The magic barrel short story summary. The Magic Barrel by Bernard Malamud: Summary & Analysis 2022-11-08
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The Magic Barrel is a short story written by Bernard Malamud, first published in 1954. It tells the story of Leo Finkle, a young rabbi who is searching for a wife. Despite his initial reservations, Leo decides to hire a matchmaker named Pinye Salzman to help him find a suitable partner.
Pinye introduces Leo to a number of potential brides, but none of them seem to be the right fit. Desperate to find a wife, Leo agrees to meet with a final candidate recommended by Pinye, even though he knows very little about her.
As it turns out, the final candidate is a woman named Lena, who is described as "a short, plump, dark girl with black hair and large brown eyes." Lena is not exactly what Leo was expecting, but he is drawn to her honesty and vulnerability. Despite the fact that they come from very different backgrounds, Leo and Lena are able to connect on a deeper level and fall in love.
As the story comes to a close, Leo is grateful to Pinye for introducing him to Lena and admits that he had been wrong to doubt the power of the matchmaker's "magic barrel." In the end, Leo and Lena are happily married and begin their new life together.
The Magic Barrel is a heartwarming tale of love and acceptance. It teaches the lesson that sometimes the best things in life come from unexpected places, and that it is important to keep an open mind and trust in the magic of the universe.
The Magic Barrel Characters
He had no map. And since novel and short story are both tales, the heroes are matched with two unexpectedly flawed heroines. Both "in the University" and "in University" have the flavor of the British upper classes. And both have beautiful daughters who will eventually be courted by Leo and Pip in defiance of their own earlier prescriptions. In the midst of Leo's absorption with the hen in the sky, the narrator wipes away the trace of a smile that was making itself more and more discernible and replaces it with a poker player's face from which issue these sober tones: Salzman, though pretending through eyeglasses he had just slipped on, to be engaged in scanning the writing on the cards, stole occasional glances at the young man's distinguished face, noting with pleasure the long, severe scholar's nose, brown eyes heavy with learning, sensitive yet ascetic lips, and a certain, almost a hollow quality of the dark cheeks. One would think that the barrel is merely Salzman's metaphor, and Leo, seeing no sign of it in Salzman's apartment, tells himself that it is "probably also a figment of the imagination.
Leo now knows that "he did not love God so well as he might, because he had not loved man. Henry anecdotes to suddenly complex, reverberant endings. He "appeared one night out of the dark fourth-floor hallway. The story is divided into five sections overtly, that is, by spaces on the page. The curious thing about the Kaddish is that nowhere is death mentioned. Whether Stella is the fallen woman Salzman has suggested and Leo has visualized, is uncertain.
It is clear that Salzman has indeed disowned his daughter who has gone completely bad. Let us spend a few lines on it. While damage has been done to Isaac, on a certain level he has been brought to a fuller knowledge of what his father's God can demand of him, and he has come to see what his father might demand of him as well. And on the date he says he "came to God not because I loved Him, but because I did not. Fiedler's article is subtitled "An essay in genre criticism" and is clearly within a modernized version of classical criticism. Salzman has thrust Leo into a meeting with Lily in order to expose to Leo his own specious life. He must know others to be himself; he must be part of society to be himself; Leo must love one other person to love humanity.
The Magic Barrel by Bernard Malamud: Summary & Analysis
There is no evidence in the story of any commitment to his religion or his vocation, no evidence of any real practice of his faith or any real knowledge of it. This concluding scene is striking not only in itself but in the retroactive effect that it has upon the whole story. The stomach, the gut, is the center of the fully lived life, the beginning of the bowels, where the gritty and unpleasant but absolutely necessary work of living is done. When Leo and Lily talk and Lily asks of Leo's love of God, Richman reads her questions as Pinye's attempts at ritual indoctrination. The last date is today's date — the date you are citing the material. In fact, "Stella" does the job to perfection since it means "star. This analogy also resolves the seemingly contradictory elements—the earthy and the magical—in Salzman's character because, as a god, Pan possesses the magical characteristics assigned to Salzman, and his half-goat, half-man form gives him that earthiness which Salzman displays.
The summary of the story the magic barrel by bernard malamud Free Essays
The theme of redemption through a fallen woman is a fanciful piece of self-deception, a mere conventional cover for what is apparent to all disinterested—and thoroughly amused—observers. The vehemence of his refusal and his respect for rabbis convince the reader that Salzman has no intentions of bringing the two together. It is fanciful and fantastic; it depicts profound suffering and sordid conditions yet qualifies them with poignant humor, leaving readers with relief and the pleasant sensation of having tasted the bittersweet. After some time has passed, Leo runs in to Salzman again. The truth of course is that Pinye as marriage broker, though he deals in dreams—other people's dreams—is altogether too much a cynic, too calloused a character to believe in such dreams himself. At the critical instant of the critical moment, with Stella before him in her ambiguously suggestive red and white, Leo has an insight that resolves his conflict and sends him forth "with flowers out thrust" and which cues another celebration, or psychological projection, in the heavens: "Violins and lit candles revolved in the sky.
In a strange twist, he comes to love the matchmaker's daughter who was disowned because of prostitution. Because he believes that he will have a better chance of getting employment with a congregation if he is married, Leo consults a professional matchmaker. I was an ambitious boy of 23, with a debut novel about to appear and the selfconfident conviction that I could and should replace him while he took a leave of absence from his teaching job. New York: Twayne, 1993. As we go through the story and compare Leo's behavior against the standards of the law, recall that the first three were summarized by Christ with the phrase from Deuteronomy 6:5, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with the love of thy whole heart, and thy whole soul, and thy whole strength," and the last seven from Leviticus 19:18, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thy self; thy Lord is his. Articles on Malamud's boyhood, growth and development as teacher and writer are within the definition of psychological approaches given above.
In the latter interpretation, Leo becomes the great Law-Breaker as contrasted to the author and "hero" of the Pentateuch, the Law-Giver, Moses. Lesson Summary The Magic Barrel, written by Bernard Malamud in 1954, follows the story of Leo Finkle, a reclusive rabbinical student, as he enlists the help of matchmaker Pinye Salzman in finding an appropriate bride. Distinctive from the women in the previous photographs, Stella appears to be someone who has lived and suffered deeply. Quite symbolic is Leos refusal to take at least one of them. The already known feeling of irritation possesses him. Being irritated with the girls questions he confesses that he, being the would be rabbi does not love God. Obedience will bring redemption.
