Bernard Malamud (1914 – 1986)

American novelist and short story writer, best known for his novels The Natural and The Fixer.

The Prison was first published in Commentary magazine in September 1950 and then in the collection The Magic Barrel in 1958.

Available to read online here.

This is the third of eight stories in the volume Points of View to be given the style classification by Moffett and McElheny of Biography, or Anonymous Narration – Single Character Point of View. Their introduction continues: “A point of view, naturally, is both a physical vantage point and a personal way of perceiving events, What we mean by “single character point of view” is that the author takes us only where a certain character goes and permits to know only what that character is thinking and feeling.”

Spoiler alert – if you haven’t read the story yet and want to before you read the summary of it below, stop now!

The Prison

#Tommy Castelli is in prison; a prison of his own making and in accord with his environment. At least, that’s what it feels like, every day having to work in the candy shop that his father-in-law paid for to keep him on the straight and narrow. He runs it with his wife Rosa; they don’t love each other but they muddle through. Tommy had a bad start in life, holding up a liquor store; he escaped justice but allowed himself to be bought into the marriage and running the store – sixteen hours a day of sheer boredom and frustration. He even consented to becoming Tommy, whilst his real name is Tony.

Recently a young girl has started coming into the store and buying tissue paper for her mother, who apparently encourages other children to make toys and dolls out of it. One day he realises that whilst his back is turned, she steals two candy bars. His initial reaction is to challenge her, but he also feels sorry for her, seeing something of himself in her behaviour. It also reminds him of his Uncle Dom, who is in prison, and whom he misses. Still, he can’t let her keep on stealing from him, so he devises various plans of catching her out, making her realise that he knows what she’s doing, and encouraging her to stop before the habit gets out of hand. But nothing he does seems to prevent her regular thefts.

It’s not until Rosa catches her thieving that things escalate quickly. She grabs the girl and shakes her within an inch of her life; identifying more with the girl than his wife, Tommy slaps Rosa across the face until he draws blood. The girl’s mother arrives, and when she discovers what her daughter has been doing, she too administers corporal punishment on the girl. But in a moment of total defiance, the girl still finds time to poke her tongue out at Tommy as her mother manhandles her away.

This claustrophobic, depressing yet simple little tale takes the notion of imprisonment and applies it both to the reality of what Tommy escaped in his youth, but it has been replaced by a virtual prison; and what could become the future for the girl if she doesn’t change her ways. There’s an overwhelming sense of regret in the story; regret for the “dreams and schemes” he never achieved, regret for the loss of freedom, regret that he married the “plain and lank” Rosa, regret that the girl’s future could become the same as his, even regret that he changed his name. There’s also regret that Tommy didn’t prevent the girl from stealing in the first place, as his virtuous attempts to shame her into decency are thrown back in his face.

It’s tightly, darkly written; a sparse combination of sentences that make for one of the shortest stories in this collection. It paints a severe picture of down-at-heel life amongst the poorest in society and how crime and violence are an inevitable consequence of the poverty. “Time rotted in him, and all he could think of the whole morning, was going to sleep in the afternoon.” The story does not offer any possibility that life will change for the better; as such, it comes across as a negative, pessimistic piece.

The next story in the anthology is the fourth to be classified by Moffett and McElheny as Biography, or Anonymous Narration – Single Character Point of View, The Stone Boy by Gina Berriault.