Cultural Conflicts In Philip Roth’s American Pastoral

Philip Roth (1933-) has been a publicly recognized controversial novelist inAmerica literature history after the World War II. This thesis focuses attention on AmericanPastoral, one of Roth’s later works, to analyze the conflicts between the Jews and themainstream society and to reveal the embarrassment of the Jews in today’s Americansociety. In this thesis, we probe into those problems concerning Jewish identity, Jewishtradition, intermarriage, war and politics presented by his other novels.Roth distinguishes his American Pastoral by exploring the imbalance between theprotagonist’s id and superego. In the depth of the protagonist’s heart, he has an intenselonging for assimilation. He seeks a compromise to poise his id and superego—abandonsold traditional and enters the mainstream American society. Finally, the protagonistbecomes a dangling man between Jewish identity and American identity in his inner world.He associates individual fates with the America’s politics, society and culture backgroundtightly. We can get a glimpse into the abnormal psychology of the young generation ofJews in contemporary American society. On the one hand, the Jews hate the Jewish familyvalues and religion rules, and desperately want to break free of the shackles of Jewishtradition; on the other hand, they cannot easily find paradise in modern American.As a Jewish writer, Roth has already transferred his attention from Jewish immigrantsto all humanity. At the end of the novel, Roth implies that humanity would never achievedream of Eden under the social unrest and upheaval of that time. Through a thoroughscanning on the lives of four generations, Roth intertwines protagonist’s conflicts with theself, family and society into this grand story. He spares no effort to explore variousrelationships between people and people in the mutual exchanges. Roth really reflects hisstrong concern for human beings.