The battle inside raging - the end of The Fixer

Though the end of Bernard Malamud's The Fixer may seem abrupt withe Yakov on his way his way to his trial escorted by Cossack troops - the procession disrupted by a hurled bomb that kills one of the soldiers but then as it approaches the courthouse Yakov sees some Jews standing and watching in silent solidarity - all you have to do is read Malamud's brief note on the sources for the fixer, which are appended in the library of America edition, to see that in fact the novel ends precisely as and where it should - in the source case the accused is acquitted in trial but Malamud was wise not to make this a courtroom drama all that would be anti climactic and would give us no new info and would make this a novel about a system rather than what it is - a novel about the moral, political, and cultural education of a man , in a sense an Everyman. The fixer Yakov bok learns that neither faith nor philosophy can come to his aid - only good and courageous people, few and far between as they may be. He also learns of the deep hypo racy and even cowardice of those in power esp in an autocracy or monarchy. One of the fine scenes at the conclusion is his imagined dialog w the tsar who claims to be a kind man working for the betterment of the Russian people but Yakov pierces through that mask of falsehood quite easily - recognizing the poverty and racism of the culture and how little the comfortable and powerful are willing to do or to risk to change anything for the better - when they could have done so w a few words and w the slightest bit of empathy or eve n curiosity about the lives of others. It's a very powerful novel harrowing at times and dark right to the end but not w the unremitting gloom of the anti-Stalinist novels now w the dark comedy of Kafka either - it's a novel of education that takes place mostly in one confined location and mostly within the consciousness of its protagonist. There are some powerful dramatic scenes but most of the novel is interior a battle of ideas raging inside one man.