The Universalized Reflections On The Maintenance Of Jewishness In The Post

The late1970s and the early1980s saw the rise of the post-Holocaust consciousness, which ever since then has been centering its interest around various phenomena in the post-Holocaust society, in particular, around the Holocaust survivors and the changes in the Jewish thought after the Holocaust. The post-Holocaust consciousness is closely connected with the living situations of the Jews after World War II. With the destruction of the European(esp. the Eastern European) Jewish communities, the Jews were confronted with the ill fortunate of exile and their center was shifted to America and Israel, resulting in many Jewish people’s severing from their family, hometown, tradition, culture and language as well and making them experience various kinds of trauma in the new lands. The solitariness and helplessness produced by living in unfamiliar places and the complex feelings after the great disaster made the majority of the Jewish people choose to live a solitary and private life with no communication with the outside world. However, at the same time, the Jewish people paid much attention to the regulation and discipline of their behavior and morality imposed upon them by their Jewish identity. To maintain Jewishness became a touchstone for their life and the maintenance of Jewishness took priority over other things. This strengthened the national identification of the Jewish people and enhanced the reawakening of Jewishness among them, making the Jewish people living in different quarters and coming from different social strata stick ever more to their Jewish identity and resulting in the rejuvenation of Zionism. As a result, an awareness centering around the national profits of the Jewish people and featuring strong will, extreme anxiety, persistent consciousness for achievement and indifference to the non-Jewish world was forged and was ultimately shown in the construction and development of the Jewish land—Israel.Under such circumstances, the Jewish life in America gained a characteristic of being "self-contradictory":on the one hand, the Jewish people enjoyed peace and comfort brought about by the American development; on the other, they were deeply involved in various negative influences produced by the Holocaust. As they tried their utmost to reach a compromise between living in reality and surviving the post-Holocaust influences, they by and by reconstructed the Holocaust, making it a cultural event and bringing about a continuous impact upon the social life and the moral life in the American society.In America, the Holocaust was at the beginning presented as a representative of "violence" created by the evil of the unnatural and inhumane World War II. Talking about the Holocaust, people put more emphasis on the ultimate and uncompromised evil of Nazism and considered it as a threat to the future of human civilization. The Jews were singled out by Nazism as the biggest enemy and therefore the anti-Nazis people would necessarily single out the Jews as the most effective evidence of anti-Nazism, for the Jews were the most traumatized by the Nazis. As a consequence, the Holocaust was presented to people as a war story and the extermination of the Jewish people became one of the bad results brought about by the evil of Nazism. Thus, the universal ization of the Holocaust became a trend. Helping the Holocaust survivors forget the past and embrace a bright future became the general pursuit of the American people and getting rid of Nazism became a composite part of the American mainstream. The Jew was then used as an analogy to the American symbolization of "democracy" and "nationality" and the Jew, as the opposite image of the Nazis ideology, became refreshed and thus occupied the place of front and center for the American morality and politics.At the same time, the sanctification of the Holocaust was also under way:the Jewish people refused to consider the Holocaust as a composite part of World War II, arguing that the Holocaust was an independent war on the Jews; they refused to take the history of the extermination of the Jewish people as a common example of racism, claiming that only the Jews had the right to the name "the biggest victim" and that any other racial group should not compete with the Jewish people for this name; they also refused to take the Holocaust as a common event in history, claiming that the Holocaust was unique and matchless. Though, the process of the sanctification of the Holocaust could not stop the opposite process of its universalization, for the discourse of the Holocaust was unavoidably imprinted with the features of the American mainstream culture so as to produce impact upon the American mainstream as well as the world all over. Only on condition of this could the Jewish people succeed in making America and the world to accept and understand the Holocaust as well as effecting impact upon the American foreign policies so as to be beneficial to the development of the Jewish homeland Israel. As the story-telling of the Holocaust went on, the spiritual trauma of the Holocaust finally edged to the center of morality in the American society and became a way of moral consideration and judgment.In a word, after World War II, the Holocaust was constructed as a discourse concerning politics, race, ideology as well as cultural traditions. Although the post-Holocaust consciousness is related to the Holocaust, it goes beyond the Holocaust itself, trying to interpret the non-reciprocal actions or violence in the modern times as something that is politically related to the Holocaust. This results in a greater degree of the universalization of the Holocaust and a lesser degree of its sanctification. The principles created during the process of understanding and interpreting the Holocaust are then employed in the process of morality construction of the American society instead of the Jewish people only.A thorough reading of Philip Roth’s works reveals that his themes and implications are closely connected with his Jewish identity, Jewishness serving as the thread through all his works and the Holocaust being the biggest event that he is not likely to evade. Based on this fact, this dissertation, in the light of the post-Holocaust consciousness, effects an analysis of Philip Roth’s Zuckerman Books, aiming to reach the conclusion that Philip Roth’s Zuckerman Books are imbued with the post-Holocaust consciousness, showing that the maintenance of Jewishness and the reflections on the construction of the post-Holocaust discourse in the American society are the central concerns in Zuckerman Books and that, by explorations concerning how the traumatic Jewish event(the Holocaust) is universalized so as to promote the progress of the post-War American morality, Philip Roth has proved that he is an American writer instead of a Jewish American writer as he himself once claimed to be.This dissertation is made up of five parts:"Introduction" first clarifies what the target of the research is, namely, what Zuckerman Books are, followed by an introduction of Philip Roth’s status in the American canon and his Zuckerman Books’connection with the post-Holocaust consciousness, aiming to show that research findings on the Zuckerman Books can be achieved from the perspective of the post-Holocaust consciousness."Introduction" also includes a section of literature review as well as a section about the structure of the dissertation.Chapter One "Writing with the Post-Holocaust Consciousness about the Jew" first explores Philip Roth’s ideas and understanding concerning writing about the Jew, followed with a detailed analysis of how the Jew is portrayed in The Ghost Writer and Exit Ghost(the former being the first book in Zuckerman Books and the latter being the last). Chapter One also tackles the issue of how the Holocaust is employed in a creative way in these two books, showing that Philip Roth, by bridging across the two books that are almost30years away from each other, has revealed his understanding of the American Jewish morality and spirituality in the post-Holocaust era and his reflections upon how to achieve the universalization of writing about the Jew on condition that Jewishness is maintained.Chapter Two "Identification with the Jew and the Universal Concerns in the Post-Holocaust Era" effects a detailed analysis of Zuckerman Unbound, The Anatomy Lesson and The Prague Orgy, showing that Philip Roth, by way of portraying Nathan Zuckerman’s so-called liberation in Zuckerman Unbound and his self-reflection and self-anatomy in The Anatomy Lesson, has shown the complex feelings existing between the Jewish parents and their children and that this serves as a revelation of Philip Roth’s identification with Jewishness. In The Prague Orgy, going beyond himself and his ethnic group and showing his deep concerns about issues concerning the human progress, Philip Roth has explored the moral conditions of the European Jews and their ill fortune under the harsh rule of a tyranny. With these universalized concerns about the human progress, Philip Roth continues his reflections and interpretations of issues about the Jews in The Ghost Writer.Chapter Three "Reflections on the American Jewish Problems in the Post-Holocaust Era" makes an analysis of The Counterlife, The American Pastoral, I Married a Communist and The Human Stain, pointing out that Philip Roth, as he has always been doing, has in these four books continued his exploration of important issues concerning the life of the Jews such as the maintenance of Jewishness in the post-Holocaust era, the reflections upon the Holocaust and the employment of the Holocaust and his aim is to warn the Jewish people that they should learn from history so as not to make unforgivable mistakes and turn themselves from victims into victimizers. "Conclusion" draws a conclusion to what is analyzed in the body part of the dissertation, pointing out that, in his Zuckerman Books, by using the Holocaust as the concealed background, Philip Roth has explored the way of the construction of the Jewish identity in the modern American society, aiming to find out how Jewishness can be maintained in an America that has a powerful force of identification and how the post-Holocaust discourse can be constructed in the post-Holocaust era so as to make use of the traumatic historical event to promote the morality of the post-War American society. This proves that he is an American writer instead of a Jewish American writer as he himself once claimed to be.