An Interpretation Of American Pastoral From The Perspective Of Postmodernism

Philip Roth is one of the most controversial writers in contemporary Americanliterature. While some commentators view his work as anti-Semitic, obscenity bordering onpornography, and self-indulgence, others praise Philip Roth’s skill of exuberance,inventiveness and his fantastic humor. People view that Philip Roth’s complexity lies in avariety of narrative methods adopted in his works. Throughout his career Roth hasexperimented with narrative methods producing fiction that has grown increasinglysophisticated and technically interesting. American Pastoral is one of the best examples inwhich Philip Roth experiments with some postmodern techniques. By analyzing thisrepresentative work, this thesis intends to explore the embodiment of the postmodernnarrative strategies in the novel and the aesthetic effects achieved through the interfusion ofthe three postmodern techniques: metafiction, parody and indeterminacy.American Pastoral, one of American Trilogy is not postmodern in a vacuum. In theprocess of creation, Philip Roth exhibits the use of postmodernism for humorous purposes,The self-conscious narrative and fragmented narrative are the center of the metafictionalploy. Fragmentary plots and characters put together just like the daydreaming of theprotagonist defines himself in an indeterminate world. Philip Roth is the most ambitiousJewish American writer, he has continued to foreground the fragmented, contingent natureof narrative production. All three works in the American Trilogy reveal the narrative uses ofmemory and present how the text of the self linked to the cultural time. Parody is a kind ofwriting technique that presents the contrast between the parodic and the parodied entity.Philip Roth is concerned with the experience of Jews in a heterogeneous environment.For Roth, no form of identity can ever be fixed; his work has its ability to portray not onlyAmerican Jewish experience in all of its historical variety but also to challenge the meaningof identity in postmodern ways. And the thoughts revealed in the novel are in accordancewith them. It’s difficult to deal with the problem of identity, and there are grotesqueconsequences for the man, the family and even the liberal Gentile society that surroundsthem.This thesis attempts to interpret American Pastoral from the perspective of postmodernism. And it consists of three chapters.Chapter One focuses on using of metafictional ploy. It is analyzed from two aspects:self-conscious narrative, fragmented narrative in the novel.Chapter Two explores the art of parody. Roth’s humorous parody of Miltonic epic, thecharacters more or less intimate the classic characters. This chapter also consists of threedivisions: parody of Miltonic epic, parody of pornography and parody of detective story.Chapter Three involves indeterminacy. In a indeterminate world, the characters’identity are unsolved, their anxieties and fears in a postmodern world, the assimilated Jewsin a heterogeneous culture act like Diaspora spiritually, which makes man more torturedand frustrated.In American Pastoral, Philip Roth exhibits postmodern techniques such as metafiction,parody and indeterminacy. In his novel, life is such an absurd paradoxical theater wherethere is no boundary between reality and fiction. Roth merges fiction and facts through theuse of imagination in his creative process. The characters are fragmented selves in anindeterminate universe, plots are also fragmentary, which forms the fragmentary picture inthe readers’ mind. The novel demonstrates Roth’s concerns not mainly with the epic andsocial Jewish American life but rather with the spiritual condition of his characters’ innerlives.