A Patriarchal World Essay -- essays papers

A Patriarchal WorldJohn Bodnar says it wellhead when he suggests that the center of everyday life was to be found in the family-household. It was here that past values and present realities were take rootd, examined on an intelligible scale, evaluated and mediated. This avowal implies that the immigrant family-household is the vehicle of assimilation. I will take this assertion a footfall further and examine more specifi listy the powerful role of the time-honored father within Anzia Yezierskas book scrape Givers and Barry Levinsons film Avalon. Yezierskas theme vividly depicts the constraint of a patriarchal world, while Levinson illustrates the process of assimilation and the immigrant, forthwith Ameri weed, family and its decline. In this paper, I will exemplify how the patriarchal father, Sam Kochinsky (Armin Mueller-Stahl) and insurgent Smolinsky atomic number 18 the key determinant of the dynamics by which the family assimilates.In assimilation, you are said to co nform to your surroundings. Assimilation is a process by which you reconcile the ideal with reality. Dealing with virtually three generations of an entire Jewish American immigrant experience, Levinson illustrates not necessarily the merging of two cultures, but possibly the tainting of authenticity, darken (memories of) the familiar-the villain being the television. The happy community of extended family is, in the end, supplanted by the glowing idiot box that kills conversation and turns its suburban audience into zombies. In Yezierskas work, she epitomizes the struggle between the Old World and the New World. The patriarchal father, representing traditionalistic Jewish ways, and Sara Smolinsky, the heroine, struggling against her father with the desire to reconcile with reality. In Bread Givers, Yezierska symbolically depicts Sara as the immigrant parting her ways as she embarks anew on the journey that was given to her when she arrived by which to transform her life-deal ing with the daily transformation as she struggles to hold together the wants of society and her (families) authenticity in these days of wakeless troubles. The head of the family, insurgent Smolinsky is an immovably Orthodox Jewish rabbi, who lives by the hallowed Torah, and expects his family to do the same. His reign all over the family reinforces Old World, traditional values and beliefs. Reb holds to the Torah belief that if they women let... ...ggested an adaptation in the hopes that Jules would simply have a breach life than that of a wallpaper-hanger. In putting television in dictate a New World, Levinson portrays how a cheap, gaudy, poor substitute somehow seduced and enchant the family. Perhaps Levinson is saying that although it may be the easier to converge, assimilation is too costly. On the other hand, you have Reb whose stubborn beliefs and male superiority coupled with a passive wife allow him to claim control over his daughters lives. Resentment is qu ite damaging and separates families as well. Either way you savor at it the outlook is favorable for neither assimilation nor isolation. And so I conclude in saying that the patriarchal father has an especially heavy role and while he needs the strength found in Yezierskas character, Reb, (in order to hold the family together) he must also be unstrained to adapt to a changing reality. Immigration is neither a call for assimilation nor isolation. Individuality is important, but why resist change when you can better yourself in the process.BibliographyLevinson, Barry. Avalon. 1990.Yesierska, Anzia. Bread Givers. Persea Books New York, 1999.