Final Paper, "Don't Wanna Be Your Slave"

God, Sarah, the Jewish faith, Jan Bzik, passionate lust, the ten commandments, the Polish robbers, Wanda, and true love. In Isaac Bashevis Singer's novel, “The Slave,” Jacob is a slave to all of these people and entities throughout the story. It can be seen that Jacob never becomes a free man in certain respects because he always submits himself to powers other than his own. Jacob remains in some sort of captivity throughout the entire novel, initially his slavery is characterized by disgust and a sense of betrayal. As the story goes on however, he becomes a slave for the right things and his sense of captivity turns into one that is full of enjoyment and passion. This can be illustrated by analyzing how he acts in responses to each one of the captivities he is involved in. In the beginning of the narrative the reader learns that Jacob is a slave for Jan Bzik. He farms and milks the cows for the village down the hill. As Jacob begins his introductory prayer he says, “ 'Thou hast not made me a slave,' he paused. Could these words be spoken by him? He was Jan Bzik's slave.” This illustrates Jacob's unusual position regarding his enslavement in the village. His thoughts are not the typical reflections one would expect to see from a slave, in that they characterize a forgetfulness of his condition. It is as if he has to remind himself he is bound in captivity. Later on in the book when Jacob is called down from the mountain for harvest time he again has an atypical sense of enslavement. “How painful it was for the slave to leave his solitude! He had already scratched forty-three commandments and sixty-nine interdictions into the rock.” Jacob's sense of duty and faith paint and interesting picture when it comes to analyzing his thoughts. He recognizes his enslavement yet he does so in a way that seems to contradict his faith in himself. Arguably Jacob shows more discipline to his religion than his enslavement by Jan Bzik. It seems he would rather scratch commandments into a rock by himself than be a slave for the people of the village. It can be seen that he gets more satisfaction by being a slave to God, than a slave to Jan Bzik. He does so in a way that seems to allow no room for free will, he feels as if all is preordained and he is a slave to his life. The way he feels about Wanda and the lust he has for her at the beginning of the story carries a similar kind of feeling. “Yet Jacob knew that all this had been contrived by Satan; throughout the day he missed her and could not overcome his longing.” Jacob has essentially illustrated a recognition that he has no free will. Where he should see passion for Wanda he characterizes it as lust because it came from Satan and not himself. He sees himself, again, as a slave to sin, where he should see himself as a slave for love, much like Wanda does, “She had fallen in love with the slave at first sight...It was said that the slave had bewitched her.” Others in the community see Wanda as a kind of slave to Jacob. The difference is that Wanda embraces this kind of love as a beneficial power. She illustrates this when she says, “I have done this for you” on the night they sleep together. She submits herself to Jacob and recognizes that he is in control of the situation. Wanda basically becomes a slave to Jacob, who is a slave to his religion, she shares the same sense of duty to him that Jacob shares to God. Jacob's devotion to his religion develops as his relationship with Wanda progresses and only until he fully devotes himself, does it start to be beneficial. Initially Jacob feels that Wanda is pulling him away from his relationship with God, he sees his actions as blasphemy and his feelings for her are like “... a snake, passion lay curled at the bottom.” This image presents the passion for Wanda as a negative force, one that make him feel shame for his actions, because he is still so much a slave for God, he has not yet recognized the captive power of love. As the story goes on, however, and the two of them move to Pilitz, and Jacob begins to recognize this power. “Teaching others, Jacob realized, one also instructed oneself; correcting Sarah's behavior, answering her questions, eradicating her errors, many problems about which he would not have otherwise thought were clarified for him.” His teaching of both Sarah and the children in the town have allowed Jacob to embrace his religion in a more profound way. In his relationship with Sarah he is bringing himself closer to God because he is talking about it and thinking about it with someone other than himself. His slavery is no longer characterized as lonely, but rather as fruitful because he can share it with someone else. In these ways he is becoming a slave for the right reasons, characterized as compassion and discovery. His attitude begins to shift because he begins to recognize his own power to accomplish things and not seeing his actions manifestations of uncontrollable sin. Jacob sees that he can do good on his own in the light of God, he is his own man, still a slave, but one with power. After Sarah's death and Jacob's escape from the Cossacks he get a clears sense of how he should feel about his condition as a slave. He meets with the ferryman named Waclaw, who talks to him about being a slave, like a man is to his wife or like cows are to their herders. He says, “When I hear such things, I say to myself Waclaw not you You'll be nobody's slave...Here at the ferry I'm free as a bird. I think what I please.” Waclaw's sense of freedom does not come from being able to do anything you want, rather it comes from one's thoughts. He sees this as a true manifestation of freedom one's will to think for themselves. Jacob several times cursed his thought and his desires. He saw them as slave like because he did not recognize his own power for having them. The way Jacob should have been thinking all along is presented to him by the Jewish elder he meets towards the end of the novel. When Jacob inquires about what he should do about his son and his wife he learns a valuable lesson about the ways of the world. Jacob insists he has no power to act any other way. Then the elder tells him, “It seems it was not, Free will exists, but so does foreknowledge. 'All is foreseen but the choice is given.' Each soul must accomplish its task,or it would not have been sent here.” This is not unlike slavery as it illustrates a kind of submission to a higher power. The key however, comes in analyzing how one should feel about his life on this earth. Jacob should have understood his free will was not a burden but rather a catalyst for accomplishing his task in life. When Jacob dies his bones are taken to be buried on top of the hill where they also find Sarah's remains. Upon discovering her body the people of the village recognize Sarah as a Jew. “The cemetery had ordained it; Sarah was a Jewish daughter and a sanctified corpse.” The foreknowledge of the universe and God are prevalent in this passage as communicated to the reader. One sees that although people make choices in their life they must always be willing to submit to a higher power. This submission should not be looked upon negatively because in light of Jacob's life. His accomplishments became more profound though this sense of ordainment. It can be seen that Jacob transforms throughout the course of the novel he never stops being a slave he just learns how to be one correctly. He knows this from the beginning, “His years of enforced slavery had been succeeded by slavery that would last as long as he lived.” This slavery that would last the rest of his life should be seen as a manifestation of his own self imposed slavery. His constant submission to the higher power is a choice he makes throughout the book. However, after talking with the elder he sees that he had the power to choose all along. He wanted to be a slave to God, he wanted to be passionate with Wanda, and he wanted to live life as a good person. The important realization by Jacob comes at the end of the book when he sees the power he has had his whole life. “Sometimes Jacob was amazed at the burdens he required his body and his soul to carry.” This sense of amazement is spot on with how Jacob should feel about his choices. The decisions he made as a slave, whether it was to God, Wanda his lust, or the Polish robbers, were his own and because they were is own they were the right choices and they lead him to led a life full of servitude and reverence for his family and all things holy.

We Are The Furnance

When I was first assigned to be part of the Furnace group I did not know quite what to expect, and after reading the chapter for the first time I really didn't know what to expect. But when we started meeting as a group I kind of got an idea of what Frye was talking about. It may have been destiny that Orsi was part of our group, because his infatuation with Beckett fit perfectly in with the group theme. Frye argues for a kind of complete sacrifice of the self, a burning of everything until there is nothing left. The furnace is the perfect image for this as it gets rid of impurities and offers a more profound return. I can't help but think of the low brow movie "Friday" in which the father of Craig gives him life advise saying, "You win some you lose some but you live, you live to fight another day." I think this a great representation of how we should feel about the furnace. Going into the furnace like Job of the Bible and Jacob of the Slave did is a fight they lost, but they did live, and they lived to fight another day. Without this deprivation of their luxuries, their lives would not be as profound. Because it is when you are down at rock bottom and the world has taken it all, that you have the chance of a lifetime to win everything back and live, yes live to fight and fight for another day, it's the only way.

The Word, Slave

Before I began to read the Slave Dr.Sexson told us that one good paper topic might be explaining why the novel was entitled, the Slave. I thought about this and decided I would try to investigate this notion. So upon beginning to read the novel I had a pencil by my side and every on every occasion I saw the word "slave" I underlined it. I was surprised to see that the word did not appear as often as I thought it would, perhaps less than two dozen times. I have yet to total these numbers up. However just recently as I was looking over my markings in the book. I noticed an interesting pattern emerging. I feel that Jacob never ceases to be a slave at any point in the story, he merely becomes a different kind of slave. Another notion I started to pick up on during this process was how Jacob's life in this book is very similar to a Dark Romantic Quest. For my capstone with Dr. Morgan this is the major theme we are dealing with as it occurs in texts such as the Hobbit, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and Harry Potter. In any case the quest has several elements that I found to exist in Jacob's journey in the course of the novel. One being that the quest must be an impossible one, one where the quester would not succeed without the intervention of a supernatural force. Another aspect is overcoming death, or in Jacob's case a great loss. The most important element of the Dark Romantic Quest, is the sense of inevitable and irreplaceable loss that characterizes the end of the journey. I have found all of these elements or at least similar comparisons in the novel, and I feel my paper will be about one of these two ideas, either the word the slave or Jacob's quest as a Dark Romantic manifestation.

Furnace Script So Far

-Furnace
Scene One opens with Jacob and Job running away from Cossacks they have torn clothes and are dirty
Jacob: “What will I do now we just escaped, from captivity?”
Job: “We are merely runaway slaves, we have lost almost everything”
Jacob: “My wife is dead and my son has been taken away, I have nowhere to go”
Job: “My wife still alive we can try to get to my house for refuge”
Jacob: “God willing we will find salvation there”
Job: “Before I was taken away, we had a prosperous house with many servants we can recover there”
Jacob: “It's good to warm my bones beside the fire”
Job: “Let us make way to the woods, our journey will begin there, come quickly”
Jacob and Job stumble off stage into the forest
Scene Two Jacob and Job are wandering in the Garden of Eden they see Eve and Adam under the tree of knowledge
Job: “Hello good people have you any food?”
Jacob: “We have been traveling many miles and are hungry”
Adam: “There is only the tree of knowledge, but its fruit is forbidden”
Job: “Why is it forbidden?”
Eve: “God has demanded so”
Jacob: “Does not want us to prosper? We should eat of it.”
Job: “We should obey God’s word be has provided us with so much to disobedient would be heresy”
Adam: “Job is right to say so”
Eve: “The serpent told me that we would be equal with God if we ate of it”
Jacob: “If that is true eating the fruit would make us stronger and we would no longer suffer.
Job: “Everything God has created so far has been great, is this not one of his creation also”
Adam: “This is right to assume perhaps we should eat of it”
Eve picks up the pomegranate: “Thanks be to the Lord” and takes a bite, passes it around and all eat it
Adam: “I feel different now” looks at Jacob and Job “I know everything from Alpha to Omega”
Eve looks up wide eyed: “Ma ma lou jo”
Jacob turns to Job “These two now seem changed, perhaps we should go by a way in which there is NO ecstasy” they leave

A Furnace Inside

With the presentation date coming closer everyday, I prepared for my group meeting by reading the Fourth Variation: The Furnace in Frye's book. At first I was a little overwhelmed, mostly by all the allusions he makes to numerous texts. I had a hard time following his train of thought as he referenced a diverse amount of works. So initially I skipped to the second section of the chapter where he begins to talk about the imagery related to the furnace. He characterizes it as having two different qualities a one and a negative one. I agreed with this notion because as I see it a fire can be both destructive and creative. The positive image of the furnace he illustrates to be, "purgatorial, a crucible from which the redeemed emerge purified like metal in a smelting operation." The negative is, "the traditional hell which is a furnace of heat without light." I think that both of these sides of the furnace can be analyzed in the light of Job. Arguably like metal, Job had to experience the heat and pain of the furnace in order to emerge as a purified person. I think that the positive is that he learned about God's ways and became a more humble person as such. And yes I do think that the negative is essential to this transformation. Job was able to experience the light in a more profound way because he was deprived of it for so long. So like a hot piece of metal being taken out of the darkness of the furnace so Job is taken out of his suffering by God and shown the light.

Prodigal Son

My notes from class last week read, verbatim...

"Good Stories violate you
attack on your structure of explanation
Parabole

BE INSPIRED

Prodigal Son"


I have recently had some time to reflect on this notion of being violated from a story, yesterday I posted up in my room for an hour and a half just to finish "The Slave." In certain respects I felt violated and asked myself why did Sarah and Jacob have to die at such times in their lives. Sarah during after child birth, Jacob on his return to Pilitz. I felt violated because so much could have happened differently to make it a happy story. But in some respects it was a happy story, the love Jacob and Wanda had for each other was nothing short of inspirational. The fact the Jacob was able to raise his son to become a prosperous man, was simply fantastic. But why the suffering? That might be cause for some inspiration too, the fact that they had to endure so much yet were able to come back from it stirred something in my being. I in a sense reflected on my life thinking. If I could have loved and been devoted to something as much as Jacob was, to Wanda and his religion, then I can do the same in my life and receive a kind of unmatched satisfaction.

I'll now switch gears to talk about the last line of my notes from class I have posted. "Prodigal Son" is a song by the Rolling Stones, which appears on their 1968 album Beggar's Banquet. I listened to it again and pulled up the lyrics, and sure enough it was about chapter 15 in Luke. Each part of the song's verses end with either the line, "And that'll be the way to get along" or "Cause that is no way to get along" This kind of commentary gets at the notion of being violated. It almost seems to ask which is right and which is wrong, in the case of the story it is what is wrong that occurs, and that's what make it a good story, because it attacks us and complicates things, making us question the world, like we should.

Here is the complete lyrics for those who are not familiar.

Well a poor boy took his father's bread and started down the road
Started down the road
Took all he had and started down the road
Going out in this world, where God only knows
And that'll be the way to get along

Well poor boy spent all he had, famine come in the land
Famine come in the land
Spent all he had and famine come in the land
Said, "I believe I'll go and hire me to some man"
And that'll be the way I'll get along

Well, man said, "I'll give you a job for to feed my swine
For to feed my swine
I'll give you a job for to feed my swine"
Boy stood there and hung his head and cried
`Cause that is no way to get along

Said, "I believe I'll ride, believe I'll go back home
Believe I'll go back home
Believe I'll ride, believe I'll go back home
Or down the road as far as I can go"
And that'll be the way to get along


Well, father said, "See my son coming home to me
Coming home to me"
Father ran and fell down on his knees
Said, "Sing and praise, Lord have mercy on me"
Mercy

Oh poor boy stood there, hung his head and cried
Hung his head and cried
Poor boy stood and hung his head and cried
Said, "Father will you look on me as a child?"
Yeah

Well father said, "Eldest son, kill the fatted calf,
Call the family round
Kill that calf and call the family round
My son was lost but now he is found
'Cause that's the way for us to get along"
Hey

Jacob, The Slave?

Having just got through the first section of the book, entitled "Wanda", I'm contemplating this notion of Jacob and his existence as a slave. Obviously he was a literal slave in the beginning of the book until the Jews ransomed him back and took him to Josefov. But I question his underlying feelings and actions as he farms and herds for the village. He loved what he did he even loved his lust for Wanda, waiting to see her come over the hill. He admired her in a way only unconditional love could accurately describe. I think an important aspect to notice is how Jacob is a slave to himself in the light of his worship. There are many instances when I was getting mad at Jacob for being to helpless. He seemed to attribute all occurrences and feelings in his life to the creator not his own humility. In these ways he became a slave on his own accord, the village had nothing to do with his mental enslavement. He comes across to me as a very intelligent and thoughtful man, but not when it comes to Wanda. He seems to put too much faith in his religion and not love. When it is clear to anyone reading this Wanda has nothing but love and admiration for Jacob. The fact that he did not wait to hear if his family had been killed before lying with Wanda illustrates, I think, his recognition of the love they share for each other. And going back to his place in Josefov showed him what an empty existence he had before he loved Wanda. He literally could not function right without her. At times he felt repulsed by his previous actions regarding her, but through it all she never left his mind. I think one line can sum up how Jacob should think of Wanda and all other characters in the book alike. "The evil ones destroyed, the Jews created." This thought comes to Jacob as he sits waiting to meet the woman who many become his new wife and he looks around the new house that has rebuilt. He should see that Wanda is not evil but like a Jew, in that she helped create so much when she was with Jacob, she helped him learn more about his religion and its values. She made him a better Jew and he made her a better person. Now that they have just run off together I'm curios to see what this relationship will develop into.