The Assistant is about Frank Alpine’s transformation from a petty thief into a compassionate, self-sacrificing and loving human being. Frank is a 25 years-old wanderer of Italian extraction, who came from San Francisco to New York in search of a new and better life. He is the protagonist in the story. His past in conveyed by a series of incoherent memories of want, guilt and failure. Everything he does seems to be an effort to escape his past. According to Frank, a good person is someone who’s honest with other people, who can have discipline and have control over his action. A good person also has good education but Frank doesn’t have education at all. For him, St. Francis is a very good person because he can speak with Good and call the birds. Frank fails to understand the nature
. . .
There is too much adversity working against him, caused by his lying, cheating and stealing. He has become a better person in the end, caused by living with an honest Jewish family, but he is still not a good person, and will never be one as well. Either way, it is caused by his love for Helen. He also regrets his crimes afterwards with an intensity that is almost suffocating.
Frank is not able to bring closure to his miserable existence, not even by converting to Judaism in the end. Frank seeks acceptance as Morris’s son-in-law, but works tirelessly to support him to pay back his debt for the robbery.
He goes from lover to hater, from victim to victimizer and from saint to criminal. He committed crimes and did not feel a thing, or even at times experiences a curious pleasure from it. The book is full of ironies, beginning with Frank’s name, after St. Love, or the lack or it, causes Frank’s development and transformation throughout the book. His need for love is again ambivalent, because he moves between lover and luster, and between romantic and sensualist.
Frank has a need for love that is almost insupportable. Francis, winning Helen only to rape her, being discovered as a thief as he is putting money back in the cash register, not taking it out; finally confessing his crime only to lose everything because the confession comes too late. His transformation is symbolized by his religious conversion at the end and his attempt to court Helen, Morris’s daughter.
Approximate Word count =
528
Approximate Pages =
2 (250 words per page double spaced)
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