The Certificate by Isaac Bashevis Singer - Essay Example

‘The certificate’ ‘The certificate’ is a novel by Isaac Bashevis Singer. The novel portrays the life of David Bendiger, an aspiring writer as he strives to survive on his own in Warsaw. Through David, the novel’s protagonist, the story details political, moral, social, religious, and philosophical angst. David is confused about his own identity and the reader meets him when he is eighteen and a half years old. David is the son of a rabbi, poor, and appears to secularize from his Jewish religion. He has no interests of becoming a Rabbi like his father (Singer 3). David gets provided with chance after chance to mature up but he gets caught up within his angst and cannot make better decisions to change his life for the better. The author tells the story of the protagonist by providing the protagonist with a sense of self-doubt and importance that gives the narration an ironic edge. Events swirl around David that plunge his life into an ocean of family tension and lost loves. The novel centers around the character development of David as he evolves from a shy character to a much more sophisticated and cosmopolitan figure by the novel’s end. The reader meets a guilt ridden David at the beginning of the novel. David aims at becoming a worldly writer and thus moves to Warsaw from his little village. To the reader, David cuts across as young, penniless, and gutless. He is hungry and without a place to spend a night (Singer 2). He arrives in Warsaw in a bid to start his life. David has not turned nineteen yet and is financially surviving. He is unable to shake off his parent’s faith instilled in him by them. When he arrives in Warsaw, he carries along an unfinished novel, a cabbala, and an essay on Spinoza. This intimates the initial stage where David’s life is currently at when the reader meets him. It shows that David was torn between following his philosophical dream or maintaining his traditional Jewish tradition. David also gets forced to confront his religious beliefs when his father, an old rabbi, shows up in Warsaw. David had already grown a distance from his orthodox upbringing by the time his father visits. He feels uncomfortable and embarrassed when his father offers to read the Torah with him. David views himself as a ‘victim of compulsive thoughts’. He imagines that he is possessed by ‘several dybbuks’ (Singer 9). He believes that he has become a walking dead and is part of the devil’s party. His guilt has turned into a personal fear as he thinks he is not himself and cannot also become someone else. “I experienced a sort of sickly shyness, a need to hide away from everyone”. He cuts across as a loner at the novel’s beginning. When David leaves his village for Warsaw, he only had two people with whom he contacted. He has a strong sexual desire for Sonya with whom she had a relationship with back in her village. His other contact was a Zionist functionary who got to inform him about his qualification for a certificate to immigrate into Palestine. But as the novel progresses, David becomes further sophisticated in terms of developing his relationships and making new friends. In a bid to make the journey to Palestine, David gets informed that he has to enter into a fictitious marriage with Minna, a rich young woman, who was also eager to move to Palestine as her fiancee lived there (Singer 8). Minna is willing to pay all the expenses involved in acquiring the marriage certificate and getting to Palestine for both herself and David that she agrees to marry him. Through his relationship with Minna, he gets to witness how complicated relationships can get. His hopes of immigrating to Palestine with Minna are quickly dashed as Minna’s parents go bankrupt and Minna attempts to commit suicide. In the process, David also loses his certificate and passport. This represents a transformation in David’s life as he gets to start to brush shoulders with someone of a higher social class to his. This relationship provides David with an outlook of the different sets of Jewish communities that existed in Warsaw at the time. Through Minna, he meets the modern secular Jews who are ready to enter into fictitious marriages to attain their goals. As David awaits his certificate, he further gets involved in another relationship with Edusha. Edusha is a fore guard communist party member and represents a mental shift for David’s political thinking. Edusha become his landlady and tempts him with communism by giving him talks on an all-transforming class struggle (Singer 15). David finds temporary joy and peace within Edusha’s apartment abode that he rents. Finding a temporary abode at Edusha’s apartment represents a far-cry from his first night in Warsaw when he did not have a place to spend the night. It represents a transformational shift from a lack of shelter to having a roof under his head. The reader also gets to view the change David undergoes as he courts three women at a go. He gets involved with Sonya, Edusha, and Minna simultaneously. All these women are highly demanding of David in their own ways. They provide David with a discovery of women, relationships, and love. David also gets to transform and develop philosophically as the novel progresses. His initial musings about his desperate youthfulness and the world change as he grows into Warsaw. He begins to find answers to a few of his philosophical questions as he develops through the novel. The protagonist initially appears possessed by an inability to comprehend or reflect on his youth. While waiting for his shoe to get resoled at a shoemaker’s gallery in Warsaw during his first night in the city, he questions what time is? He tries to find answers as per the writings of Spinoza but ultimately concluded that time was something real. "Something in me cried out: 'Nonsense! Time is real. A philosophy is needed that is built on time and space. Time and space are both attributes of God” (Singer 29). As Europe undergoes a revolution of philosophies like Marxism, secularism, nationalism, Freudianism, and relativity, so too does David develop and begin to appear to find his purpose. He embraces the old and even rejects Spinoza’s ideas. He seems to find answers to his philosophical musings by himself and not just upon the basis of other people’s ideas. “I rebelled against Spinoza's ideas. Why couldn't God have will, intent, feelings? . . . There must be room within Him for Satan, ghosts and demons” (Singer 101). David also transforms and develops his passion for writing as the novel progresses. At the novel’s start, David had carried with him an unfinished novel and a much criticized essay on Spinoza and Cabbala. He sees a change in his fortune when he gets his criticized essay on Spinoza get accepted by a magazine. As he grows steadily hectic through the novel’s progression, David Dreams about writing. He dreams of the rise of a new literature that lacks the prescribed laws or rules of initiation. He dreams of new rules in literature and how literature should get separated from philosophy. He gets in a mood to write when he thinks of how literature in the study of man’s character has failed to study modern man’s characterlessness. “It would present people with all their deeds, thoughts, caprices and insanities. Though literature has always studied character, it has almost always ignored modern man's characterlessness” (Singer 150). It is this thought that spurs him on to dream of paper, table, pen, and ink on which he could put down his masterpiece. The novel by Singer provides a look at the character development of the protagonist. David gets swirled around by events that get to define him and his life. The reader gets to see him grow throughout the novel as he eventually turns out into a wise adult but who is wounded emotionally. David develops from the desperate youth who mused about his social, political, and philosophical struggles to a man who understands the futility of his struggles. Through his relationships with various women, David appears to discover women and love. At the novel’s end, the protagonist is concerned with getting back home to his roots and becomes unperturbed by his initial fantasies of power. He has developed a sense for writing and is philosophically more sophisticated. He muses about going back home to start all over again as he waits for his train ride. The novel’s ending provides somewhat a sense of conflict for the reader as they see the protagonist wanting to start all over again as before. This time it might turn out different for David as he has experienced a little life that was out of his imagination. These experiences have developed him as a character throughout the novel. Works Cited Singer, Isaac Bashevis. The Certificate. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1992. Read More