Introduction
Call It Sleep by Henry Roth is a novel, though it is also, to an extent, an autobiographical work of literature first published in 1934, during the Great Depression. The author exquisitely depicts the trials and tribulations of a poor Jewish immigrant family trying to adjust to life in a foreign country during an economically difficult period before World War I. With different degrees of success, the characters of the book deal with issues of love and hate, acceptance and rejection, freedom and suppression, truth and lies.
Life of Jewish Immigrants in America
The plot of the book starts in 1907, the time of mass migration to the US, then perceived by many immigrants as the Golden Land. This idealized view of America attracted hundreds of thousands of people into the country. In one popular song about immigration to America, Long Live the Land of the Free, the U.S. is described as “sweet heaven of freedom of u.s. the oppressed” (Rumshinsky and Small). Indeed, people overcame great hurdles and traveled to the U.S. with hopes of opportunity and freedom – virtues that were unavailable to them in their countries of origin. Such positive sentiments were expressed in many pieces of art, but immigrants retained their cultural roots by singing about America in Yiddish, as the narrative of the “Long Live” shows. Although many immigrants viewed the U.S. as the “land of the free,” many of them were soon disillusioned with the challenging reality of being a stranger in society.
Albert Schearl, a Jew who has come to the U.S. from Europe in search of a better life, is a representative of this trend. He came to America hopeful for change, but his dream has hardly come true as Albert keeps changing jobs, mostly due to being bad-natured and violent. However, poor working conditions and living environments endangered Jewish people of different personalities. Anti-immigration sentiments affected people’s view of the arriving workers, while Jewish people, eager to join the workforce, accepted dangerous and low-paid jobs to assimilate. In some cases, the neglect of American businessmen to the conditions of immigrant workers led to horrible tragedies. The fire at the Triangle West Company took the lives of more than 100 immigrant women, which later spurred a fight for human and worker rights (“From Haven to Home”). While the industrial side of the Jewish immigrant’s life is not as present in the novel, the tensions between Jewish people and assimilated Americans are evident.
First-generation immigrants dreamed of a better fate for their children, which is vividly depicted in Avalon, the film directed by Levinson. It is devoted to the same topic as Roth’s book – the life of an extended Jewish family, the Krichinskies, who immigrated to America at the beginning of the twentieth century. Before coming to the US, the five Krichinsky brothers were violinists by trade but had to work as wall hangers to earn a living in America. Neither of them wanted his children to do such a job. The brothers and their children pursued the American dream and achieved it, but at the cost of breaking family ties.
Unlike the Schearls who were in America all by themselves, the Krichinskies were an extended close-knit family with scores of siblings, aunts, uncles, and in-laws to lean on in good and bad times. This was the norm for Jewish people, and they were used to it. However, the new life in the U.S. gradually eroded the Krichinsky family ties, and the relatives moved away from each other, physically and emotionally. In comparison to the Krichinskies, Albert Schearl had no one to rely on in America; that is why it was more difficult for him to adapt to the new country. This lack of adjustment caused the violent outburst directed at his wife and son as well as strangers.
Roth’s novel starts with the description of a seemingly happy event – the Schearls reunite after a long separation. However, there is little happiness in this reunification as the husband is consumed by a suspicion that Genya has been unfaithful to him, and David is not his child, but that of a non-Jew. Although the specified plot twist does not occur until the second book, the presence of mistrust and the tension that is building up until the final reveal creates an impressive setup for the catharsis, thus allowing Roth to make a crucial point about the problem of relationships and the impact that they produce on shaping one’s identity and defining one’s resilience toward the hostile environment in which an immigrant is forced to live. Albert and Genya’s complicated relationships constitute a large part of the plot. Kazin writes, “Albert’s war against wife and son sounds an alarm at the very opening of the novel that will keep wailing through these three lives until the last possible moment in the novel” (x). Due to the lack of affection between them, Genya directs all of her love to her son. It is only natural as the young woman gets neither her husband’s support nor his affection. The lack of love that Albert shows to his wife and child makes the relationship between the latter two even stronger. Although David is more open to learning English and communicating with peers than other immigrants, Yiddish is closer to his heart. David and his beloved mother use this language to talk to each other.
The topic of languages is essential in the novel as in it, Roth presents Yiddish as the language for communication within the family, unlike English, which is needed for speaking to strangers. This is unsurprising as many Jewish people coming to America spoke no English. The Jews who entered the USA at the end of the nineteenth century or earlier tried to imbue fellow believers arriving later with American values. This was done with a variety of texts in both English and Yiddish, such as the translation of the Constitution (Konstitushon fun di Fereynigte Shtaten und Deklereyshon of Indipendens). This artifact, similar to other translated texts, shows the role of the language in Jewish people’s assimilation. Art and music, like the described above Long Live the Land of the Free, served as bridges between the culture of Jewish people and their new home to which they pledged their loyalty. They also show the idea of transformation, not coexistence, being the central focus of immigrants’ education.
For Young Schearl, the adjustment to America did not always go smoothly. David excels at school, despite his teacher’s harsh treatment of the pupils, and the fact that the education is reduced to studying the Hebrew Bible. Here, one can see a stark contrast between Jewish people’s assimilation and preservation of cultural and religious heritage. While some Jewish people wished to give up their history for the U.S. opportunities, others try to balance their own culture with the environment’s nationalistic views. David, for instance, seems to be a genuinely devout Jew, unlike his mother, who observes Jewish rituals as tradition, not out of a sincere religious belief. The fact that David also attends an N.Y.C. school distances him from Schearl even further, creating a gap that will be very difficult to cross for both of them due to the internal struggle and the external pressure of American society. The observed detail allows exploring the problem of acculturation and the hostility toward Jewish immigrants in the U.S. on the specified time slot. Having to face segregation and discrimination, Jewish people also faced a much more insidious threat of their culture dissolving and being engulfed by the American one. The novel portrays the internal struggle of the lead characters trying to come to terms with their cultural legacy and at the same time embrace the culture of the U.S. very vividly, thus building quite a believable portrayal of Schearl and Genya.
Growing up, Albert and Genya’s son faces more complex events and feelings he cannot understand and does not know how to deal with them. Young Schearl has a sexual encounter with a girl who almost forces David’s hand into her genitalia. He is deeply ashamed of what has happened and is left with a vague feeling that sex is bad; he tries to avoid everything connected to the topic of sex.
At one point, David becomes friends with Leo, a Polish boy who is a Christian. The Jewish youngster is fascinated by how different Leo is from him and how independent his friend is. The latter shows David a rosary, and although he suspects this object represents something forbidden, he longs to own the rosary. Leo exploits David’s longing for the beautiful thing and asks him to bring his female cousins to a secluded place. Gullible David agrees, and his cousin, Esther, meets Leo in a cellar for petting. The moral contrast in the described scene is truly striking; thus, the author sets the tone for the further relationships between the characters, juxtaposing corruption to innocence.
When David realizes what has transpired, he is so shocked that he seems to be going mad. He creates a story that he is not his mother’s son but a child of an affair with a non-Jew. David’s father finds out his son has a rosary, which, to him, is a confirmation that his wife was not faithful to him. David escapes another of Albert’s violent outbursts and flees from home. Distraught, the boy goes to the railroad tracks, attempting to see the light created by touching the rail with a metal object. This event can be interpreted as David trying to call upon God’s power to cleanse his sins. David is burned from the electrocution, and a policeman brings home the barely alive boy to his parents’ horror. Albert feels pity for his son, probably the very first warm feeling for David. The unfortunate accident at the end of the novel seems to bring the Schearls a bit closer together.
The issue of identity has been interwoven into the narrative quite effectively, with the problems related to cultural assimilation, the threat of identity loss, the impact of the dominant culture, and the struggle to retain the essence of the Yiddish community being depicted in the novel very accurately. The struggles of the leading characters are easily understood by the reader as the emotional appeal lies at the core of the narrative, creating tension and emphasizing the urgency of the main characters to find themselves. The connection between citizenship and identity as portrayed in the novel makes for a very impressive case of the problems that a minority group faces in an environment that cannot be deemed as hostile, yet does not allow for a substantial amount of freedom in self-expression, either. In the novel, a drawn line between the American community and the Jewish ghetto sets the stage for the analysis of how segregation transforms the social perception of people from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, thus making the cultural gap nearly impossible to overcome and creating the prejudices and misconceptions that would define the future struggles for minority groups for generations.
Thus, the novel points to the challenges that an ethnic and religious minority is most likely to face when settling in a completely new environment. While not denying the fact that people can retain their culture and beliefs while being exposed to a culture that is much more dominant, Roth portrays the challenges of maintaining cultural integrity and national identity very accurately. Social ostracism and other dangers that prejudices toward Jewish people imply for the specified demographic at the time are depicted with chilling accuracy in the novel, which makes a case for the promotion of diversity as the foundational principle of humanism.
Conclusion
Call It Sleep is a book about the complicated and often unhappy life of Jewish immigrants in the country once viewed as the Promised Land, about growing up without fatherly support, but with much motherly love. The book speaks about attempts at adjustment and assimilation of adults and children in a foreign country and finding one’s footing and place in the world. Despite hardships first and second-generation Americans had to endure, they laid much of the industrial and economic foundation of the country to go through two World Wars.
References
- “From Haven to Home: 350 Years of Jewish Life in America.” Library of Congress. Web.
- Kazin, Alfred. Introduction. Call It Sleep: A Novel, by Roth. Farrar, Strau.s. and Giroux, 2013, pp. ix-xix.
- Levinson, Barry, director. Avalon. Columbia Tristar, 1990.
- Rumshinsky, Joseph, and Solomon Small. Long Live the Land of the Free. Hebrew Publishing Company, 1911. Web.