On Ethical Orientations In Philip Roth’s Novels

Philip Roth is a noted Jewish American writer and he published his first novel in 1959. In his long creative career, he showed a very strong vitality in creation and gave a unique thought on profound issues.In Roth’s novels, particularly in his autobiographical novels, he demonstrated a very strong reflection on ethics, especially in Patrimony:A True Story and Everyman, which showed Roth’s thinking on Jewish immigrants, society, family and life in the field of Ethics. Through studies of the two novels, this thesis is to analyze and discover the ethical orientation implied in his novels. His ethical views are manifested through a series of conflicts. Jewish immigrants between two generations, the traditional Jewish culture, individuals and society, individuals and family, individuals and marriage, individuals and disease and death are all represented by a great variety of conflicts.Therefore, the study of Roth’s ethics is the process of studying the ongoing conflicts in his novels. The publishing-time span of Patrimony and Everyman is large, but both expressed his reflection on the same topic. The former rouses reflections on identity conflicts of Jewish immigrants from his father’s illness; the latter is about the author’s thinking of the relationship between individuals and the world after the disease and death of his friends at an old age. The two novels, complementary and identical, thus form Roth’s full thinking of community, family and individual ethics. Through researches, it is known that Roth has serious ethic-orientation in his works, and that he surpasses the limitations of race and environment and analyzes the incredible fate of human beings. Roth believes that people are always in a variety of mixed relationships and are haunted by various and unavoidable contradictions so that it is difficult to find the ideal ego throughout the whole life.