Author: Anzia Yezierska
Chapter: 3-6
Today we discussed our second segment of chapters of the book, Bread Givers. The focus of today was mainly on wealth and on those who have it versus those who don't. After talking about it together, I realized a few things about this book.
Many of the characters are what I call 'extremes'. They have a personality that can be summed up in two-three lines and everything about that character can be derived from there. Take the characters Jacob Novak and Berel Bernstein, for example. Berel was Bessie's suitor, a man of obvious wealth and horrible attitude. He wore his money 'on his sleeve', brandishing it about for all to see. On the other hand, Jacob is also a wealthy man, but Anzia describes it more as a 'quiet wealth'. He didn't wear gold or boast about the amount of money in his pocket, but one could still tell he was well off simply by the way he carried himself. Though both of these men have money, they are so obviously different. Pulling from my experience from another novel, The Great Gastby, I would divide these two between 'New Money', being Berel, and 'Old Money', being Jacob.
Another thing is that Anzia seems to work very hard at showing the reader exactly who they should like and dislike within the story. The father is, of course, a part of the latter. Perhaps it is because I am female that I find his derogatory comments so frustrating. It was as though I was once again on the elementary school playground, demanding to play basketball because no, I did not have cooties and no, boys were not automatically better than girls. And then there are the sisters, the poor girls who want nothing more than to fall in love with a man with no fear that they could not marry him. These are the main points I have noticed about the novel so far and I look forward to reading more into the story.
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