"The Mourners"
In this story, Mr. Gruber comes into conflict with his landlord, Mr. Kessler when he comes around to collect the rent. Gruber’s argument is sensory. It is the kind of imagery most people will immediately “get” because it gets right to the heart of the situation (not to mention providing insight into Mr. Gruber’s personality:
“It looks like a junk shop and smells like a toilet.”
"The Magic Barrel"
As the title perhaps suggests, this story is not entirely rooted in the fundamentals of reality. The space between what is meant to be taken literally and what might be perhaps be assumed as metaphorical is situated through the imagery of the story’s opening. It is an opening line featuring imagery that subtly implicates the story to come within the construct of a fairy tale or fable or myth:
“Not long ago there lived in uptown New York, in a small, almost meager room, though crowded with books, Leo Finkle, a rabbinical student in the Yeshivan University.”
For all intents and purposes, that opening might as well be changed to “Once upon a time, there lived…” in the fashion with which it uses familiar imagery to subtly suggest perspective to the reader.
"Angel Levine"
This story, on the other hand, takes a somewhat different approach. The title also sets up the expectation that perhaps there is a blurring between reality and fantasy within the story. The opening paragraph is steeped in realistic detail of a man who seems to be very near to the end of his rope. It is the ending which facilitates an interpretation that maybe what comes after is not quite so deeply rooted in the literal. And yet, the presentation of the imagery which suggests this is ambiguous enough to deny the reader any certainty about the true state of being of Mr. Levine:
“He heard an odd noise, as though of a whirring of wings, and when he strained for a wider view, could have sworn he saw a dark figure borne aloft on a pair of magnificent black wings.
A feather drifted down. Manischevitz gasped as it turned white, but it was only snowing.”
Take time to notice the effectiveness of this imagery to split apart into two different, opposing yet plausible interpretations. The big picture affirms that Levine actually was an angel, after all. The details suggest quite differently, however.
"Behold the Key"
Here is another story that begins with strong imagery, but it utilized for a quite specific purpose: irony. The protagonist—a grad student named Schneider—has left Columbia University behind and find himself in one of the oldest, most historical and most romantic cities in the world: Rome. It is a beautiful day late in the fall in the Eternal City and by all rights, Mr. Schneider should be happy; or at the very least not acting as though he got stuck in some Podunk little town in the Midwest. And yet, he:
“left a real estate agent’s office after a depressing morning of apartment hunting…finding himself so dissatisfied in this city of his dreams. Rome…had surprised unhappily. He felt unpleasantly lonely for the first time since he’d been married...desiring the lovely Italian women he passed…especially the few who looked as if they had money. He had been a damn fool…to come here with so little of it in his pocket.”
Over the course of one short paragraph, Malamud efficiently engages imagery to transform “a city of perpetual surprise” into a nightmare of loneliness, unsatisfied corrupted desire, economic deprivation, and an overarching sense of despondent failure of reality to meet expectation.
