The Magic Barrel

Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 1958

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“The Prison”Chapter Summaries & Analyses

“The Prison” Summary

Twenty-nine-year-old Tommy Castelli, whose original name was Tony, once had dreams of escaping the poverty and chaos of his dead-end neighborhood, but he quit school at age 16 to hobnob with small-time criminals and soon made the mistake of joining them in holding up a liquor store. To get him out of trouble, his father and others arranged his marriage to Rosa, a “plain” and “lank” girl whose father gave them a candy store in Greenwich Village to run. For protection, he was told to change his name from Tony to Tommy. His life now under the thumb of Rosa’s family is one of unrelenting boredom and drudgery, and every day, he curses the store, his wife, and his past mistakes.

A regular customer at the store is a 10-year-old girl who comes in every Monday to buy colored tissue paper for her “rock-faced” mother. One day, while fetching the paper for the girl, Tommy uses the vantage point of a surveillance mirror that his wife installed and sees the girl shoplift two candy bars. His first impulse to grab and punish her is checked by memories of his own youthful mistakes and of his beloved Uncle Dom, who was hassled by police, eventually went to jail, and then disappeared. Convinced that he should warn the girl in a friendly way to stop stealing before it destroys her life, he finds himself tongue-tied and unable to do so. Afterward, he browbeats himself over what he should do; feeling he has no talent for speaking, especially on moral matters, he decides to steer her away from a life of crime by way of hints, none of which are effective. Finally, after several more incidents of theft, he hides a handwritten message in one of the candy bars that reads, “Don’t do this anymore or you will suffer your whole life” (103). He signs the note, “Your Friend.”

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The next Monday, after waiting hours for the girl to come in, Tommy retires to his room above the shop, bitter and depressed. The girl’s sudden absence reminds him of Uncle Dom, who disappeared after prison. He also contemplates his own fate, which he believes is hardly better, for it is a prison in all but name. When he goes back downstairs, he hears Rosa screaming. She has caught the little girl stealing. To make Rosa stop shaking the little girl, he slaps his wife on the mouth, harder than he intended. He shouts that he let the girl take the candy, and Rosa bursts into tears. The little girl’s mother emerges from a crowd of shocked customers; calling her daughter a “little thief,” she punches her in the face and threatens to “burn” her hands. As the girl is dragged roughly to the door, she sticks out her tongue at Tommy.

“The Prison” Analysis

Tommy Castelli, who can see no escape from his life sentence “trapped in old mistakes” (97), somewhat resembles Eva Kalish from “Take Pity” in his fatalistic paralysis. Imprisoned in an arranged marriage that has even deprived him of his real name, Tommy has settled into a joyless 17-hour-a-day grind in a claustrophobic candy store. The devil’s bargain he made to stay out of actual prison, together with the unknown fate of his Uncle Dom—has blackened his horizons, cutting off all rays of hope. Yet unlike the narrative structure of “Take Pity,” “The Prison” is one of Malamud’s spiritual success stories. Despite having given up on himself, Tommy has not been broken or twisted like Eva. Instead, his moral strength shines in his determination to save a troubled youngster from mistakes that resemble his own. The “plain” little girl with the bullying parent reminds him of his own truncated life—an eternal, prolonged childhood under the puritanical thumb of his loveless wife’s family.

In his poor neighborhood, Tommy sees prisons everywhere, and from his own bitter experience with law-breaking, he knows that the gates of Hell are baited with illicit sweets of one kind or another. His many attempts to save the little girl come from a place of strength, not weakness, and signify a resurgence of hope in his own ability to save and in her capacity for salvation. The agony of his decision therefore focuses on the best method to rescue her from herself, for he knows that bullying and violence save no one and breed only resentment and contempt. This conviction is reflected in his memories of the belligerent cop who hassled his Uncle Dom. Tenderness, he decides, is the only way to reach her, and so he signs his gently chiding note to her, “Your Friend.” Such a friend, he feels, might have saved him so long ago. As always in Malamud’s stories, the ability to see oneself in another, especially among the lowly or marginalized, is itself a moral triumph, and in the end, Tommy’s failure to save the little girl does not change the nobility of his efforts.