Goodbye, Columbus : And Five Short Stories Literary Elements

Adventure, Pastoral, Comedy, Romance

Newark, New Jersey; Short Hills, New Jersey; Boston, Massachusetts during the season from Summer to Fall in tail end of the 1950's.

Neil Klugman is the narrator and the novella events are told in first person.

Comic mostly but peppered with his highly biased insights colored by his insecurities. He is however a sympathetic narrator and though largely comedic there is bittersweet melancholy that unifies the novella especially when the protagonist realizes that his summer romance is over.

Neil Klugman is the protagonist, and although there is no antagonist per se several characters do assume this role depending on their interaction.

The first major conflict appears when Brenda undergoes rhinoplasty to remove a bulging portion of her nose bridge. Neil takes issue with this as he interprets it as an attempt to downplay her Jewish heritage.

Neil and Brenda have a major fight a few days before Ron and Harriet's wedding; prior to this though a lot of tension has been brewing already and things finally come to an explosive climax when Neil asks Brenda to buy a diaphragm.

When Neil and Brenda begin to refer to "love" with regard to their relationship but in the past tense it is a foreshadowing of their resolve to end their romance, even before words are exchanged.

"Did you let her win? I think so… I'm not sure…Even Ron lets her win."

In a conversation between Neil and Brenda he expresses concern through an unobtrusive question that everybody in the Patimkin Family lets Julie win. Julie, the youngest Patimkin, has been conditioned that she has the right to win all the time, ironic given that their clan, being so obsessed sports isn’t teach their youngest child to be a good player.

The author makes several allusions from history, literature, and pop culture through Neil Klugman's character throughout the novella. He references Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, Paul Gaugin's paintings of Tahitian Women, and he mentions Popular Mechanics.

Most of the imagery in the novel revolves around descriptions of Neil's life in Newark with contrasts being provided by narratives of the opulence of Short Hills and the lifestyle of the Patimkin Family. There is also a considerable amount of inclusions of Yiddish words and Jewish customs to remind readers of the ethnicity and cultural character of the narrator.

Neil's voyage of discovery comes to a full circle when he full realizes and accepts his worth after nearly discarding it completely to better fit in with the Patimkin clan and the social circles they move around in.

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, serves as a parallel for Neil's epiphany of his worth and dignity as a human being.

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“Let's see, what else did I do? I ate, I slept, I went to the movies… I did everything I'd ever done before… There was no flow, for that had been Brenda.” Neil wistfully states how much he misses Brenda calling her the “flow” by which rhythms of his life had previously been dictated by.