Freedom and Responsibility in The Fixer Anonymous 11th Grade

Bernard Malamud’s The Fixer depicts the constant tribulations of Yakov Bok during the pre-Russian Revolutionary era. The plot follows the life of Jewish repairman: Yakov Bok, in finding an occupation that will allow him to venture off into a world of luck, luxuries, and overall better living. However, in the midst of the highest point in his career, life and its ills of corruption and avarice entangle him in the murder of a young Christian boy: Zhenia Golov. As a novel written in a first person-limited writing style, Malamud establishes and surrounds the themes around the changes in Yakov’s life, situation, and relationships. In the passage “You think not…. I am a fixer” (184-186), Malamud establishes freedom and responsibility as coexisting and sometimes contradicting elements that aid individuals in alleviating the tolls of a facile society through characterization, mood, and metaphor.

In the novel, Bibikov, the Investigating Magistrate for Cases of Extraordinary Importance is the only character that righteously fulfills his moral and societal responsibilities. Malamud carefully decides Bibikov’s profession in order to emphasize not only his importance in the world of Russian Law but in the course of the novel as well. His...