A Psychological Interpretation Of David Kepesh’s Futile Struggle Against Alienation In The Breast

In1972, Philip Roth, a famous American writer in contemporary America,published his novella The Breast, which triggered extensive disputes. The novel isabout a man’s metamorphosis into a huge breast. David Kepesh, a38-year-old Jewishprofessor in comparative literature, turns into a breast of6feet and155poundsovernight. Since then, the lustful professor is living as a huge breast, unable to moveor see. Yet all the efforts he makes to overcome it are inevitably doomed to failure.With first-person narration, the book reveals Kepesh’s reflection on hismetamorphosis and his ensuing suffering via the descriptions of his thinking activityand the conversations between him and others. This thesis attempts to uncover theprofound meaning of human alienation, which is symbolized by Kepesh’smetamorphosis. It analyzes the severity of Kepesh’s alienation and the objective andsubjective reason of his failure to overcome it. It is concluded that the novella revealsthe harm of alienation to its readers. Alienation brings its victim ceaseless torment,both physical and mental. What’s worse, the process of alienation, once starting, isirreversible.Chapter1gives a brief introduction to Philip Roth and The Breast, and thensystemizes the overseas and domestic research status of the novella. Finally, themethod and the significance of the research project are briefly introduced.Chapter2analyzes Kepesh’s alienated behavior after his metamorphosis and theseverity of his alienation. The analysis is carried out from three aspects: the disordersKepesh suffers in his gender, speech and identity.Chapter3gives a description and classification of Kepesh’s futile defenses of hismetamorphosis. It comes to the conclusion that Kepesh’s efforts to overcome thealienation are in vain. The subjective reason for his failure is that he is always tryingto justify his metamorphosis with various plausible explanations, rather thanadmitting and confronting the internal cause of his alienation.Chapter4uses Lacan’s subject theory to analyze the objective reason ofKepesh’s failure to overcome his alienation. After his metamorphosis, Kepesh wentthrough the Mirror stage and the Oedipus stage, where his self-identification can beachieved only by others’ touch and words. The conflicts between his newlyestablished breast-based unconsciousness and his previous unconsciousness as ahuman lead to the inevitability of his failure. Chapter5is the conclusion. The metamorphosis of Kepesh symbolizes thesevere alienation he suffers. He can not eliminate his bewilderment and confusion.Nor can he overcome his alienation. It is the consistent theme of Roth’s works tofocus on depicting modern people’s bewilderment and confusion in the alienation.Kepesh, in The Breast, is not an isolated case, but a typical example of millions ofmodern people who are suffering from their alienation, and Roth is trying to give us acaution by describing Kepesh’s metamorphosis.