Exploring the Text: - Richard Bernstein, reviewing The Complete Stories in December 1997 for the New York Times, wrote that Malamud could “take figures from the immigrant Jewish petty bourgeoisie [usually defined as the lower middle class] and place them into struggles worthy of the Greeks.” Describe how the characters in “The First Seven Years” represent the Jewish petty bourgeoisie, and explain how their struggles are “worthy of the Greeks.”