SOURCE: "Fear, Fatherhood, and Desire in Call It Sleep," in Yiddish, Vol. 5, No. 4, Fall, 1984, pp. 49-54.

In the following essay, Fein discusses David Schearl's enmity with his father in Roth's Call It Sleep.

Call It Sleep is a classic portrayal of the Americanized son who pits himself against the unyielding immigrant father. In an orthodox but dramatic Freudian fashion that never succumbs to a mechanical pattern (and is as moving as Lawrence's rendition of this conflict in Sons and Lovers), David Schearl finds his enemy in his father.

Henry Roth's Call It Sleep portrays a father who looms as an impregnable tower of energy to his son, the conflict beginning even before the child is conscious of the struggle. David Schearl sees his father as a figure of wrath. He dreams of his father lifting a hammer against people, an image he derives from the knowledge that his...