Immigration as Natural Phenomenon in the history and Pre-History of the Human Race - Essay Example

Comparing the psyche of immigrants as depicted in the novels "Call it Sleep" By Henry Roth (1934) and "Bread Givers" by Anzia Yizierska (1925). Immigration by itself is a phenomenon that is natural in the history and pre-history of the human race. In fact, the core of civilization is base upon the actuality of the long standing theory of "out of Africa", which, in correspondence is nothing else but immigration in the purer sense. Down the line of history it has been observed time and again that the human race travel from place to place in search of greener pasture mostly driven by scarcity of resources. The majority of these immigrations took place by the dint of the sword which in the modern term has been enumerated as 'colonization' like the Anglo Saxon migration during the 7th- 8th century AD into Britain. But these historical migrations were triggered by single dimension grounds. As the modern era arrived into the scene it was found that the act of migration was the cause of a web structure that contained a multi strata formation and is far more complex than the previous historical migrations. This complexity developed in the minds of the immigrants themselves. This is particularly depicted in the novels "Call it Sleep" By Henry Roth written in 1934 and "Bread Givers" written by Anzia Yizierska in 1925. 'Bread Givers' written by Anzia Yezierska and 'Call It Sleep' written by Henry Roth each would give us unique perspectives on the lives of immigrants in the earliest years of the twentieth century. The comparisons between the two are quite interesting, as the contrasts would also be. The settings are similar; the families which are central figures in each book are far from that in the numbers of members and the areas they would come from. The texts enable the reader the ability to almost sense the differences and similarities between Sara Smolinsky and young David as they live their lives in the New York area. Comparing their life experiences and then contrasting their ideals of the life they would in America would indeed be intriguing. Call It Sleep exemplifies Henry Roth's fascination with modernist technique; the influence of James Joyce is apparent throughout the novel, as are typical modernist themes of alienation and isolation. As a cultural portrait, Call It Sleep paints a vivid picture of immigrant life in early twentieth century New York, specifically that of the very large immigrant Jewish population. As a commentary upon the struggles of a minority group, Call It Sleep offers a poignant tale of a young boy and his often unsettling experiences both at home and in his community. On the contrary, Bread Givers, Anzia Yezierska's autobiographical novel, endures for the way it relates universal truths about the poverty and despair of new immigrants to America at the turn of the century. Within that universality, Yezierska's voice emerges as strong, female, and idiosyncratic as it reveals the particulars of her characters' inner lives. Like many of her female protagonists, Yezierska immigrated to New York's Lower East Side in her early teens. She was born in around Warsaw in the early 1880s - the exact year is not known. Her older brother Meyer had immigrated to America a few years earlier and had saved enough money to bring his parents and seven siblings to New York. Like many immigrants who passed through Ellis Island, Meyer was renamed, and Max Meyer set out to reinvent himself accordingly. Anzia, called Harriet Meyer when she joined him, later reclaimed her identity and took back her given name. "Bread Givers" can be regarded as a source of cultural and social history because, even though it is fictionalized, it gives rich details of life in the early 20th century and illustrates many social conditions. It should be noted that the book is not a primary history source, but rather a secondary source, full of facts that would be of immense value to get a notion of the insight and the psyche of an immigrant at that juncture of the period in American history. This book is the story of a young girl's fight to make something of her, just as the author came to America as a young girl in 1890 with her family, who emigrated from Poland, graduated from college, and wrote six books between 1920 and 1932. When Henry Roth began working on Call It Sleep in the summer of 1930, his intent was to write autobiographically. He wrote the first 75 pages of his draft in the first person, strictly adhering to the facts of his own life. Yet Roth admits that a struggle arose - a struggle between the factually-oriented autobiographer and the novelist who wanted to present different ideas and the freedom to imagine. Consequently, the resulting novel presents what Roth felt was an embellished portrait of his soul: an honest portrayal of his own childhood that reflects a young Jewish boy's perceptions of his world and of his faith. Yezierska's preoccupation with ethnic identity permeates her fiction and is expressed in the Yiddish-English vernacular of her prose. Her empathy for the "greenhorn" she once was and the immigrant she would always be is reflected in the stark social realism of her books. Her choice of genre was also a subtle form of rebellion against the prevailing literary taste for abstraction and the emotional restraint that was endemic to polite society. Yet within Yezierska's social realism there is also a brilliant, luminous strain of romanticism. Although Yezierska's characters are steeped in the dire poverty of the tenements and subjected to the subhuman conditions of the sweatshops, they survive on their dreams for a better life. This is particularly evident in Bread Givers, the most widely read of her novels, in which young immigrants struggle to put their pasts behind them. The life of an immigrant as is recognized within the language of both Bread Givers and Call It Sleep would appear to be quite challenging, however it seemed to be even more so during the era in which these two texts would focus. In the earlier years of recorded immigration, so very many would be maneuvered to a singular location and government forces would allow certain numbers to disperse from there. That location, as noted in Call It Sleep, was Ellis Island. Yet, still, as can be seen in both texts, poverty is the largest part of the tale. The seeking of gainful employ seems to be the main thread throughout the two texts as both the protagonists families suffer in the lack of work, one because his father is angry and the other because her father is a Jewish priest, merely intent on the Torah. It would make an interesting reading on this regard to quote from book Bread Givers: "Home! Back to New York! Sara Smolinsky, from Hester Street, changed into a person! Kid gloves were on my hands. All my things were neatly packed in a brand-new leather satchel. Who would believe, as I took my seat with the quiet stillness of a college lady, how I was burning up with excited pride in myself I was like a person who had climbed to the top of a high mountain and was still breathless with his climb. If only I could have taken out my diploma and held it over my head for all to see! I was a college graduate! I was about to become a teacher of the schools! For the first time in my life, I knew the luxury of traveling in a Pullman. I even had my dinner in the dining car. How grand it felt to lean back in my chair, a person among people, and order anything I wanted from the menu. No more herring and pickle over dry bread, I ordered chops and spinach and salad. As I spread out my white, ironed napkin on my lap, I thought of the time only four years before, when I pinched pieces out of the loaf, and wiped my mouth with a corner of a newspaper and threw it under the seat." This could be termed as the ultimate utopia of an immigrant in the modern era with market economy standing as a major and mostly the only driving force of the material world. In Call it a sleep, we are shown the world is basically phenomenological; that is, we get to know the city only as it's filtered through our protagonist's awareness. David takes life inside; it becomes his life, his New York. Here, for instance, is David's first glimpse of Luter, a man who pretends to be his father's friend in order to get his father's wife, David's mother, into bed. At first sight, David doesn't like Luter's face: It was not because it was particularly ugly or because it was scarred, but because one felt one's own features trying to imitate it while one looked at it. His mouth so very short and the bow of his lips so very thick and arched that David actually felt himself waiting for it to relax. And the way his nostrils swelled up and out almost fatigued one and one hoped the deep dimples in his cheek would soon fill out. The hyper-intensity of David's seeing hovers at the edge of fantasy, the surreal. David doesn't walk out into a sunny day. Instead: "A dazzling breaker of sunlight burst over his head, swamped him in reeling blur of brilliance, and then receded." The drama of Call It Sleep arises from the collision of David's inner world and the city he distorts. The novel is built on misunderstood secrets. Its climax begins in a sensational scene in which David's various lies and shames, arising from his tortured misunderstandings, come down on his head. Roth is a great dramatist of the tortured soul. It's one way in which he's much stronger than Saul Bellow, who isn't good at building dramatic plots. Sara's story, and the story of her sisters is not unusual for the time, and provides the historian and interested reader with rich details of how these Jewish immigrants lived and worked in the ghettos of New York. Sara recognized her father's dominance over the family, and struggled to make a life for herself, which her sisters did not have the strength to do. She said plaintively, "I don't want to sell herring for the rest of my days. I want to learn something. I want to do something" (Yezierska 66). She broke away from the family and suffered incredible hardships to educate herself, and in addition, these experiences give great insight into the personal history of the people, and of the time. The two protagonists compare in that they come from a background of fear and poverty in the poorest sections of New York City and its surrounds. They contrast, other than the fact that they would be male and female, in that Sara would be far older than young David as the book begins. Where David is alone in his fears, Sara would be in a house overflowing with family. Sara finds no solace in her mother or her father, yet David, who finds no love from his father, would find a haven with his mother. David, as a result of his father's insistence, learns English and must express it at every turn, as stated in the first two chapters as his father speaks on page twenty-five, "Say it in English, you fool!" You hear the anger, the contempt in his father's voice for the people he had worked for and for the son that he would have there. David, understandably, is intimidated by his father's presence, and his father's ravings. The fact that he is a pawn in the majority of the first two chapters is almost distressing. This is where the two characters compare, for both are consistently used as pawns toward gaining the money that affords existence. David in his retrieval of the wages his father nearly forfeited in his anger toward his colleagues and employers. Sara compares quite well with David in her desire to provide the food for her mother's table in the absence of a truly caring father. Sara and David also compare in the fact that they wish to find a true place for the two of them in the world that is so new, America. Regardless of the age gap separating the two characters, the two compare in their use of the English language. The comparatives continue in their expression of fear of the unknown and their willingness to do anything for those they care about, even if they fear their fathers' wrath. Another comparison is their heritage. The two both come from Jewish backgrounds. They both live in the same general area, and both would in fact suffer from being immigrants primarily. The fact is seen time and again in the work they do, the people they meet and the neighbors who share their street. You can see, even early in the text, how young David has come to depend on English. David sees it as a method for survival when he ends up running for what he thinks is his life to find himself at the police station, hopelessly lost. He understands just how important it is for communication in the city where he lives. David realizes the importance there is in pronouncing things the way they should be, in place of the Yiddish his mother would use. For Sara, English is spoken more easily, even more often, as though it was always part of her despite her origins. Yet she easily manages to speak one language and then the next without missing a breath, and perfectly without thought. This is so very opposite David, who struggles with the accent and the pronunciation at every turn. Yet it would be their desire to fit in with the neighbors around them and the way of life that they have had thrust upon them that is centrally realized in the actions Sara takes to work with her neighbors and David who plays with his neighbor Yussie only because there would be no others that would do so, regardless that Yussie would eye him with contempt as often as he would with friendship. And language is depicted in these works as a protagonist too. This is quite natural and logical as the main characters in these books are basically immigrants. Broken English, heavily accented words come from the mouths of those living in David's neighborhood, and he would articulate in quite the similar manner. Yet, they would speak in no other way, attempt to articulate no better than they were already, whereas in Sara's home and where she sells her wares, English is crisp, almost upper class in nature, as though it were easily managed to speak in such fashion. English in David's life is an obligation he obviously despises, one imposed upon him by elders whom he fears more each day. Roth handles dialect very well. Sometimes it's a pain to get past the distorted spelling, but it can also be a pleasure. He "does" Italian-immigrant, Irish-immigrant, as well as Jewish-American street speech. It's often funny, always vulgar. It's set in contrast to David's lyrical inner world in the same way as the crude speech of plebian Dubliners is set against Stephen's inner life. Here's Joyce's Stephen seeing classmates clowning at the edge of the water: An ecstasy of flight made radiant his eyes and wild his breath and tremulous and wild and radiant his windswept limbs. -One! Two! . . . Look out! -O, cripes, I'm drownded! -One! Two! Three and away! -Me next! Me next! -One! . . . Uk! -Stephanoforos! His throat ached with a desire to cry aloud Here, at the climax of Call It Sleep, David's consciousness-or, rather, unconscious inner life-is set against the crude street language of various ethnic groups: Terrific rams of darkness collided; out of their shock space toppled into havoc. A thin scream wobbled through the spirals of oblivion, fell like a brand on water, his-s-s-s-s-ed- "W'at "W'ut "Va-at "Gaw blimey" "W'atsa da ma'" One dominant theme that flows through the two books and it would be the theme of resignation. The feeling as though there is no method toward escape in the way things would be. Regardless of the age difference in the two protagonists, their struggle to stay out of the dirt that is endless poverty is one they share on a daily basis. Where David fears the world around him, Sara would wish the world rather than the home she reviles with every step she takes out of it. Sara, who despises those men the lack of their backbones against her father when they come courting her elder sisters. Her pain at seeing her elder sisters shrink further and further into themselves as their father becomes more and more possessed by the need for their ability to bring the money in for his support. David's pain is quite the different experience than Sara's. His pain is in the fact that his father would do such abusive things to him. The abuse he would suffer from his father, both verbal and physical, would seep from him in ways that were unintended. "Don't tell me that! I don't want to hear it! He's no son of mine! Would he were dead at my feet!" (Roth; Call It Sleep; p. 84) The fear that consumes David is one that is felt to his soul, and reflected in the actions and reactions his mother manages. In the Bread Givers the Smolinsky family endured impoverished lifestyles and countless hardships. For example, After an incident between Reb and the landlady (which made Reb revered), boarders began to occupy the Smolinsky family's place, the three sisters Bessie, Fania, and Mashah had jobs, and they could purchase things they could have never afforded. These possessions included butter, regular towels, "toothbrushes[] to brush [their] teeth with, instead of ashes", and "separate knives and forks instead of" eating "from the pot to the hand as [they] once did" (29). Today, these are belongings that must people have in their everyday lives. To have them marvel at these material things further emphasizes the poor life they were so used to. There are many themes that seem to intertwine in Bread Givers and Call It Sleep, only one of them would appear to be despair. You feel pain and despair through the two texts expressed often from the varying perspectives of youth in David and in Sara, who would be so much older. You feel it in their actions, their emotions, their reactions, and their passion toward the things that they do. David is a collector, he collects small bits of useless paper as his father would say, Sara is the opposite, preferring to sell her bits of treasure to manage grander things that are helpful for the family. The most interesting understanding of the two texts would be in the fact that poverty is addressed as only something a family must learn to go around or to escape from. Yet they don't have similar methods for that escape. One is to run from the family that surrounds them and the siblings they care so very much for and the other is done by remaining solitary. Sara, who wishes only to get as far away as she can from her father's machinations as it is possible. David appears the lost one staring into life as though it were behind a pane of glass. Here they both compare and contrast in intriguing and almost intertwining themes of poverty, of fear, of pain and anguish and of a desire to find a place that they can accept and accepts them as well. The immigrant narrative is quite similar to the minority experience, especially when dealing with discrimination and exploitation. However, a demarcation exists between the immigrant and minority experience where assimilation is concerned. These narratives veer from each other for several reasons: the social contract with America in regards to the American dream and the ability of immigrants to become acculturated before assimilation can take place. Therefore, after analyzing numerous immigrant and minority texts a trend takes place whereas immigrants are more able to overcome the difficulties of adaptation of the narrative more easily, whereas minorities are not. Faith and belief in the American dream can be directly related to the ability to assimilate into the dominant culture as a result an immigrant encompasses a mythic, almost religious, vision of America. For thousands of years people have left their home country in search of a land of milk and honey. Immigrants today still equate the country they are immigrating to with the Promised Land or the land of milk and honey. While many times this Promised Land dream comes true, other times the reality is much different than the dream. Immigration is not always a perfect journey. There are many reasons why families immigrate and there are perception differences about immigration and the New World that create difficulties and often separate generations in the immigrating family. Anzia Yezierska creates an immigration story based on a Jewish family that is less than ideal while Roth's saga is a powerful example of the turmoil that is created in the family as a result of the conflict between the Old World and the New World. References: Roth, Henry. 1989. Call it Sleep. Allaying Book Publications. 2nd Ed. Yizierska, Anzia. 1972. Bread Givers. National Publication Trust.. Read More