The Absurd World And Alienated Jewish Images

Philip Roth is a Jewish-American writer who has been famous for a long time and plays a very important role in the modern American literature world. Philip Roth has won almost all literary awards in America since he began to write. He also has been nominated as the candidate for Nobel Prize for literature for several times. Philip Roth began his writing career when he was still in his youth and from then on he never stopped his writing creation even after he retired from teaching. He produced a large amount of works which in a large part describe the present living conditions of Jews in modern society. Philip Roth finished his Exit Ghost in2007which is said to be the last one among his Zuckerman Books. Critics all gave various comments on the work Exit Ghost. Exit Ghost depicts an outstanding Jewish-American writer, who had retreated into remote mountain to stay away from city life11years ago, who now returns back to the prosperous city New York because of his disease and what he saw and heard during a short stay of a week in New York. This observation draws people’s attention to the serious living condition of Jews in modern society. Through some main characters and their behaviors, this novel embodies some important theories of existentialism, for example, alienation, absurdity and free choices etc.Existentialism is a set of theories about the existence of human beings. In existentialism, men are free. The world around us is altogether an absurd one. In this thesis, the theories of free choices, alienation and absurdity are used for analyzing Philip Roth’s Exit Ghost so as to deepen our understanding of his creation purpose and the realistic significance of the novel. Jewishness has become an obstacle for the Jews to melt into the modern society. As a member of the modern society, Jews embody the spiritual perplexity of the modern people in the city. This thesis is to awaken people’s attention to their own value and to advocate their pursuit for true self. Therefore, that offers a new angle for studying Philip Roth and his creation ideology.This thesis mainly contains five subdivisions.Chapter One first introduces Philip Roth’s life experience and his main literary achievement and the plot of his new work Exit Ghost. The development history of the Jews nation and how the Jews suffered the wound brought by the two world wars are introduced. Then relative research and comments on Exit Ghost made by the critics both at home and abroad and the critical theory-existentialism by which the thesis will be discussed.Chapter Two mainly discusses Sartre and existentialism. Several basic theories of existentialism contain alienation, free choices and absurdity in details.Chapter Three studies the protagonist of the novel Zuckerman and the absurd world he lives in. This chapter analyses Zuckerman’s behaviors and the world around him by using the notion of free choices and alienation in order to dig up his living dilemma and the significance of existence.Chapter Four analyzes the absurd and strange world showed in this novel; the main characters who relapsed into different kinds of absurdity and some special absurd images in order to find the absurdity among the characters in the world.Chapter Five, also the conclusion of this thesis, summarizes the discussion in the above chapters and presents the alienation between people and absurd world to all the people in order to cause the attention of the people. This chapter analyzes the impersonal and theoretical reason for this phenomenon in order to waken the people in dilemma and cause them to make their own free choices and change the absurd world and improve their living condition and pursue existential meaning and a meaningful life.