The Assistant Themes

Most of us tend to blame others for the hardships of life. Not so for the characters in The Assistant. They tend to point the judgmental finger at themselves, sharing some of the blame for all of t...

Disappointment is a pretty common feeling for the poor characters in The Assistant. To say that dreams have gone unfulfilled would be an understatement. For Morris and Ida Bober, life is nearing it...

Most everyone we meet in The Assistant feels as though fate, not their choices, guide their lives. The novel itself doesn't delve into the philosophical question or argue one side over the other. I...

You know those feel-good stories about likeable characters overcoming impossible obstacles to achieve their dreams? The Assistant isn't one of those stories. Make no mistake, the people we meet in...

Bernard Malamud's The Assistant presents religion as, on one hand, a heritage that binds people together in the present and into the past and future, and on the other hand, as a force that separate...

Prejudice is not a one-way street in The Assistant. The Jews distrust the gentiles, and the gentiles distrust the Jews. There's mutual suspicion and dislike. It seems to come from people being diff...

None of the major characters in The Assistant are particularly competitive. This is one of the reasons they fail: they're uncompetitive in a competitive world. As much as Morris Bober, a grocer, wo...

Do lies raise you up or weigh you down? The Assistant implicitly asks this question. Its answer? Both. Morris Bober, an honest grocer, refuses to cheat and watches as those who will deceive others...

Frank Alpine commits some pretty horrendous crimes in The Assistant, and he pretty much gets away with them too. He escapes the notice of the police, but his conscience troubles him. The Assistant...

The Assistant is about a Jewish family coming apart at the seams but held together by mutual need, memory, faith and love. A gentile comes into their lives and manages to both tear them further apa...