Leah Roth possessed both sets of traits and was the source of both fictional characters.
With his immediate family polarized--father and daughter on one side, mother and son on the other--it is not surprising that much of Henry Roth's security derived from the community in which he grew up rather than from his family. The Roths, like the Schearls, settled down in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn at first, but two years later in 1910, Roth's family moved to the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
Despite poverty, overcrowding, and poor sanitary conditions, the Lower East Side was an emotionally satisfying place to live because the residents maintained their internal vitality and aspiration. Moreover, the Lower East Side offered the young Henry Roth a sense of belonging, of community; it provided him the emotional haven and protection he never felt in his home. When his family left the area in 1914, the departure caused him deep anxiety.
Torn from a homogeneous and tightly knit community, the eight-year-old Roth found himself in a much more mixed and threatening environment in Harlem. The abrupt move was also crucial to him because his sense of Jewishness and of Jewish identity was severely shaken.
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