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“The First Seven Years” is a short story that Bernard Malamud originally published in 1950. The story subsequently appeared in several collections, including The Magic Barrel, which won the 1959 National Book Award for fiction.
- Author Biography
- Plot Summary
- Characters
- Themes
- Style
- Historical Context
- Critical Overview
- Criticism
- Sources
- Further Reading
Bernard Malamud was born on April 26, 1914, in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants Bertha (Fidelman) and Max Malamud. His father kept a small grocery store where he worked seven days a week to keep the business afloat. Malamud always wanted to be a writer and began writing stories when he was eight or nine. In 1932 he enrolled ...
Feld the shoemaker and his assistant Sobel are working at their benches on a snowy February day. Feld thinks about Max, a young man he admires for his dedication to pursuing his education. He contrasts Max’s determination with the lack of interest his daughter Miriam shows in education. At that moment Max brings in a pair of shoes for repair. Feld ...
Feld
Feld is a Polish Jewish immigrant shoemaker. He has lived in America for many years although he spent his youth in a village in Poland. He has labored hard to establish his business and has had some modest success—he can afford to send his daughter to college, for example. However, his years of hard work and the worry of maintaining a business have damaged his health. Five years earlier, he suffered a heart attack; another mild attack keeps him confined to bed for three weeks. Although occasi...
Miriam Feld
Miriam is Feld’s nineteen-year-old daughter, a “large-framed girl with a well-shaped body, and. . .
Media Adaptations
1. Malamud’s novel The Natural (1952) was adapted to the screen in a 1984 Hollywood movie directed by Barry Levinson, with an all-star cast including Robert Redford, Robert Duvall, Glenn Close, and Kim Basinger. a fine open face and soft hair.” Miriam is intelligent and reads many books, especially those that Sobel passes on to her. But Miriam has no desire to go to college, preferring to get an office job and be independent. She is quite capable of standing up to her father, and does not con...
The Material v. the Spiritual
Although Feld wishes the best for his daughter and wants her to find a husband who can provide her with a better life, he takes account only of material values. He thinks of himself as a practical man, which is why he favors Max as a husband for Miriam. Max is studying to be an accountant, developing knowledge of financial matters. But that is all he is interested in. He has no depth. Miriam is soon aware of this, and tells her father that Max has “no soul.” In contrast, Miriam, who seems to...
Topics for Further Study
1. In “The First Seven Years,” Miriam appears to be more modern and Americanized than her father (she insists on her independence and takes no notice of his advice). What problems might second-generation immigrants, whether Jewish or otherwise, face in terms of the conflict between the culture their parents identify with and the culture that they, the children, were born and raised in? Might a second-generation immigrant be more likely to have difficulty forming a secure sense of personal ide...
The American Dream
The American Dream is the belief that anyone, no matter what their background, can move up the social ladder to wealth and success if they work hard enough and show sufficient grit and persistence. The Dream has often been embraced most enthusiastically by immigrants. Although Feld, an immigrant with a precarious yet reasonably prosperous business, knows that his own station in life is not likely to improve, he cherishes the idea of the American Dream for his daughter. He envisions upward mob...
Point of View
The story is told by a limited third person narrator from the point of view of Feld. No direct insight is given into the minds of Max, Miriam, or Sobel. They are revealed only by their words, their actions, and through Feld’s perceptions. Telling the story from Feld’s point of view means that he becomes a sympathetic figure; the reader understands his thoughts and feelings. But there is also irony in the method. Part of the effectiveness of the storytelling technique lies in the fact that the...
Language
Malamud helps to create the atmosphere of an immigrant’s experience by using constructions that suggest the speaker has not mastered English in a standard way. Some scholars argue that the syntax of the language used by Feld and sometimes also by the narrator resembles Yiddish, the vernacular language of European Jews, which developed in the ninth or tenth century out of a fusion of Hebrew, Aramaic, and German, and includes elements of Romance and Slavic languages. However, there is no genera...
Polish Jews and the Holocaust
“The First Seven Years” is set in New York City in 1949 when the world was still coming to terms with the horrors of the Holocaust. The Holocaust refers to the killing of six million Jews in death camps by the Nazis during World War II. Two characters in the story are Polish Jewish immigrants. Feld remembers his life as a youth in a Polish Jewish village, or shtetl, and he appears to have lived in America for some years. He may have arrived at the end or shortly after the first wave of Polish...
Compare & Contrast
1. 1950: Televisions, refrigerators, and other consumer gadgets begin to appear on the market. For many people, these items and others like them are considered luxuries.Today:The luxury items of the 1950s are considered essentials, and consumers now rush to buy sophisticated personal computers, cell phones, and satellite TV dishes. 2. 1950: In the wake of World War II and the dawn of the nuclear age, the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union dominates global politics.Today:...
Malamud and Jewish American Literature
When “The First Seven Years” was published in The Magic Barrel in 1958, following closely on Malamud’s The Assistant (1957), it confirmed that Malamud was one of a number of Jewish writers who, from the end of World War II to the 1950s, were making their mark on the American literary landscape. Saul Bellow, for example, published his novella Seize the Day in 1956 and Henderson the Rain King in 1959. Another Jewish writer, Philip Roth, published his collection of short stories Goodbye, Columbu...
With its Jewish immigrant characters living in dingy surroundings and burdened by the weight of life’s cares, “The First Seven Years” is a representative Malamud story. It has been highly regarded ever since its publication in Malamud’s collection of stories, The Magic Barrel (1958). For example, William Peden commented in the New York Times,“[Mala...
Bryan Aubrey
Aubrey holds a Ph.D. in English. In this essay, he considers the character development of Feld in Malamud’s story “The First Seven Years.” Although “The First Seven Years” is one of a number of stories by Malamud that feature Jewish characters who live in New York City, there are few details that locate the story in a specific place. These details help to give the story the plain and timeless quality of the folk tale or Biblical narrative. It is indeed loosely inspired by the Genesis story of...
What Do I Read Next?
1. Malamud’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Fixer(1957), is set in anti-Semitic, pre-Revolu-tionary Tsarist Russia. The persecuted protagonist, Yakov Bok, is imprisoned for a murder he did not commit, but through his ordeal, experiences moral growth. 2. Malamud’s The Complete Stories(1997) contains all fifty-five short stories that Malamud wrote over a period of forty-five years, arranged in order of composition. 3. Jewish American Literature: A Norton Anthology(2000), edited by Jules Cham...
Susan Sanderson
Sanderson holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in fiction writing and is an independent writer. In this essay, she points out that Bernard Malamud’sshort storynot only includes references to the story of Jacob, Rachel, and Laban, but also incorporates the experiences of American immigrants in the early twentieth century. As the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants who came to the United States early in the twentieth century, Bernard Malamud understood the obligation he carried as a second-generatio...
Abramson, Edward A., Bernard Malamud Revisited,Twayne, 1993. Alter, Robert, “Ordinary Anguish,” in New York Times,October 16, 1983, Sec. 7, p. 1. Bernstein, Richard, “Storyteller at the Top of His Form,” in New York Times,September 10, 1997, p. 7. Peden, William, in New York Times,May 11, 1958, p. 5. Richman, Sidney, “The Stories,” in Bernard Malam...
Field, Leslie A., and Joyce W. Field, eds., Bernard Malamud: A Collection of Critical Essays,Prentice-Hall, 1975. ———, Bernard Malamud and the Critics,New York University Press, 1970. Lasher, Lawrence, Conversations with Bernard Malamud,University Press of Mississippi, 1991. Sio-Casteneira, Begona, The Short Stories of Bernard Malamud: In Search of...
May 24, 2021 · Bernard Malamud’s “The First Seven Years” was initially published in the Partisan Review (September–October 1950). In 1958 it was published as the first story in Malamud’s first collection of short fiction, The Magic Barrel.
Written in 1950, "The First Seven Years" was published in Bernard Malamud's first collection of short stories, The Magic Barrel, in 1958. The story is about Feld, a Jewish shoemaker who seeks a suitable husband for his daughter Miriam.
“The First Seven Years” is a short story by Bernard Malamud that appeared in his 1958 collection The Magic Barrel. It’s about a Jewish shoemaker who wants a better life for his daughter, either through education or a suitable marriage.
When "The First Seven Years" was released in The Magic Barrel in 1958, shortly after Malamud's novel The Assistant (1957), it solidified Malamud's standing among a group of Jewish writers...
Written in 1950, "The First Seven Years" was published in Bernard Malamud's first collection of short stories, The Magic Barrel, in 1958. The story is about Feld, a Jewish shoemaker who seeks a suitable husband for his daughter Miriam.
