Jeremy Feliz Delgado

Prof. Nochomovitz

FIQWS

April 12, 2020

Redemption

            In life, people tend to seek for redemption for their bad actions. Redemption is when someone makes up or compensates for an action that they consider to be wrong. Henry Roth shows the idea of redemption in his writing as he personally feels that he needs to be redeemed for the bad things that he did during his youth.

Henry Roth was a Jewish-American writer born February 8, 1906, and died October 13, 1995. He wrote Call it Sleep and then took a pause on writing for about 30 years for personal reasons like depression (Britannica). Henry Roth and his family moved to New York from Austria-Hungary in 1907. They moved to the Lower East Side where Call it Sleep takes place. The characters he creates are based on himself and his family. Albert Schearl is based on Chaim, Henry’s father, “a man who torments his wife and beats his son mercilessly” (Rosen, Jonathan). Also, like Albert, Chaim had “a wrathful temperament” (Rosen). The character of Genya is based on Roth’s mother and like in the book, she fell in love with a gentile and was married to Chaim to cover that. When Roth was eight years old his family moved to Harlem where a few years later he started an “incestuous relationship” with his sister (Rosen). Roth doesn’t relate this event directly on Call it Sleep as he wasn’t prepared to share this. He does include a scene where David is inside a closet with Annie his neighbor. In the closet, Annie tries to get David to “play bad” with her but David rejects her and runs away (Roth 53). When Roth was 18 years old, he had another incestuous relationship with his 13-year-old cousin (Weber, Myles). Although he doesn’t include these events directly, he creates David with the need of redeeming himself because Roth himself felt that he had to be redeemed for his bad actions.

Throughout the story we can see how David, Henry’s representation, seeks to be redeemed for his sins. For example, when he admits his part on what had happened to Esther, he grabbed a whip and gave it to his father. (Roth 400) Since he believed that he had to pay for what he did and in order to make up for it he had to be whipped by his father. When his father wasn’t allowed to hit him, he went to the rail where he gets electrocuted. He went there since he still wanted to pay for what he did, and he thought that this would make up for it.             

            Henry was asked by different writers for permission to write his biography but for a long time he didn’t agree since he wasn’t ready to share his secrets. When Henry was on his 80s, he was interviewed by Rosen; on this interview, he said that he created “David as a pathetic victim when in fact he was a villain” (Rosen). Since David is based on him, he was talking about himself. A few years before his death Henry still felt guilt, he spent his entire life feeling this way. This is very unfortunate because Henry didn’t find redemption. He tried writing about it, then he tried to hide it for some time, and a few years before his death he revealed most of his secrets but for him, all of this still wasn’t enough.  

Works Cited

Weber, Miles. “Henry Roth’s Secret.” Michigan Quarterly Review, Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 1 June 2006, hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.act2080.0045.324.

Rosen, Jonathan. “Writer, Interrupted.” The New Yorker, The New Yorker, 6 July 2017, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/08/01/writer-interrupted.

Roth, Henry (l906- ). Call It Sleep. Penguin, 1979.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Henry Roth.” Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 4 Feb. 2020, www.britannica.com/biography/Henry-Roth.