Identity, Assimilation, and Representations of American Judaism in Philip Roth's American Trilogy

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" Identity, Assimilation, and Representations of American Judaism in Philip Roth's American Trilogy "
Nath, Tessa

Document Type	:	AL
Record Number	:	909759
Doc. No	:	LA8cm8n8b2
Title & Author	:	Identity, Assimilation, and Representations of American Judaism in Philip Roth's American Trilogy [Article]\ Nath, Tessa
Date	:	2015
Title of Periodical	:	UCLA
Abstract	:	Roth critics have long acknowledged that the American Trilogy elucidates the life of three men whose identities were formed based on their historical time period (the Vietnam War, the McCarthy era, and the Clinton impeachment). What has not been acknowledged is the extent to which the American Jewish community’s identity wars of the 1940s and 50s influenced the men’s lives. A history of self-hatred, anti-Semitism, and fear of a Holocaust in America informs the men’s lives as much as their contemporary moment. In the American Trilogy, the narrator Nathan Zuckerman writes novels about the lives of three real men after their deaths. In his narration, he reveals that he is actually reexamining his own past through the three men in an attempt to rediscover himself and define his identity. This thesis explores Philip Roth’s American Trilogy in order to establish a new definition of American Judaism — one that is predicated on choice rather than on birth or religious practice. Roth is an unusual writer for this goal, since he was long regarded as outside the Jewish literary canon and was popularly accused of penning anti-Semitic texts. Nevertheless, I argue that we are able to realize an inclusive definition of American Jewish identity only by allowing the periphery into the centerfold.