Abstract
Although Bernard Malamud's "Idiots First" contains many symbols to suggest his warning for crises of Jewish tradition, few critics until now have commented on this aspect. This short story in fact has been interpreted only through the theme of the sanctity of human life by Mendel's love to his idiot son, Isaac. But another significant aspect of the image of idiots in Malamud's stories is that their queerness symbolizes Jewish tradition, religious belief, because the assimilated or Americanized Jews since their immigration to the United States, have regarded the Old World as a symbol of queerness in order for them to survive in the New World. This paper analyzes the effective use of the images of names of Mendel, Isaac, and the existence of idiots, showing how Bernard Malamud, as one of the Jewish American writers positively reflects the crises of Jewish identity in his stories.
