Bread Givers By Sara Smolinsky: Character Analysis

Sara Smolinsky, the protagonist of the novel Bread Givers, is on a quest to adapt to her new surroundings and rid herself from the restrictions of her heritage. She is a Jewish immigrant from Poland who lives with her parents and three older sisters in New York. Her father is a devout Jew who does nothing more than antagonize her and her three older sisters with his overbearing devotion and need to run their lives. Yet, despite Sara's seemingly successful attempts at escaping her father and building a life of her own, she still manages to make a 360 turn by the time her the story comes to a close. Readers are left with the message that with hard work, dedication, and independence one can rise and succeed, but if in doing so you are running

away from your past problems without resolution they are bound to reappear, like Sara's ultimately did. Her story relays the struggles that young immigrants face to become accustomed to the ways of their new home while still battling their parent's wishes to keep with the traditions from their homeland. The parents usually never understand the child's hope to fit in the new world and this adds strain to their relationships, nearly always resulting in hatred and resentment.
The novel begins detailing the Smolinsky family's acute malnutrition and near homelessness due to their close to nonexistent income. They all had to rely on each other and pitch in to make things work. Even when she could not find a job "the whole family were hanging on Bessie's neck for her wages. Unless she got work soon, [they would] be thrown in the street to shame and to laughter for the whole world (Chapter 1)." Sara had to resort to selling herring in order to give the family a little money after her father had been arrested and they had no money to pay rent. Her older sisters had hard times finding work and her father did not work, instead he "lived in his Holy Torah (Chapter 1)." Masha did not make matters any better with her constant spending to buy trivial items. She goes out job searching like the rest of them, yet comes back with things to help improve her appearance (Chapter 1). Sara finds that if she wants to be like every other American and break away from her life of poverty and her father's dominance, then she has to get away from home and make it on her own.
After watching her father arrange dreadful marriages for all three of her older sisters, Sara draws the line and leaves from home to keep the same fate from befalling her.

For awhile she feels deathly lonely "cheated and robbed of the life that more fortunate girls seemed to have (Chapter 16)." However, Sara manages to get into college and despite all the discouragement and hard work she graduates and gets a job as a teacher. She gets her own apartment, which she vowed to keep clean and empty, a dramatic change from her small and filthy childhood home she shared with her whole family on Hester Street. And even despite her mother's death, her father's rapid remarriage, and then his diamond earring wearing new wife's attempt to blackmail her into losing her teaching job, Sara still manages to find happiness. She gets married to the principal at her school, even when she thinks that her step mother drove him away. Yet, in the midst of all her good fortune, "[her] joy hurt like guilt (Chapter 21)." So much in fact that even through all her hatred for him, she still developed a longing to see her

father.
So, by chance, while she is feeling giulty for being happy, she runs into her father while going to meet Hugo Seelig, the principal who she has fallen for.

She sees her father old and suffering, his wife sent him out to get money through begging; and he rants on about how his daughters left him to basically rot and how they have not honored him nor do they show gratitude towards him for all that he has done for them (Chapter 21). She gives into her feelings of shame at leaving him to become the withered old man that he is and she takes him in believing that she must take care of him because no one else would; because it is his spirit and willpower burning inside of her. But soon she understands her mistake in letting her father back into he life. "[She] suddenly realized that [she] had come back to where [she] had started twenty years ago when [she] began [her] fight for freedom. But in [her] rebellious youth, [she] thought [she] could escape by running away. And now [she] realized that the shadow of the burden was always following [her], and [there she] stood face to face with it again (Chapter 21)." Though the many years apart had changed her, made her better, her father was still the same man. He still had the same thoughts and ways and that was not going to change even on his death bed; she had let herself back into contact with the tyrant that had ruled over her as a child, her life had made a complete

circle.
Altogether, Sara Smolinsky's quest was to dodge the influence of her father and his dominating, tyrannical nature, to rise out of the poverty that she faced as a child immigrant in America, and to leave the restrictions of her past life as a Jewish Pole and succeed as an American. Her journey is one of sorrow, success, and finally happiness, though she seems to think that reconnecting with her father was too many steps in the other direction. However, getting out of the nest and spreading her wings allowed Sara to plan her own life by herself, with no help from her father and his traditions. Plus, she still manages to become a good, whole-hearted person. The novel teaches its readers about having the will to rise and succeed and to rid yourself of any limitations holding you back.