Take a story's temperature by studying its tone. Is it hopeful? Cynical? Snarky? Playful?
Contemplative, Compassionate, Honest
Bernard Malamud sure seems to care about his characters. He doesn't hesitate to reveal their faults and weaknesses, but he also doesn't lose sight for their humanity. He'll show them at their worst, but always with understanding.
Take Ward Minogue, the unrepentant criminal. Malamud depicts him as a man consumed by racial prejudice, hatred of his father, and violent rages, but also as a man who was regularly beat by his father and who now suffers from a debilitating sickness. His death scene is frank, sad, and even-handed:
Ward had, in the meantime, destroyed a whole shelf of bottles, when he felt a hunger to smoke. It took him two minutes to get a match struck and the light touching his butt. He tasted the smoke with pleasure as the flame briefly lit his face, then he shook the match and flipped it over his shoulder. It landed, still burning, in a puddle of alcohol. The fire flew up with a zoom. Ward, lit like a flaming tree, flailed at himself. Screaming, he ran through the back and tried to get out of the window but was caught between the bars and, exhausted, died. (9.1.15)
There's no triumph of the good here, no victory against the villain. Ward unwittingly dies by his own hand, horribly and pathetically. Malamud doesn't try to excuse Ward's behavior, but he depicts it humanely, noting the hunger that drives Ward and the exhaustion that imprisons him. He tells it as it is, without embellishment, but with understanding.