Son of a Smaller Hero by Mordecai Richler
"Son of a Smaller Hero" by Mordecai Richler explores the complex journey of Noah Adler, a young Jewish man grappling with his identity in 20th-century Montreal. Set against the backdrop of the Jewish ghetto, Noah’s story highlights his struggle to break free from the societal and familial expectations that confine him. As he seeks fulfillment beyond his community, he becomes involved with Professor Theo Hall and his wife, Miriam, but soon realizes that love and relationships can also create their own limitations.
The narrative delves into Noah's internal conflict as he navigates the challenges presented by his heritage, including a complicated relationship with his parents and the pressures of community life. Following his father's death, Noah attempts to reconcile his feelings of rebellion with the responsibilities he bears towards his family. Ultimately, he finds himself torn between the pull of his roots and the desire for autonomy, leading him on a quest that ends without resolution. The novel invites readers to reflect on the intricate balance between individual identity and the communal ties that shape it.
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Son of a Smaller Hero by Mordecai Richler
First published: 1955
The Work
Son of a Smaller Hero is the story of an angry young man’s confused search for his identity. In what is generally regarded as an apprentice work, Mordecai Richler presents a fairly realistic story of a rebellious and rather self-centered hero who struggles to escape the restrictive identity that his ethnic community and his society would place on him.
Noah Adler is a second-generation Canadian, born and raised in the Montreal Jewish ghetto. His family’s strife and the religious and social strictures of his milieu, which he finds stifling, impel him to leave in search of freedom and selfhood in the gentile world. That world, too, fails to fulfill the hero’s quest. Through a literature class, Noah meets Professor Theo Hall, who befriends him and takes him into his home. Soon, Hall’s wife, Miriam, does more than befriend their boarder and eventually leaves her husband to live with Noah. The romance, so passionately pursued by Noah at first, fades rather quickly when he discovers that the possessive love of and responsibility for an older woman can turn into its own kind of ghetto.
In addition, the ghetto of his upbringing still has its hold on him. When his father dies in a fire, Noah abandons Miriam and returns to his family, no longer the adolescent rebel that he was. Neither has he become a quiescent conformist. When the Jewish community attempts to raise his feckless father to sainthood, he demurs. When his rich Uncle Max greedily tries to exploit the dead father’s new status, Noah resists. When Noah discovers his grandfather’s secret, repressed, lifelong love for a gentile woman he met years before in Europe, this clarifies Noah’s own predicament. The ways of his family and of his ghetto community cannot be his. When Noah’s ambitious mother becomes increasingly emotionally demanding, Noah knows that he cannot stay.
The story ends as it began: Noah leaves home, this time for Europe. He turns his back on his ailing, grasping mother and on his lonely, isolated grandfather. He turns his back on his restrictive ethnic community. The search for self continues, but it is a search permeated with ambivalence. Noah has found that he cannot affirm his identity apart from community, family, and place. His confusion and torment stem from his problem that he can neither embrace nor finally reject community, family, or place. He chooses to escape them for the time being, but his search for an independent identity leads finally to a sense of futility.
Bibliography
Davidson, Arnold E. Mordecai Richler. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1983.
Ramraj, Victor J. Mordecai Richler. Boston: Twayne, 1983.
Woodcock, George. Mordecai Richler. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1971.