The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Mordecai Richler
"The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz" is a novel by Mordecai Richler that follows the tumultuous life of Duddy Kravitz, a young Jewish man growing up in Montreal's St. Urbain neighborhood during the mid-20th century. The story begins with Duddy as a mischievous teenager, leading a gang and engaging in acts of bullying against peers, particularly targeting non-Jewish teachers. This behavior foreshadows a deeper ambition tied to his grandfather's belief that "a man without land is nobody," driving Duddy's relentless pursuit of success and wealth, often through morally ambiguous means.
As Duddy navigates his adolescence, he faces challenges such as a tumultuous family dynamic, ridicule from his father, and societal pressures that shape his identity and values. His entrepreneurial ventures range from filming community events to navigating the seedy underbelly of business through illegal schemes. Relationships play a significant role in Duddy's journey, particularly with Yvette, a waitress who becomes both a lover and a source of disillusionment.
The novel intricately explores themes of ambition, guilt, and the quest for self-identity, culminating in a dramatic confrontation with the consequences of Duddy's actions. Ultimately, Richler's work provides a multifaceted look at the complexities of growing up, the impact of cultural identity, and the moral dilemmas faced in the pursuit of the American Dream within a distinctly Canadian context.
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The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Mordecai Richler
First published: 1959
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Satire and bildungsroman
Time of plot: 1940’s
Locale: Montreal
Principal characters
Duddy Kravitz , an ambitious teenagerMax Kravitz , his father, a cab driverLennie Kravitz , his brother, a medical-school studentSimcha Kravitz , his grandfatherBenjamin “Benjy” Kravitz , his uncle, a factory ownerYvette Durelle , his lover, a waitressVirgil Roseboro , a young epileptic employed by DuddyJerry “Boy Wonder” Dingleman , a local gangster
The Story:
Duddy Kravitz is a motherless, prankish teenager in a high school in which most of the students come from Montreal’s St. Urbain Jewish ghetto. Duddy is the leader of a school gang, the Warriors, who bully other children, especially the students at the neighboring yeshiva, a Jewish religious school. He also is the instigator of a campaign of telephone harassment of the school’s goy, or non-Jewish, instructors, especially John MacPherson, an ineffectual teacher and an alcoholic who despises the boy. Duddy causes the death of Macpherson’s disabled wife when she leaves her bed to answer one of Duddy’s harassing phone calls. Duddy is perpetually haunted by guilt and remorse.
Duddy’s stern but loving grandfather Simcha counsels him, saying that “a man without land is nobody.” This maxim becomes the driving force in Duddy’s ambition to become a success through the acquisition of money. He soon begins engaging in dubious commercial schemes.
A particularly negative influence on Duddy’s moral development is his weak father, Max, who moonlights as a pimp and who idolizes a local gangster called Jerry (the Boy Wonder) Dingleman. Duddy is also demoralized by the ridicule heaped on him by his father and his uncle Benjy, who focus their attention on the eldest Kravitz son, Lennie, a promising medical student who is sure to raise the family’s fortunes.
Pretensions and crassness define Duddy’s social environment. His St. Urbain neighborhood is filled with folly, and his high school is a place of shallow education and anti-Semitism.
After graduation Duddy works at a summer resort. He is subjected to emotional and physical harassment from a group of fellow waiters, snobbish college boys led by a malicious law student, Irwin Shubert, who masterminds a phony roulette game to rob Duddy of his entire summer wages. However, Duddy has become a favorite employee of the resort’s boss and clientele, who contribute to restitute his earnings. Irwin is forced to return the boy’s losses at roulette. Duddy plans to use this doubling of his earnings as an investment to purchase land around a nearby lake shown to him by Yvette Durelle, a young French Canadian waitress at the resort who has become his lover. Duddy’s new life ambition is to acquire this property, settle his beloved grandfather on a farm, and build a lucrative resort.
Duddy is faced with both success and failure in his attempts to raise money; he wants to acquire plots of land around the lake at St. Agathe. Because he is still legally a minor, he uses Yvette as an agent to purchase titles to the various properties. As she become more involved with Duddy as his lover and as his Girl Friday, or secretary, she grows more disillusioned about his marital intentions and his skewed sense of morality in his financial ventures.
Duddy’s ambitions and commercial activities grow more frantic and outlandish as he pursues his obsession with money. The most outlandish is his project of filming bar-mitzvahs and weddings of his acquaintances. He then attempts to sell the movies as commemorations to the celebrating families. To this end he employs the services of a has-been alcoholic film director, Friar, who produces hilarious anthropological re-creations of what he considers strange Jewish rituals.
While the films are a hit with Duddy’s customers, Friar proves to be an unreliable partner. Duddy soon seeks new ways to make money. He coerces his father to introduce him to Dingleman, who refuses to loan him money. Instead, the gangster takes Duddy to New York and then uses him as an unwitting courier to smuggle drugs to Montreal. During this trip, he meets Virgil Roseboro, who agrees to help him import pinball machines from the United States to sell in Canada at inflated prices.
Meanwhile, the Kravitz family is in an uproar when Lennie disappears. Duddy takes on the responsibility of searching for his brother, who has fled to Toronto after performing an illegal abortion for one of the girls in his new set of wealthy goy friends. Duddy befriends the girl’s father, Calder, a wealthy industrialist, and persuades him not to have Lennie charged with the crime. However, as Duddy’s debts begin to overwhelm him, Virgil appears with the exported pinball machines. A new moneymaking scheme helps Duddy acquire nearly half of the land that he covets.
Duddy’s fortunes seem to be on the rise. He employs Virgil to drive a truck for distributing movies to resorts for his successful movie-rental business. He expands his social circle and even starts dating to search for a respectable (and wealthy) Jewish woman to be his wife; he just wants to exploit Yvette, not marry her.
Crises soon abound. Uncle Benjy gets terminal cancer, and Duddy, ever loyal to the family, seeks out Benjy’s wayward wife, Ida, to return her to Montreal. Benjy tries to reconcile with Duddy, whom he has always despised as a materialistic pusherke (a pushy Jew), but the boy refuses his overtures. During this crisis, Virgil has an epileptic fit driving the truck and is disabled in an accident. Yvette blames Duddy for the incident and leaves him, taking Virgil to her home in St. Agathe. Duddy, overwhelmed once again by guilt and remorse, plunges into a serious depression, which becomes a full-blown breakdown after Benjy dies.
Virgil writes Duddy a letter, leading Duddy to seek out Yvette and reconcile with her. While at St. Agathe, Duddy reads a posthumous letter from Benjy. After Duddy sees his beloved lake, his hopes rebound. Finally, when he discovers that Dingleman has used him as a drug courier and is now competing with him to purchase the same lake property, Duddy’s chase after money is refueled.
Duddy frantically approaches everyone he can to raise enough money to buy the last parcel of lake property. He even foolishly attempts to blackmail Dingleman over the drug-smuggling affair. After unsuccessfully trying to persuade Virgil to loan him money from a family inheritance, Duddy uses forgery to steal money from the bank account of Virgil, who has a stroke after he discovers the theft. After a final confrontation with Duddy, Yvette leaves him.
Duddy takes the Kravitz family to see his new lake property. Lennie is impressed, and Max is ecstatic, even when he is appalled at Duddy’s rude behavior toward Dingleman, who shows up to congratulate his rival on acquiring the land. However, Grandfather Simcha, whom Duddy most wants to please, refuses the boy’s gift of a farm because Yvette has revealed to him his grandson’s crime against Virgil.
Duddy seeks out Yvette, who rejects him with heart-felt loathing, leading him to see himself as betrayed, not the betrayer. At a restaurant where the family celebrates, Max creates a myth around the new Boy Wonder, his Duddy, who is lifted from despondency to euphoric pride in his ill-gotten wealth and power.
Bibliography
Kramer, Reinhold. Mordecai Richler: Leaving St. Urbain. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008. A thoroughly researched scholarly biography that incorporates never-before published material from the Richler archives as well as interviews with family members and friends. Analyzes the importance of Jewish culture and “Canadianness” in Richler’s writing.
Pollock, Zailig. “Duddy Kravitz and Betrayal.” In Perspectives on Mordecai Richler, edited by Michael Darling. Toronto, Ont.: ECW Press, 1986. Analyzes the novel in terms of Duddy’s character and moral values, particularly his adherence to the code of the St. Urbain Street community.
Posner, Michael. The Last Honest Man: Mordecai Richler, an Oral Biography. Toronto, Ont.: McClelland & Stewart, 2004. Recounts Richler’s life through interviews with family members, friends, colleagues, editors, drinking and snooker companions, and others who discuss their experiences with and impressions of the author.
Ramraj, Victor J. Mordecai Richler. Boston: Twayne, 1983. This work presents a succinct overview of Richler’s life and writings. The analysis of The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz focuses on the artistry of Richler’s character portrayals.
Woodcock, George. Introducing Mordecai Richler’s “The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz”: A Reader’s Guide. Toronto, Ont.: ECW Press, 1990. An insightful and detailed analysis of the novel. Covers its significance and its critical reception. Also provides a close textual reading of the work.