Abstract
Unlike the majority of E. L. Doctorow’s novels which present a revisionary account of specific periods in American history, his first novel, Welcome to Hard Times, deals with history in a more general and allegorical manner. The narrator of the novel is preoccupied with the nature of history and historical phenomena, and this preoccupation pervades the whole book, from which a philosophy of history can be derived: history is cyclic and it tends to repeat itself in a deterministic fashion. Since Doctorow was an American Jew who was influenced by the Jewish tradition, in this paper, Welcome to Hard Times is placed within a Jewish context and read from the perspective of this multilayered tradition. Hence, the novel’s philosophy of history is compared to the historical vision of the biblical book of Ecclesiastes, which also espouses a cyclic conception of history, thereby demonstrating that their visions are almost identical. In Doctorow’s novel, however, this cyclic view also serves to repudiate the American Dream and its associated ideas of progress and optimism. It is further shown that the two aforementioned books also share a fatalistic and nihilistic attitude toward life, and their response to the Problem of Evil and innocent human suffering is a pessimistic one, arguing that there is no justice and moral order in the world.
Highlights
The historical vision in Welcome to Hard Times is contextualized within the Jewish tradition and interpreted as a reiteration of the philosophy of the book of Ecclesiastes
The speaker in Ecclesiastes rejects the classic response of the Prophets to the Problem of Evil and repudiates the concept of retributive justice and provides a much bleaker and darker response to the theodicy issue and bitterly laments that human injustice often goes unpunished while righteousness is not necessarily always rewarded: The wise have eyes in their head, but fools walk in darkness
Welcome to Hard Times espouses a cyclic view of history which is fully in accordance with the worldview promulgated in Ecclesiastes, the only book of the Bible which rejects the linear view of history
Summary
Literature Review The critical works on Welcome to Hard Times have mostly focused on the ways that this novel has subverted the traditional Western narrative and undermined the conventions of this genre Under this broad concern, the philosophy of history implicit in this book has been obliquely discussed, yet this philosophy has rarely been connected to the Jewish roots of Doctorow and his vision. Apart from this precipitate comment, the authors have not encountered any other critical work that has analyzed the novel‟s philosophy of history within the context of Jewish tradition Another theme discussed in this paper is that the historical vision of Welcome to Hard Times results in the denunciation of the American Dream with its associated ideas of progress and optimism. The only person who might have fulfilled the role of the savior is perhaps Jimmy who becomes the exact opposite of a Messiah by turning into the terrifying Bad Man that everyone had despised and dreaded
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