An Interpretation Of Philip Roth’s American Pastoral From A Neo-realistic Perspective

As one of the most outstanding and influential American writers, Philip Roth (1933---) has been active for more than half a century and is worthy of an "evergreen tree" in contemporary American literature. As the first novel of the "American Trilogy", American Pastoral is generally acclaimed as one of Roth’s best works. It demonstrates the ups and downs of a Jewish-American immigrant family and the harsh reality of American society that they face in the past half century after World War II. Based on concerns with Jewish immigrants’inner world and American social reality, American Pastoral develops a neo-realistic perspective by the use of modern and postmodern writing skills.From a neo-realistic perspective, American Pastoral demonstrates a social subject about the desperation awareness of reality; one of the important features of neo-realism is that it keeps writing principles of traditional realism while blending writing techniques of modernism and postmodernism. Thus, this thesis aims to explore such a social subject about desperation awareness of reality and neo-realist strategies to describe the reality reflected in American Pastoral.This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One is an introduction in which the general purpose of the whole thesis is revealed. Chapter Two is the theoretical framework in which neo-realism is introduced. Chapter Three and Chapter Four are the main focuses of this thesis because they concentrate on neo-realistic main principles reflected in American Pastoral. Chapter Three is about the social subject about desperation awareness of reality analyzed from three aspects-the anxiety of self-ascription in the paradise of the immigrants, the nightmare in the paradise of the immigrants, and generation gap among the three generations of the Levovs. Chapter Four is about neo-realist strategies to describe the reality reflected in American Pastoral; they are discussed from two aspects-Roth’s specific narrative mode and Roth’s neo-realistic writing techniques. Chapter Five is the conclusion. Based on the analyses of the previous four chapters, the conclusion is drawn as follows:there are two remarkable features of American Pastoral. Firstly, in order to interpret the social characteristics of postwar America, Philip Roth criticizes morality lapse and crashed spirits in the society by revealing the Jewish immigrants’ desperation awareness of reality. Secondly, on the purpose of reproducing the objective reality, Roth changes the traditional narrative mode and applies modern and postmodern writing skills to construct the subject about desperation awareness of realty. Besides, it is still hard to give a precise definition for neo-realism in contemporary American literature; so this thesis on the interpretation of American Pastoral cannot avoid limitations. But, such an attempt to discuss neo-realistic principles shown in the novel can help the reader to further understand the subject of the novel and Roth’s inclination to neo-realism to some extent, and it will contribute a lot to the reception of the novel in China.