The First Seven Years

“Feld, if anything, was a practical man.” 

Feld sees himself as a practical, business-minded man who refuses to make decisions on the basis of sentimentality. His practicality in this case is part of what drives his decision to serve as a matchmaker for his daughter. Later events prove that he is not as practical as he believes, so this phrase becomes ironic on further reading.

“Yet he could not help but contrast the diligence of the boy, who was a peddler’s son, with Miriam’s unconcern for an education. True, she was always with a book in her hand, yet when the opportunity arose for a college education, she had said no she would rather find a job. He had begged her to go, pointing out how many fathers could not afford to send their children to college, but she said she wanted to be independent. As for education, what was it, she asked, but books, which Sobel, who diligently read the classics, would as usual advise her on.”

This quote reflects the conflict between Miriam and Feld over what it is to be educated and the difference between immigrant notions of success and the notions of first-generation children of immigrants. For Miriam, education does not have to be formal in nature. It represents systematic engagement with ideas that a person can derive even from books. Feld, who is motivated by the notion of the American Dream, believes that education can be a measure of his success if he becomes a father who can afford higher education for his daughter. Education, in other words, is not something one pursues for its own sake. 

“As for Miriam, what possible harm for a working girl in an office, who met only loudmouthed salesmen and illiterate shipping clerks, to make the acquaintance of a fine scholarly boy? Maybe he would awaken in her a desire to go to college; if not—the shoemaker’s mind at last came to grips with the truth—let her marry an educated man and live a better life.” 

Feld’s perspective on Miriam’s option shows that he does not respect the work of the lower middle-class men Miriam encounters in her workplace. His idea that marriage to an educated man is an adequate aspiration as opposed to a woman securing her own education also offers insight into his notion of gender roles: from his perspective, a woman’s identity can be determined by her husband’s.

“I am a business man.” 

Being a business man is an important part of how Feld sees himself. Feld makes this statement during his negotiations with Max over dating Miriam. To call himself a businessman while negotiating the date with Max shows that his important decisions in life are shaped by a focus on material benefits or even the idea that such interpersonal interactions are transactional. Still, his actions throughout the story reveal that values other than material ones drive him. Feld lacks some insight into who he really is.

“Later, as he entered the store, he was startled by a violent clanging and looked up to see Sobel pounding upon the naked last. It broke, the iron striking the floor and jumping with a thump against the wall.” 

A last is a form used to create a shoe, so it is an essential tool of the shoemaker’s trade. Malamud uses this careless destruction of the last to show the unusual emotional response of the usually quiet and careful Sobel to Feld’s matchmaking between Max and Miriam. The last is an important symbol for Sobel’s emotional states and his devotion to Miriam.

“Feld could trust him with anything and did, frequently going home after an hour or two at the store, leaving all the money in the till, knowing Sobel would guard every cent of it. The amazing thing was that he demanded so little. His wants were few; in money he wasn’t interested—in nothing but books, it seemed—which he one by one lent to Miriam, together with his profuse, queer written comments […]. [H]is daughter, from her fourteenth year, read page by sanctified page, as if the word of God were inscribed on them.” 

Sobel’s two interests—books and Miriam—characterize him as a man who has little concern for material things, a contrast to some of the values of Feld and the central values of Max. There is also some dramatic irony here. By this point in the story, it is obvious that there is some connection between Miriam and Sobel. While the reader is able to see this, Feld is not.

“What keeps him here? why does he stay? he finally answered it that the man, no doubt because of his terrible experiences as a refugee, was afraid of the world.” 

This moment is one of those during which the reader is meant to call Feld’s insight into human nature into question. His misreading of Sobel makes it clear that his focus on tangibles prevents him from understanding others with other motivations. This quote is also one of just a few explicit mentions of the impact of the Holocaust on a Jewish character. Note that Feld is also here acknowledging the difference between his experience as a Jewish man and immigrant and that of Sobel. This awareness of the difference motivates Feld to have an attitude of pity for Sobel rather than of respect for Sobel’s work ethic.

“It surprised him to learn that the boy was not studying to be either a doctor or lawyer but was taking a business course leading to a degree in accountancy. Feld was a little disappointed because he thought of accountants as bookkeepers and would have preferred ‘a higher profession.’ However, it was not long before he had investigated the subject and discovered that Certified Public Accountants were highly respected people.” 

This telling quote gives the reader insight into how Feld measures status. It is not enough that Max be in college and on the way to entering the middle class. Feld wants a potential suitor for his daughter to have the status of being a professional. Feld’s adjustment of his estimation of Max’s status shows the impact of American materialism on his calculations.

“He has no soul. He’s only interested in things.” 

In dismissing Max as a potential suitor, Miriam makes clear that her values are distinct from Feld’s values. While Feld values markers of material success, Miriam believes valuing intangibles is an important mark of good character. As a daughter who has received consistent support from her father and is the beneficiary of his decision to move to another country, she has that luxury. Her difference of opinion with her father shows the difference between their identities as immigrant and child of immigrants, respectively.

“He read, he said, to know.”

Sobel’s explanation for why he engages in so much reading indicates that he values intangibles such as knowledge for their own sake. He is thus a man in a different mold from Feld and Max. His values align more closely with Miriam’s.

“Feld had a sudden insight. In some devious way, with his books and commentary, Sobel had given Miriam to understand that he loved her. The shoemaker felt a terrible anger at him for his deceit.”

This moment is one of several epiphanies Feld has later in the story. There are several clues throughout that there is something significant about the exchange of books between Miriam and Sobel, so Feld’ previous blindness to that significance is a way of characterizing him as a man who sometimes lacks emotional intelligence.

“How strange and sad that a refugee, a grown man, bald and old with his miseries, who had by the skin of his teeth escaped Hitler’s incinerators, should fall in love, when he had got to America, with a girl less than half his age. Day after day, for five years he had sat at his bench, cutting and hammering away, waiting for the girl to become a woman, unable to ease his heart with speech, knowing no protest but desperation.” 

This moment of pathos is one of the few direct reflections on the impact of the Holocaust on Sobel. Feld takes these experiences into account in his second reaction to the notion of Miriam and Sobel dating; his willingness to surrender his dreams for his daughter in part because of Sobel’s experience of the Holocaust shows his sense that he bears some moral responsibility towards survivors. 

“And all his dreams for her—why he had slaved and destroyed his heart with anxiety and labor—all these dreams of a better life were dead.”

Feld should be crushed by his resignation to the idea that Miriam will not move up in economic class if she marries Sobel, and indeed, he is sad in this moment. When Feld leaves, however, he does so with strength and purpose, an indication that his willingness to give up on this part of his American Dream is a healthy return to values that are part of his identity.