Point of View The story is told through an objective, third-person narrative, and unfolds in a rigidly objective tone. There is no hint of the narrator’s personal voice as each character is presented. With the exception of the graveyard scene that concludes the story, the narrator does not explain the character’s thoughts, but presents only…
Category: Literature
The Man to Send Rain Clouds – Themes
Creativity In her short story “The Man to Send Rain Clouds,” Silko perceives creativity as a source of strength for Native Americans, a theme that recurs in her later works. In particular, Leon’s strength lies in his ability to creatively combine Indian rituals with Catholic rituals. He does not strictly follow the Indian ways, but…
The Man to Send Rain Clouds – Characters
Grandfather See Teofilo Ken Ken is the brother-in-law of Leon and a minor character in the story. Like old Teofilo and Leon, he also believes in following Indian ways, and he helps his brother-in-law any way he can. Leon Leon is Teofilo’s grandson. He manages to integrate American Indian ways and Christian ways; he is…
The Man to Send Rain Clouds – Summary
‘’The Man to Send Rain Clouds” is set on an Indian reservation in the American Southwest, with its wide mesas (plateaus) and arroyos (ravines). As the story opens, Leon and his brother-in-law, Ken, find an old man, Teofilo, dead under a cottonwood tree. They ritually paint his face and take his body, wrapped in a…
The Magic Barrel – Analysis
Publishing “The Magic Barrel” in 1954, Bernard Malamud was at the beginning of his career, and near the beginning of a brief and remarkable period in the history of Jewish-American writing. For perhaps a decade, from the mid-1950s to the mid1960s, the American literary imagination seemed to have been captured by a series of books…
The Magic Barrel – Setting
Malamud’s “The Magic Barrel” was first published by the Partisan Review in 1954 and reprinted as the title story in Malamud’s first volume of short fiction in 1958. The period between those two dates was an eventful time in American history. In 1954 the United States Supreme Court unanimously rejected the concept of segregation in…
The Magic Barrel – Symbolism, Point of View & Idiom
Point of View Point of view is a term that describes who tells a story, or through whose eyes we see the events of a narrative. The point of view in Malamud’s “The Magic Barrel” is third person limited. In the third person limited point of view, the narrator is not a character in the…
The Magic Barrel – Themes
Identity Malamud’s Leo Finkle is a character trying to figure out who he really is. Having spent the last six years of his life deep in study for ordination as a rabbi, he is an isolated and passionless man, disconnected from human emotion. When Lily Hirschorn asks him how he came to discover his calling…
The Magic Barrel – Characters
Leo Finkle Leo Finkle has spent the last six years studying to become a rabbi at New York’s Yeshivah University. Because he believes that he will have a better chance of getting employment with a congregation if he is married, Leo consults a professional matchmaker. Leo is a cold person; he comes to realize that…
The Magic Barrel – Summary
Part I Leo Finkle has spent the last six years studying to become a rabbi at New York City’s Yeshivah University. After hearing that he would have better job prospects if he were to get married, Leo decides to consult a matchmaker. Matchmakers, also called marriage brokers, were common in many European Jewish cultures, as…