Mordecai Richler

The focus of the paper is to explore the position and identity of the Jew in a Jewish-Canadian context of the mid-twentieth century Montreal Ghetto with reference to Mordecai Richler"s select novels. It also explains how history and literature view the position of the Jews, the ambivalent tagging and untagging of Jewish characteristics and labels, gentile views and Anti-Semitism. It analyzes with reference to the select works how each generation copes the structurally imposed ghetto life of the Jews in Canada with their traditional set of values and how they explore their spaces.

The definition of Jewish-Canadian identity is far from being an easy task: in the Jewish-Canadian identity two cultures meet, namely the more ancient Jewish culture and the more recent Canadian one, on Canadian soil.
The first part of this dissertation aims at analysing and discussing the main aspects of these two cultures in order to highlight their similarities and differences in the attempt to define a Jewish-Canadian identity, which is necessarily hyphenated, because of its dual nature. The distinctive trait of such identity, whose features will be explored in the first part of my thesis, lies precisely in the word ‘hyphenated.’ After an examination of the main traits of Canadian and Jewish history and literary traditions, it will clearly appear that even though there is an identity proper to Jewish-Canadians, this identity is definitely not steady and it will be widely questioned in the course of the analysis. I will look at this complex issue through a specific and circumscribed lens: Mordecai Richler’s novels. I deem this to be a fertile way to tackle this theme as Richler is
not only a renowned novelist, but also a journalist and satirist, who represents an icon of modern Canadian written production. The importance of his writing is not simply found in
his excellent novels: as a matter of fact, his characters, whose features will be further analysed from many points of view, are expressions of this non-unitary but distinctly Jewish-
Canadian identity.
To bring this multi-layered identity into focus, I will deal with the representation of Montreal from the writer’s viewpoint, not simply because it is an essential feature in Richler’s writing but also because it represents a special example in the Canadian
panorama due to the considerably vast presence of Jewish-Canadians; in the second chapter I will deal with hyphenated identities in Richler’s novels, particularly focusing my attention on two novels, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and Barney’s Version, but I will draw a mapping of Jewish-Canadian identities also basing my thesis on many heterogeneous novels
by Richler, such as The Incomparable Atuk, St. Urbain Horseman, Salomon Gursky was here, and Son of a Smaller Hero.
The third and last chapter will eventually deal with
Richler’s choice to represent anti-heroes as his novels’ protagonists instead of traditional Jewish heroes, and the purpose and importance of the employ of humor, satire and black humor in his novels.

In the decade of the 40's in Montreal, social limitations of having Jewish ancestry were considerable, as is the case of Duddel Kravitz. It is of great interest to analyze "The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz" from an ideological perspective, delving into the primary motivations of the character. This work gives an explanation about the contradictory nature of the character, showing the different axes that build his motivation and identity.

The often contentious division between English-speaking Canada and French-speaking Canada is perhaps the most familiar aspect of Canadian multiculturalism for most outsiders, but the reality is much more complex. Whether one considers the wide variety of indigenous peoples – First Nations tribal groups, Inuit, or Métis – or the large number of more recent immigrants to Canada from Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and the Caribbean, the pluralistic nature of the country’s culture is apparent at every turn, even if not always acknowledged or welcomed. We will read nine contemporary novels by Canadian authors from a wide range of ethnic and cultural backgrounds in order to understand more clearly how Canadian identity in the twenty-first century is vastly more complex than can be encompassed just by the historical dichotomy between England and France and the resultant "two solitudes" that Hugh MacLennan and others have observed.