Identity In Malamud's The Awakening

The American intellectuals,like Malamud, for instance, denounce collectivism. Furthermore, American Experience places the accent on the individual safeguarding his separate identity though he is of different racial origins. The American intellectuals who value American Experience recommend new conditions of life, which, they argue, ensures one’s identity. One enjoys the identity only if one can remain the same, notwithstanding the varying aspects and differing conditions of life.
The title story, “THE MAGIC BARREL”, of Malamud’s prizewinning first short fiction collection, THE MAGIC BARRELis one of most frequently discussed works of short fiction. It is a quintessential Malamud in form and content, and perhaps most of all in moral vision;

The story’s concluding tableau is highly ambiguous. It depicts Finkle running toward Stella, who is standing under a lamppost dressed in a white dress and red shoes, while Salzman stands next to a wall around the corner, chanting the kaddish, a prayer for the dead.
In Malamud’s fiction,THE MAGIC BARREL, the protagonist Leo Finkle follows tradition well, that is, the tradition of the old world, at the beginning. As a rabbinical student, Leo Finkle understands adhering to law, to ritual, to custom; so, to pick a wife. Leo consults a marriage broker because his own parents had been brought together by a matchmaker. Salzman, the marriage broker, is a man of business with a ritual, first comes family, then the amount of dowry, and finally also what kind of promises.
The ritual progresses towards strict standards and specifications in order to better bargain. Such ritual is not a part of the American myth, which has its centre a virtual lack of history and tradition. The marriage broker is an element in a tradition that is not American. Even Leo realizes the un-American tone of matchmaking when he makes inquiries about one of Salzman’s clients. The text reads thus [Magic Barrel, 1956, p.