The Interwar Family and American Jewish Identity in Clifford Odets's "Awake and Sing!"

AWAKE & Sing! (Play); ODETS, Clifford, 1906-1963; JEWISH identity; JEWISH drama; YIDDISH theater; JEWISH families; AMERICAN Jews; WORKING class Jews; MIDDLE class

Clifford Odets's 1935 play "Awake and Sing!" was one of the earliest American Jewish dramas outside of the Yiddish theater to present a brutally honest portrayal of the American Jewish family. This Depression-era play offered a searing critique of middle-class mores and aspirations while holding up the family as an anchor of support and affection, a safeguard from anomie. This ambivalence reflected Odets's conflicted Jewish identity. His struggle with Jewishness helped him capture the general condition of the Jew in interwar America and informed his transformation of stock characters from the Yiddish stage into nuanced, thoroughly Americanized archetypes, many of whom continue to populate both stage and screen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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