The Magic Barrel

“His wants were few; in money he wasn’t interested—in nothing but books, it seemed—which he one by one lent to Miriam, together with his profuse, queer written comments […] which the shoemaker peered at and twitched as his daughter, from her fourteenth year, read page by sanctified page, as if the word of God were inscribed on them.”

Clearly, the shoemaker’s “helper” Sobel is interested in far more than books; but they are his chosen vehicle for expressing his passionate love for Feld’s daughter. She seems to fully return his love—hence her almost religious devotion to his “sanctified” comments. Feld is unconsciously aware of this dynamic, which is why he “twitch[es]” at the sight of her reading them: He disapproves of the aging, gloomy Sobel as a suitor for her hand.

“Max’s Adam’s apple went up once he saw them, and his eyes had little lights in them.”

Miriam derides her young suitor Max as a “materialist” who cares only about “things,” and his rapture over his newly repaired shoes seems to confirm this, for he shows much less excitement over the prospect of dating Miriam. His prominent “Adam’s apple,” besides emphasizing his gaunt meagerness, strikes an amusing contrast with the biblical Adam, for whom the woman offered to him (Eve) was the apple of his eye.

“When after a while, he gazed around the room, it was clean, drenched in daylight and fragrance. Gruber then suffered unbearable remorse for the way he had treated the old man.”

The highly impressionable Gruber is by nature a pessimist who has recurrent visions of death and desolation (his building falling down, himself falling down the stairs), and his tendency toward self-pity has made him callous toward his tenants. The squalor of Kessler’s room and person repels him with its intimations of mortality—which, he suddenly realizes, is rooted in fears of his own death.