The Assistant Analysis

The events of The Assistant are set in and around a small, family-owned grocery store located in Brooklyn. The place is owned and run by Morris and Ida Bober. We also get familiar with some other s...

Bernard Malamud narrates The Assistant in the Third Person Omniscient voice, entering in and out of his characters' hearts and heads. For most of the novel he keeps to the perspectives of Morris, I...

The Assistant focuses on the financial and personal trials of the Bober family—Morris, Ida, and Helen. The protagonist of the novel is arguably Frank Alpine, but his story is theirs. He enters th...

Bernard Malamud sure seems to care about his characters. He doesn't hesitate to reveal their faults and weaknesses, but he also doesn't lose sight for their humanity. He'll show them at their worst...

Bernard Malamud wrote The Assistant in a clear and concise style, conservative with details. Like Graham Greene, another writer with religion on his mind, Malamud explored complex moral and spiritu...

The title The Assistant refers to the grocery store clerk, Frank Alpine. He assists with the business, obviously, but he also helps the Bober family members in their own lives. He helps pay for Hel...

At the end of the story, Frank Alpine hasn't discovered any illuminating answers to life's big questions, particularly why people suffer so much, but he makes a decision to accept suffering in a wa...

The action of The Assistant mostly takes place in or around the Bober family store and focuses on the deeds and desires of the three family members, plus the troubled clerk, Frank. The plot is easy...

Going Nowhere, SlowlyMorris Bober runs a small grocery store in Brooklyn with his wife Ida and his daughter Helen. This might not seem too depressing at first, but…business is bad and getting wor...

Frank Alpine hasn't made much of his life. He's come to New York to make something new of himself. Unfortunately, he's chosen a life of crime and participates in a robbery motivated by racial preju...

Frank Alpine enters the lives of Morris, Ida, and Helen Bober, becoming a clerk at their failing grocery store. He appears to bring an increase of customers and money into the business, but he's al...

Bernard Malamud's parents, like his character Morris, were Russian Jews who fled the country and came to America. (Source) Malamud's father, also like Morris, ran a grocery store in Brooklyn. (Sou...

In The Assistant, the main character, Frank Alpine, spies on Helen Bober while she showers. The prose describes her naked body. Later, when Frank rapes Helen, she makes a reference to his uncircumc...

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