Power Discourse Behind The Madness In The Human Stain

Roth is definitely one of the most remarkable and significant novelists inAmerican post-modern literature, because of his fictional depict of the fantasy andreality of contemporary American society and of his notable artistry to expose themoral consequences which people face in contemporary American society. Besides,due to the exposure of the private life of the American Jewish in his early fiction, hewas regarded as a controversial and “notorious” novelist. Even so, as a productivewriter, Philip Roth has become the third living generation of American authors,having his works collected by the Library of America since2005.The Human Stain is one of the “American problem” fictions, published in2000, which tells the story of a black man who passes for a white Jewish. In thenovel, the image of a maniac on “The Ship of Fools” depicted by Foucault ispresented by the protagonist, as well as by his sufferings that he is first repelled, andthen accepted, yet finally expelled again by the dominant white culture. And thecomplicated power relationships between Coleman and other chief characters areexposed by Philip Roth through multiple angles, which combines and reveals thedisillusionment of different people in contemporary American society. ThusColeman’s sufferings mirrors the repression of the upper class and the whitecommunity to the black, while his maniac behaviors stands for the counteractivesubversion of the American black, and through Coleman’s tragic ending Roth hasbrilliantly revealed the essence of the angst of the modern American black, and thedisillusionment of their “American Dream”.