"humanity's Filthy Dominant Factor Of The Tragedy And Hidden Factors

Philip Roth is an active representative Jewish American writer who has never stopped writing since he secured a firm position in American literature. He has won many prizes and awards, and he is also well-known in the literary arena of the world. In the year 2000, at the age of 67, Roth published the last novel of his American Trilogy—The Human Stain, for which Roth was conferred the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in the same year of its publication, and it was listed among the top 10 best books of that year. This novel relates the story of a black American named Coleman, who has a fairly light complexion, tries his best to conceal his racial background to identify himself as a Jew, in order to escape racial discrimination.This paper is intended as an analysis of the human stains on the major characters of the novel, and a revelation of the social stains hidden behind them——racial discrimination, crazy persecuting spirit and the trauma of the Vietnam War. These direct factors are the ostensive factors that result in the tragedy of Coleman. This paper also attempts to explore the relationship between and the decisive effect of free will and determinism upon Coleman in his tragedy. The everlasting conflict between free will and determinism is the indirect and potential factor, i.e. the covert factor of the tragedy.