[In The Flowering Peach it] was Odets's apparent decision to make of the Biblical story a modern Jewish folk play…. The pattern of Noah's family is that of many lower-middle-class Jewish families in New York. The old folks, who speak with a Yiddish accent, hold close the tradition of the family; they demand of the sons and their wives, who are Americanized (i.e., modernized) in speech and thought, a loyalty that cannot easily be given. (p. 74)
[It is] to such an environment that Odets tries to wed the Noah legend. He fails for two reasons. First, his setting sounds surprisingly phony, even to an outsider; second, there is a good chance that Noah could not fit into such a setting even if it were presented with authenticity. All of the familiar devices for the stage recognition of Jewish family life are in the play: there is the mixture of practical wisdom and semi-philosophic foolishness, which in this case should be inspiration, in Noah and his wife; there are the loud, pointless arguments; there is the emphasis on getting ahead; there are the recurrent references to food. The desultory chatter that weaves in and out of these identification marks is written and read in the inverted singsong that characterizes and caricatures English-Yiddish speech, but Odets vulgarizes the whole process…. As often as not Odets sounds as though he is writing an extended dialect joke, a friendly one of course. There are occasional funny lines, but for the most part the cheapness goes beyond the rhythm of the speech and takes in the content as well. (pp. 74-5)
This is a free excerpt of 266 words. There are 1,021 words (approx.
3 pages at 300 words per page) in the full critical essay.
Read the rest of this Criticism with our Odets, Clifford 1906–1963: Critical Essay by Gerald Weales Access Pass.
