Malamud's "The Magic Barrel"

I would not classify Bernard Malamud with the first rank of American writers. With the exception of this story, I tend to classify his work as "good" rather than exceptional. However, I love teaching this story. It is an exceptional piece of writing, and it offers something few other 20th. Century pieces offer -- a happy ending.

This piece centers on the relationship of three people:

Leo Finkle: scholar, would-be rabbi, 2nd. or 3rd. generation American, ancestry Eastern European Jewish, thoroughly assimilated in manners, traditionally Jewish in his love for learning and the Torah (the Law).

Pinye Salzman: marriage broker, traditional Eastern European Jew; 1st. or 2nd. generation American and completely unassimilated, poor, unlearned with a particular and traditional respect for scholars.

Stella Salzman: Salzman's daughter, assimilated and secular American; exactly who and what she is serves as the story's key.

Questions to consider:

1. Leo needs a wife before he can gain a congregation as a rabbi; what does he need in terms of himself? What is missing from Leo's life?
2. How does each interaction with Salzman serve to deepen Leo's self-awareness?
3. What does Leo discover about himself at the end of the disastrous date with Lilly Hirschorn?
4. Is Salzman, at that point, acting with inept good (or pecuniary) intentions, or is the date a "set-up" to provoke Leo's soul-searching?
5. Is Stella's picture supposed to be in the packet?
6. Why does Leo fall in love with Stella's picture?
7. Why does Salzman (apparently) not want them to meet?
8. Why should a star (Stella) burn in hell?
9. Is Salzman just a human being, or is he somehow a flawed and fallible angel, fulfilling the task of leading Leo Finkle to life?

The Climax. We have several sets of images colliding in the final scene:

• When Leo meets Stella, Stella is posed like a streetwalker, but is wearing a white dress (innocence) and red shoes (guilt, or life).
• The images of violins and candles in the air are symbolic of an Eastern European Jewish wedding; Malamud borrowed the images from painter Marc Chagill, who used such imagery in his pictures of Jewish wedding celebrations.
• Salzman is around the corner, "chanting prayers for the dead." Several points:
  • he has declared his daughter "dead" in that she no longer follows the family traditions;
  • Jewish "prayers for the dead" include no mention of death, but are prayers for life and happiness;
  • Salzman obviously quite desperately loves his daughter; he may be praying for her deliverance;
  • we should, at this point, ask if there is something "dead" about Leo, something that Stella Salzman, and no one else, can bring to life.

If you read this piece as I read this piece, you end up beside Salzman (and me), hidden around the corner and praying desperately that this unlikely match will work. You want Leo to find love; you want Stella's redemption; you want to believe in magic (such as Salzman's Magic Barrel). The ending is more hope than promise, but the hope seems enough.

I mention a symbolic reading in one of your other handouts. I think that reading works, but also note that a good story is more than a puzzle in which to seek out the "deeper meaning." A good story works on a number of levels -- and in my critical judgment it isn't a good story unless it works on the surface level. I think "The Magic Barrel" works because, at the end, I empathize with Leo, Stella, and Salzman. "The Magic Barrel" works because it leaves me caring about the characters.