Bernard Malamud's Sorrow

The short stories, “the Magic Barrel” and “The German Refugee” displays Bernard Malamud’s sorrow over his mother’s death. “The Magic Barrel” is about a young Jewish man named Leo Finkle, who has been studying six years to be a rabbi at a Jewish university called Yeshiva University in Brooklyn, New York. The story is ultimately about this man’s quest to find a wife, because one of his colleagues told him when he was ordained as a rabbi, a wife would make it easier for Leo to win a congregation over. However, Leo has no experience or social life with women, so Leo calls a marriage broker or matchmaker named Pinye Salzman, who Leo likes at first for being amiable. Salzman takes out three photos of women and tells Leo about the women, but he is
This made him want to express his sorrow for his nationality through his writings. “The German Refugee” displays Bernard Malamud’s sorrow over witnessing the Holocaust through a German-Jewish Refugee named Oskar. According to Bernard Malamud’s short story “The German Refugee”, “In tormented English he conveyed his intense and everlasting hatred of the Nazis for destroying his career, uprooting his life after half a century and flinging him like a piece of bleeding meat to hawks. He cursed them thickly, the German nation, as an inhuman, conscienceless, merciless people.” (Malamud) This shows Malamud’s hatred of the Nazis for destroying his own people and his defense of them. Malamud was incensed by the Nazis for murdering his people for no reason. Oskar is like Malamud, because he express his hatred towards the Nazis with cursing. Oskar hated the Nazis, and Malamud hated them as well. Malamud even struggled to sleep through the night thinking about and having nightmares about the Holocaust. According to Malamud, “When he did sleep, out of exhaustion, he had fantastic frightening dreams of the Nazis inflicting torture on him, sometimes forcing him to look upon the corpses of those they had slain.” (Malamud) This clearly shows that Malamud was tormented by the murdering and torturing of his own people. Malamud is trying to convey to everybody in his writings about just how brutal and awful the Holocaust was, and he wanted to remind people that this was portentous, very evil, and gives you a huge feeling of trepidation. Malamud was upset and lost confidence and composure, because Nazis murdered and took everything from his people. According to Malamud, “I have lost faith. I do not-not longer possess my former value of myself. In my life there has been too much illusion. I tried to believe what I was saying: Have confidence, the feeling will pass. Confidence I have