Michael Gold Biography

American Jewish Fiction by Joshua N. Lambert (p.38)

http://books.google.com/books?id=08QctHhKdcgC&pg=PT54&lpg=PT54&dq=michael+gold+jews+without+money+bio&source=bl&ots=m7LpbqXI-X&sig=VH9tZCVnTG-A5wkZSR2lM20TDlk&hl=en&ei=jtSeS9T1L46i0gTNmcWlDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CCkQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=&f=false

• Poverty forced him out of school at the age of 12 but briefly attended Harvard in later years as a young man

• He published Jews Without Money as his only novel, and wrote hundreds of essays and polemics against capitalism and corruption

• "He was a communist first and a writer second"

• "Gold’s novel is an expression of communist thought, it reflects the a major trend in the politics and ideology of early Jewish life in the U.S"

• Part of Gold’s novel appeal to internationals is within the final pages of the book in its “call to revolution… (O workers’ Revolution… You are the true Messiah)”

Chapter 12 entitled “The Gangster’s Mother” I felt was quite interesting in how it used the character Aunt Lena to repeatedly emphasise how immigrants felt when they had arrived in America. Her gaily attitude and excitement towards arriving in America is set up for a massive contrasting downfall on the harsh reality of America’s poverty within the East Side of New York. Therefore, setting up the reader in the introduction of her character:

“Everything was wonderful to my Aunt Lena… [she] was afraid of nothing, she laughed and all of us laughed with her. She was so happy at first, it made us all happy. Then everything came to an end”.

With Lena’s youthful naivety she soon finds out that she has to work to support the family to pay rent and her dreams of seeing New York city with thrilled eyes become deteriorated as she loses the energy and eagerness from when she first arrived. Constraint to the working life she becomes entangled in the long, tedious hours of manual labour at a clothing shop and no longer has time or willingness to go ‘see the boats at night’.

Additionally, not only does this chapter introduce the disintegration of an immigrants hopes and dreams in what they expect from the ‘promise land’, it also notes the dangers of the city for Lena, as she is pursued by the most feared gangster on the tenement, Louie One Eye. Here, there is a scene of him forcing himself on her and the mob of neighbours saving her.