Which do I want to be when I grow up, weak or strong, a success or failure, a man or a mouse?
Jack is insecure and, what is more important, he has always been. Being a Jew, he has been laughed at, bullied, and rejected. Goys have never treated him as an equal—and even if they have, Jack can’t say for sure because he is as prejudiced against goys as much as they are prejudiced against him. Alex is God’s gift to him. Sophie is beyond herself too; her little boy is a promise of the happy future. However, even such a bright boy as Alex fails to meet his parents’ expectations. Every time he refuses to eat a meal carefully prepared by his mother, he is asked “what” he wants to be when he grows up. Does he want to be “weak or strong, a success or failure, a man or a mouse?” It is too much for Alex. He just doesn’t want to eat his supper and his parents act as if he refuses to eat forever.
Doctor, what do you call this sickness I have?
Alex is scared of himself. On the one hand, he loves his family: his father has worked hard so that Alex could study and get a high-paying job, and his mother and sister adore him. On the other hand, he is sick and tired of them. Alex this, Alex that. They need to know where he is, who his new girlfriend is, when he is going to make them happy grandparents, why he doesn’t want to visit them every Friday, and so on. Alex doesn’t feel like an adult. He is forever his mummy’s little boy. He asks himself if it is “the Jewish suffering” he used to hear “so much about” and can’t find the answer. He even goes to a doctor to find out why he can’t get rid of his fears and insecurities. He “can’t stand any more being frightened like this over nothing!” He exclaims, “Bless me with manhood!”
I just refuse to be perfect.
It seems to Alex that “by remaining” in “his single state” he brings his parents “nothing but grief.” He has been recently appointed to be Assistant Commissioner for The City of New York Commission on Human Opportunity but they just ignore it. He knows for sure that every time his name appears in the Times, they “bombard every living relative with a copy of the clipping.” His mother is “on the phone for days,” her mouth is going “at such a rate about her Alex.” However, he is still “somehow not entirely perfect.” They have sacrificed all for him and he— Alex—refuses to be perfect. “What a pricky kid.”
