The Unknown Citizen Made Known

THE UNKNOWN CITIZEN MADE KNOWN:
ANTI-HERO IN THE FICTION
OF BRUCE JAY FRIEDMAN

E. Suresh Kumar

“He was married and added five
            children to the population
Which our Eugenist says was the right
            number for a parent of his generation
And our teachers report that he never
            interefered with their education...”
–W.H. Auden, “The Unknown Citizen”, Collected Short Poems, 147.

W. H. Auden’s poem, “The Unknown Citizen” depicts the anonymity of the common man in our age. However, Auden does not go into the ethical complexities of the unknown or anonymous average man. It is in modern fiction that the psychological, cultural or ethical trauma of the “Unknown citizen”, is explored and revealed. The consequence of this exploration gave birth to a new concept of here in the modern critical tradition, namely the “anti-here”.

Before attempting to examine the typical anti-hero in the fiction of Bruce Jay Friedman who is a well-known American Jewish writer and an acknowledged Black Humourist, it is necessary to have a glimpse of the characteristic individuation of the anti-hero”. We are familiar with the significance of such terms as “the presence”, “the burlesque”, “the grotesque” and “the absurd”, as they have come to be used in modern critical discourse. There is good reason to consider these notions as the forerunners of the anti-hero. To quote M. H. Abrams:

A term sometimes applied to the typical protagonist to signify his discrepancy from the heroes of traditional tragedies, is the anti­hero: a man who, instead of manifesting largeness, dignity, power, and heroism in the face of the fate, is petty, ignominous, ineffectual, or passive.
(Abrams 1971 : 176)
The first scholar to examine in a relatively detailed manner, the concept of the anti-hero and also his place in modern American fiction, was Ihab Hussan in his book Radical Innocence: Studies in the Contemporary American Novel. Hassan states that “the modern hero... is an anti­hero” and points out three chief characteristic features of the anti-hero in modern fiction (31). One of them relates to the presence of a self-torturing or self-destructive element in the anti-hero. “The dagger is turned inward, the most refined tortures are released for the self’ (22). The second concerns the anti-hero’s search for identity. The third important feature of the anti-hero characterises his conduct in a work of fiction: in the modern novel, man seems to overcome the contradictions of his experience, its destructive or demonic element, by assuming the role of the anti-hero, the rebel-victim. The rebel denies without saying ‘No’ to life, the victim succumbs without saying ‘Yes’ to oppression” (31).

In fact the anti-hero is not the villain of the traditional critical canon, but a protagonist who is precisely an inversion of the traditional hero. To put it differently, an anti-hero, is one typical species of hero who has the potential to become a hero but fails to do so for some reason or the other and as a result becomes a butt of ridicule. A number of factors like Oedipus complex, inferiority complex, insecurity and alienation, hostile social and cultural environment etc., may be responsible for this. The anti-hero, in his attempt to attune himself to his environment emerges as an absolute misfit. His predicament elicits a comic response from the reader though for himself it is as profoundly tragic as for King Lear or Hamlet.

However, one important virtue of the anti-hero is his naivity and unhypocritical vulnerability. In fact, every common man in the modern world -- particularly in the Western world which has experienced the horrors of two great wars -- is an anti-hero in his own right. This is applicable to the common man alone because there is no dearth of heroes and supermen -- most of them self styled -- amongst us even in this age of democracy and technology.

The assumption underlying this paper is that, using this conceptual drop of anti-hero, it is possible to understand the fiction of Bruce Jay Friedman. Although he wrote three major novels viz. Stern (1962), A Mother’s Kisses (1964), The Dick (1970), this paper confines itself to an analysis of Stern which is Friedman’s first novel. Stern is the hero (i.e. anti-hero) of the novel. His very name has ironical implications because he is not at all and cannot be stern with anything, anyone or anywhere; he is just the opposite. He is a “tall, soft man” married to a “fragrant, long-nosed” woman whom he had loved at college. Mild and anxious by nature, Stern represents the anonymous millions in the modern world who are engaged in sundry nameless jobs.

Stern is a Jew by birth. His father was a silent small man who supported a family of wife and two children with difficulty because he worked as a cutter of shoulder pads, a low-paid occupation. The relationship between Stern and his father was just matter ­of-fact. His mother was ambitious, unlike her mild husband, and was very careful about her appearance. Her influence on Stern, when he was a\boy, led to a mild Oedipus complex in him. This slowly grows with him and he develops a sexual fantasy fancying himself to be a Jewish Don Jaun moving daringly with New York blondes. In reality he has no guts to approach any modern American girl because he suffers from the complex of discrimination meted out to Jews, not only in America, but all over the world. Likewise after marriage, in his relationship with his wife he feels sexually insecure because of a deeply hidden suspicion that he is not masculine enough to please his wife. He constantly suffers from baseless suspicions that his wife makes love to Jose, a modern dance instructor.     Thus his Jewishness and his sexual fears are the two important factors which contribute to his gradual emergence into an anti-hero.

In a fit of emotion Stern shifts his residence from a safe, familiar and friendly Jewish urban locality in New York to a suburban gentile area. This adds to his troubles. The neighbours do not allow their children to play with Stern’s children because the latter are Jews. One day in a quarrel between Stern’s wife and a heavy Italian man (Kike man) she is pushed into the gutter in a shameful condition. When Stern comes to know about this, he feels that he should avenge the insult inflicted on his wife. But he is afraid of the Italian man and the other neighbours. Thus he develops an ulcer which spares him from the need to confront the “like man”. Subsequently Stern joins a rest-home for five weeks.

Even his stay in the rest-home does not pass without making him feel guilty. Observing the other inmates who are suffering from serious ailments and problems, he thinks that his illness is not serious to justify his stay the rest-home. However, his experience in the company of two youngsters who play mischief with a Puerto Rican girl has a favourable influence on Stern. As he always suffers from a sense of alienation, and tries to identify himself with the mainstream of American life by liberating himself from his Jewish stigma, he passively joins the boys in hurting the girl. When she abuses all of them he feels gratified because that girl recognised him as part of the youthful mischief of the Americans. This, again, is a typical trait of the anti-hero.

After Stern returns home, his suspicions about his wife’s fidelity haunt him. Furthermore his masculine need to avenge his wife’s imagined insult by the ‘Kike man’ adds to his psychological tension. In a fit of artificial emotion, he goes to the house of the Italian and challenges him. They move into the yard, where Stern receives a severe blow on his ear from the like man and in retaliation Stern deals a mild, ineffectual blow to his enemy and returns home shivering in fear with a bleeding ear. This episode again proves Stern to be an anti-hero.