The Victim
Left alone in a sweltering New York summer while his wife is away, Asa Leventhal is accosted by a shabby Gentile he barely remembers, who insists Leventhal cost him his job and his marriage and then moves into the flat. Persecutor and persecuted change places by degrees until neither Leventhal nor the reader can say with confidence which he is. Bellow said he built it on the pattern of Dostoevsky's The Eternal Husband.
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Lineage
- modeled on ↑ The Eternal Husband
Attributes
Genre
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
Plot structure
Symbol / motif
Culture / tradition
Closest analogues
- 81% · 15 shared
- 67% · 13 shared
- 61% · 13 shared
- 61% · 13 shared
- 61% · 12 shared
- 61% · 11 shared