The Assistant

In the novel The Assistant (1957), Bernard Malamud explores the American experience of immigrants and their more assimilated offspring through the lens of parental-child relationships and the challenge of passing on values and culture.

The story opens as Morris Bober, the aging owner of a small grocery store in Brooklyn, New York opens the store one cold morning. Morris reflects on how little the store has changed and how slow business has been. He notices his upstairs tenant, who normally shops at the grocery, coming home with a bag of groceries from another store. His wife, Ida, comes downstairs to clean up and he tells her about this betrayal. He later learns a rival delicatessen will be opening down the block, making his financial situation dire. His daughter, Helen, riding the subway to the store, encounters Nat Pearl, the young man to whom she lost her virginity. Helen is upset that Nat, while pleasant, is not interested in more of a relationship.

One evening, Morris is violently robbed at the store. The thieves beat him brutally, leaving him badly injured. A few days later, a young man named Frank Alpine arrives at the store and offers to work for Morris for free, claiming that he wishes to gain experience so he can open his own business. Frank left his abusive father and has been drifting ever since. Morris, injured, accepts the offer and arranges for Frank to live above the store. Morris is unaware that Frank was one of the thieves who assaulted him. Frank had come to the neighborhood with Ward Minogue to commit robberies. Frank, seeing Morris’s suffering and frustration after a life of hard work, is moved to pity. He has offered to work to expunge his guilt.



Frank works hard and interacts well with the customers. Business improves, in part, because Frank begins returning his share of the robbery in small increments. Ida does not like having a non-Jew in the store, believing business is better because the gentiles in the neighborhood prefer to deal with a non-Jew. Frank begins stealing from the till in small amounts he feels he deserves because of his hard work. He keeps a careful record of his theft with the intention of returning the money someday. Frank and Morris have conversations when business is slow. Morris’s affection for Frank grows.

Frank and Helen take notice of each other, to Ida’s distress. Helen is attractive and has suitors her parents approve of, but she desires nothing less than true love. Frank and Helen grow close and fall in love, though Helen, remembering her earlier regret, refuses to sleep with him. Just as she realizes she loves him and wants to be in a committed relationship with Frank, Morris catches Frank stealing and fires him.

Frank, distraught, goes to meet Helen in the park for a date. He arrives to find her being assaulted by Ward Minogue, and saves her from rape. Helen rushes into his arms in relief. Frank, knowing she will reject him when his theft is revealed, rapes her. Helen bitterly rebukes Frank. Overwhelmed with remorse, Frank repeatedly apologizes to Helen, attempting to think of a way to make it up to her.



The store is on the verge of collapse with Frank gone. Morris opens the store one morning and forgets to light the gas radiators, allowing the store to fill with gas and almost dying from asphyxiation. Morris denies this was a suicide attempt despite his obvious depression. While hospitalized, he asks Frank to come back and run the store again, despite Ida’s protests. Determined to do the best job possible, Frank takes a second job at a local diner in an attempt to make himself more attractive to Helen. However, when Morris checks himself out of the hospital, he once again fires Frank.

Morris, depressed and desperate, is approached by a professional arsonist, who will, for a fee, set the store on fire so Morris can collect the insurance money. Morris throws him out, but reflecting on his failures, decides to do it himself. Trapped by the flames, Morris is saved by Frank. Instead of gratitude, however, he is angry and once again throws Frank out.

The business miraculously improves a bit, and then Ward Minogue returns to the neighborhood and robs a liquor store owned by Julius Karp, a rival of Morris. After smashing liquor bottles, Ward lights a cigarette and burns the building down, dying when he is trapped by the flames. Morris, who had often wished terrible things to happen to Karp, feels guilty, but is then delighted when Karp offers to buy out the grocery. Morris, feeling energized by this turn of good fortune, goes out to shovel snow from the sidewalk. He quickly falls ill and dies just three days later.



Frank returns to run the store. His second job is keeping him financially afloat but killing his health; his desperation to reconnect with Helen drives him to mania. Frank decides to give all of his money to Helen so she can achieve her dream of attending college. Helen, moved by this offer, thinks that if Ward had not attacked her, she would have voluntarily slept with Frank, and so forgives him.
Frank inherits the store and converts to Judaism so he can marry Helen.