spiritually grows upwards in a spiral along the axial line given by the concept of "a Jew," from a pseudo-heaven to a real heaven.
1 0 0 0 IR 『九つの物語』に現れる三人の特殊な人物を考えて
- 著者
- 新田 玲子
- 出版者
- 中・四国アメリカ文学会
- 雑誌
- 中・四国アメリカ文学研究 (ISSN:03880176)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- no.24, pp.92-100, 1988-06-01
There are three characters in J.D. Salinger's Nine Stories more marvelous than any of the premature or even more sophisticated characters in his other works. They are Seymour Glass in "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," the Laughing Man, the hero of John Gedsudski's story in "The Laughing Man," and Teddy in the short story of that name. Their distinction is marked by a talent to see more than other human beings are allowed and by their choice of death. This thesis discusses the connection between their miraculous talent and their death, taking into consideration their relationship to society and to the people around them.In "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," Seymour's wife and mother-in-law are depicted in a critical and harsh tone, while Seymour himself reserves his critical comments against them. His story of banana fish, which gives the story its title, shows that Seymour is abnormal and that he is to blame for his own death. The inconsistency between the characterization and the thematic meaning of bananafish, however, is not observed in "The Laughing Man." The narrator of the story can see things both from the ideal side, represented by the Laughing Man, and from the realistic one, represented by Mary Hudson. The narrator can sympathize with the both sides and realizes the conflict between them by perceiving John Gedsudski's inability to stay as the Comanche's leader. "Teddy" tries to solve the conflict faced by the narrator of "The Laughing Man" from the transcendental view, Teddy ignores, however, all human feelings, which we cannot neglect. What is worse, we can never completely believe, like Teddy, in the world beyond death. And, if we could, it is in this present world that we are living and need solutions. In the end, "Teddy" only indicates the direction in which to seek for a solution.As Salinger observes, these three miraculous characters cannot keep up with the society, and so he lets them die to show that even our full commitment to them will not solve the problems of this world. Still, by making Seymour's and the Laughing Man's deaths sad, Salinger also intimates that we cannot live a full life without following their life styles. These conflicting attitudes coexist more and more explicitly in Salinger's later works, along with his aversion to American middle class materialism and his admiration to their energy to survive. As a result, what Salinger offers to his readers is a most difficult and sad way of life, much like the narrator of "The Laughing Man." But it is at least an honest and sincere way of living, and many of his young readers seem to sympathize more with this awkward way of living rather than some other clever or bold way, which is after all only a superficial and compromising solution to their predicaments.
1 0 0 0 IR アニメ『この世界の片隅に』の功罪 : 新しいアメリカ平和文学研究者の立場から
- 著者
- 新田 玲子
- 出版者
- 全日本電設資材卸業協同組合連合会
- 雑誌
- New Wave
- 巻号頁・発行日
- vol.81, pp.14-19, 2017-10-28
2017年11月号掲載