In Limbo: Immigrant Children and the American Dream

Abstract

Forced to work before their teens, some aged rapidly, cursing their families and fates; others rebelled, fleeing homes, rejecting religion, and attempting mainstream assimilation. Generational conflict, cultural clashes, and family strife-common concerns in immigrant fiction-are central to four representative urban novels: Amzia Yezierska's Bread Givers, Michael Gold's Jews Without Money, Pietro Di Donato's Christ in Concrete, and Mario Puzo's The Fortunate Pilgrim. A comparative analysis highlights certain similarities among these works. All are set in pre-World War II New York and revolve about lower class Italians and Jews. Since the older immigrants cling to their memories and customs, it is their more impressionable children, torn between two worlds, who provide the drama. In the traditional sense, these are Bildungsroman, education novels, charting the protagonists' loss of innocence and their painful initiation into a new life. With the exception of The Fortunate Pilgrim, the points of view are those of adolescents, doubly burdened by their age and foreign backgrounds. Uprooted from native cultures, vulnerable to changing values, they battle to survive in hostile urban environments. Despite these similarities, however, the characters' fates do differ. While the boys, Paul Di Donato (Christ in Concrete) and Michael Gold (Jews Without Money) become disillusioned with America and reject its promise, the young women, Sara Smolinsky (Bread Givers) and Octavia Angeluzzi (The Fortunate Pilgrim), partially fulfill their dreams in their adopted land.