Sexuality, Traums, Self-autonomy

American Jewish author Philip Roth concerns much about the predicament of modern Jews in the conflicts between American culture and Jewish tradition, and focuses on Jewishness as his major territory in the examination of American culture. Roth devotes himself to conveying the inner-self of modern Diaspora Jews through applying fundamental themes embedded in American culture, such as sexuality following the trend of sexual liberation in1960s. Kepesh trilogy is such a saga depicting the professor of desire, David Kepesh’s unceasing pursuit of sexuality. Kepesh’s lascivious youth in The Professor of Desire (1977), ridiculous metamorphosis in The Breast (1973), as well as his last years’obstinate self-autonomy and phonographic obsession in The Dying Animal (2001), all illuminate certain traces of Jewishness.Through associating Kepesh’s sexual experience with the corresponding Jewish cultural elements, traces of Jewishness could be revealed:Kepesh and Birgitta’s unbound sexuality restores Kepesh’s Jewishness and performs as restoration for Kepesh’s Jewishness; Kepesh and Elizabeth’s traumatic memory functions as a figurative catastrophe of the Holocaust, both persecutor Kepesh and victim Elizabeth have to face it and live on with this trauma; Kepesh and Helen’s disastrous marriage traps Kepesh into a space of anxiety molded by Jewish exile and Diaspora; Kepesh and Claire’s transient happiness intervened by Kepesh’s seemingly irrational metamorphosis into a female breast, self-punishment derived from Jewishness could be found through exploration of the motive of this transformation; Kepesh’s phonographic obsession with Consuela vacillates his obstinate self-autonomy and makes him hesitate about whether to surrender his self-autonomy or not, during which Kepesh’s radical form of self-autonomy and the solution to end it indeed serve as Roth’s literary exploration of the future of Zionism.