A contract with God

To discuss Will Eisner's "A Contract with God" is to discuss not only the Jewish relationship with God but also the ideas of sexuality, and, suffering. Cookalein was my personal favorite so I'm going to address these themes with respect to that story. While the most potent theme in Cookalein is sexuality, I will start by addressing the idea of suffering.
In Cookalein the most apparent suffering is loneliness, whether it is the loneliness of Goldie and Benny searching for lovers, and money, or Sam’s wife being cheated on. Loneliness is constant theme in the story, Goldie talks about spending all her savings to buy two dresses just to find a husband. This In my option speaks of desperation, she’s willing to spend all her money in order to obtain a husband. Then Sam’s wife appears to be lonely because she spends all day doing house work, and the only reason she will not get a divorce from Sam is because they have children. Then at the end of the story she tells Willie he has to be the man of the house because his father is going to be around less often. Benny appears lonely not only in the extremes he goes to attract a mate, but also that he wants to have sex so badly he rapes Goldie, and while I know this is a heinous and villainous act to do, it also speaks of a desperation for a basic human need that I think Benny has. The other person who seems to be lonely is Maralyn, her husband mention how she is back to her old tricks when she is sleeping with Willie, which implies she is in the habit of sleeping around. This could mean she is either an overly sexualized woman or she is lonely and looking for attention, or both are possible. Eisner focuses heavily on the idea of loneliness but not nearly as much as he does on the role of sexuality in the lives of his characters.
Almost every one of the characters Eisner presents to the reader in Cookalein has some sort of experience with sexuality over the course of the story. Sam has sex with his mistress and tries to have sex with his wife but she rejects him because she knows that he is sleeping around. Maralyn has sex with both Willie and her husband. Benny rapes Goldie, and the two young children watch. Each of these characters reacts to the sex differently as well. Sam enjoys the sex with his mistress, but the sex with his wife she more like it is out of obligation then out of love, or even lust which seems like a larger driving force behind sex in this story. This leads me to both Maralyn and Benny, who both seem motivated by lust to seek out sexual encounters. Then the children witness the rape of Goldie but in their innocence that just what adults do when they are being “naughty” so they are exposed to sexuality at a young age and it leads to them already having an interesting exposure to sex.