Reading Responses
Yezierska, Bread Givers.
"I knew now that I was alone. I had to give up the dreams of any understanding
from Father as I had to give up the longing for love from Max Goldstein. Those
two experiences made me clear to myself. Knowledge was what I wanted more than
anything else in the world. I had made my choice. And now I had to pay the price.
So this is what it cost, daring to follow the urge in me. No father. No lover.
No family. No friend. I must go on and on. And I must go on - alone." (208)
"My work goes on Sundays and holidays. I'm like a soldier in battle. I
can't stop for visiting, even with my own family." (178)
"I'd do anything for you. I'd give you away my life. But I can't take
time to go 'way out to Elizabeth. Every little minute must go to my studies."
(171)
"They were again the life of my life. […] Nothing was so beautiful
as to learn, to know, to master by the sheer force of my will even the dead
squares and triangles of geometry. I seized my books and hugged them to my breast
as though they were living things." (201)
"I want knowledge." (230)
"Stupid yok! Always wasting yourself with wild loves. I'll put a stop
to it. I'll freeze myself like ice. I'll be colder than the coldest. I'm alone.
I'm alone." (230)
"If I must go on alone, I should still have silence and the high stars
to walk with me." (220)
--------------------------------
We see that from the time Sara leaves home in order to pursue her education,
she has had to face all trials and hardships alone. Before her flight, she had
her family to rough it out with. Even though they were barely surviving and
in their "worst poverty", they "sat around the table, together,
like people" (173) to eat and share. This perpetuating loneliness is replaced
with her pursuit of education. What Sara cannot achieve socially or financially,
she makes it up by religiously ("worse than Father with his Holy Torah"
[178]) pursuing and cumulating knowledge. Her whole being is guided by the need
to acquire knowledge, as she believes that knowledge can free her and better
her life. She thrives on the beauty of learning and lives and breathes through
her books. The isolation and alienation that she experiences from the people
around her drives her further into her private and lonely sphere of grammar
and geometry.
Many a time, Sara finds that knowledge cannot completely fulfill her. Her inadequate
social life and inability to bond with her peers dawns upon her that "it
[isn't] character or brains that counted [but] only youth and beauty and clothes
- things [she] never had and never could have" (220). Her struggle for
recognition does not go disregarded in the end. She wins the friendship and
respect of the older and wiser professors and she also wins an essay competition.
But it is also interesting to note that with the money that she wins from the
competition and her newly acquired salary, Sara 'buys' back her life and dignity.
With the money, she is "changed into a person" (237), a "prisoner
just out from a long confinement in prison" (242).
More often than not, in man's struggle for recognition as a human and as an
equal, education provides that stepping stone and liberating force. It is only
through education and knowledge that man can be judged equally and is freed
from being reduced to stereotypes of his social status, skin color, blood or
religion. We can also see this in the Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.
The character Shiny, is set apart from the other blacks because he is educated
and articulate. He is then removed from that color biasness that perpetuates
other colored men. In Bread Givers, education and knowledge liberates.
Because of her desire to learn and to be an educator, Sara finds the strength
to break free from her father and the traditional role of Jewish women. With
education, opportunities and different facets of knowledge become available
to Sara (eg. Psychology) and this enables her to re-examine life and lead her
"out into the beginnings of wider places, newer light" (231). Thus,
Sara is enable to discover her self-worth and individuality through the pursuit
of knowledge.
--Michelle Thompsen
|
