Bread Givers Summary Paper

Bread Givers

The 1920s was a hard and painstaking era in American history. Many family's throughout New York lived in absolute poverty and saved week to week just to make enough to eat and pay the rent. Many Immigrants flooded the streets desperate for work while living conditions were harsh and many starved. This is just the case of the novel Bread Givers, written by Anzia Yezierska. In this story we follow Sarah Smolinsky, an ambiguous independent Jewish girl "trapped" by her religious traditions. Her story unfolds as she breaks away from her controlling parents and moves to work and go to school for hopes of being a school teacher. Her life is not easy and she must endure countless sacrifices just to get by. With the determination of her will she graduates college, but returns to her father to take care of him in his old age. In the begging of the story Sarah hates her father, and everything about him, and this relates to her hatred of his God and his traditions. From hatred of her father she refuses her Jewish traditions and religious beliefs to make a better life for her self in America. After accomplishing her goals, she can't ignore the emptiness of her fathers love. Sarah yearns with a wanting to be loved by her father. She begins feels remorse for him, and starts to remember her past and where she came from, returning slowly to her once lost traditions.

In the begging of this novel Sara Smolinsky, her Parents, and sisters Mashah, Bessie, and Fania, all live together in a small cluttered apartment. Her father, a Hassidic Jew, does not work to provide for his family, but instead preaches his family with strict spiritual guidance by studying the Torah as he pleases. Her father justifies his life style as his belief in the superiority of men. He proclaims as it says in the Torah "it says in the Torah that women came from man, and therefore women are nothing without man" (Bread Givers 15). Sarah's father is an immigrant who holds Jewish traditions as the highest importance of life. The role of Sarah's father strikes her hard and creates an enormous hatred for him. Sarah has been Americanized and feels strongly that her father should be the provider for the family. Instead her father lives off the work of his four girls as they slave away to make ends meet. Sarah sees this as the main reason of why her family is in poverty and is in such pain. If her father would work then at least some of their misery would lesson. She appears to view her father as a leech, as worthless man, who has lives in the days of the past. "I can't respect a man who lives off the blood of his wife and children" (Bread Givers 130). Sarah appears to believe that his idea of family does not fit the American recipe for being successful and more important happy. America has a standard cultural, "nuclear family", of a providing man, a caring mother, and student children. Her apparent hatred for her father's preaching's reflects how she feels about her Jewish religion and traditions. This influences her enough to turn away from her upbringing for an attempt to better her self.

In Jewish tradition the father has final say over the marriage of his daughters. Sarah's sisters all had chances to marry the ones they loved, but because of their father, they ended up being married for her father's political reasons. Sarah saw her sister's ideals of love being crushed one by one. Her father had married Masha off to a man who lied to be a diamond dealer, and sent her into an even further whole of poverty. Her father accomplished even worse as he married off Bessie, the oldest daughter to a house hold of countless children to spend her days taking care of "devil children", and working the fish market, with a Zalmon the fish peddler. The father only did this in order to gain money to create his own business. Sarah saw her sisters true loves be crushed and then their arranged marriages turn out to be horrible. Sarah appears to blame all her and her sisters pain and suffering on the blind selfishness of her father. This appears to have sparked the independence inside Sarah's tiny body. She makes a pack in her self that she will marry for love and not for politics or to better herself. This appears to make Sarah realize that her father has ruined all their lives, and is one of the major reasons why she runs away from home. She appears to have already seen her life before her in an unhappy, poor marriage with nothing to show for her self if she stayed under the wing of her father.

As the great depression rampages through the Smolinsky's life, Hatred from Sarah grows for her father, and she makes the decision to run away and better her life by going to college. During this time she makes huge amounts of sacrifices and only comes out a live because her enormous will. Growing up Sarah had already started working at the age of ten selling herring in the busy streets, which seemed to have given her the keen ability and will to endure countless hours of work. She quickly rented a room, started night classes, and managed to work ten hour days ironing clothes for a sweat shop. "Workweeks averaged 60 hours--10 hours every day except Sunday." (Liberty 733). Her hatred for her father and her fear of always being in poverty appears to drive her self to accomplish her goals. During the great depression jobs were scarce and jobs for women were even harder to find. The only jobs most women could find were in either on the street selling goods or in the sweat shops, sowing, or ironing clothes. Sarah had lived this life style from seventeen all the way

...