On The Disillusionment Of American Dreams In The Human Stain

Being an influential contemporary Jewish American writer, Philip Roth has published dozens of excellent works until now. And his works repeatedly won literary awards and got the reader’s recognition and love. Therefore he occupies an important position in American literature. In 2000, Roth finished The Human Stain which was the last novel of American Trilogy. Set in the American society, this novel depicts three main characters’ pursuit for American dream and their living states, embodying the author’s profound insight into the American society and conveying a panorama of current American society.Many literary critics have focused on analyzing The Human Stain from different perspectives such as identity crisis, ethics, tragic theme, psychoanalysis and so on. However, there are few scholars studying this novel from the perspective of American dream. Actually, American dream has been an eternal and significant theme. The Americans from one generation to another have deep belief that they will lead happy and wealthy lives by the means of persistent hard work and struggle. Whereas, with the advancement of the industrial process, American dream has been endowed with different connotations, becoming people’s urge for success and money, which made millions of Americans bewildered and confused, even lost. Considering the background of the current society, this thesis attempts to dissect three main characters’ quest for American dream, revealing the roots for the disillusionment of their dreams.Philip Roth created many tragic figures in The Human Stain, however, for the sake of convenience, the thesis only elaborates on three different characters to support the perspective of American Dream, revealing how fragile and vulnerable they were.With the review of the American dream as the cornerstone, this thesis consists of five chapters. The introduction part introduces Philip Roth’s life and main works, the main idea of The Human Stain, and the literary reviews about the American dream at home and abroad. Chapter one mainly analyzes the hero Coleman Silk, a light-skinned African American, who has been a professor of high prestige, attempting to get rid of his identity and realize his freedom dream, finally experiencing political rightness in the 1990 s. Chapter two discusses Lester Farley, a Veteran retiring from the Vietnam field and suffering from the physical and psychological trauma, was finally unable to fulfill his dream of happiness. Chapter three mainly depicts Delphine Roux, an intellectual from France, urges to gain success in the career meeting with career waterloo in America society, reflecting the different cultural conflicts between America and France. In the conclusion part, this thesis elucidates that while the main characters have different American dreams, their ultimate goals are to assimilate into American society and establish their existence. However, unfortunately, their dreams and pursuits are shattered by cold society and bloody reality, ending in disillusionment totally. The broken dream signifies the vanishment of the American ideal in the individual’s heart. And also the cracked dream is a significant theme of American literature in the 1990 s. Therefore, the so-called American dream is merely a rosy mythology for the capitalist class. Regarding of the common people, the American dream is nothing more than a nightmare, which means complacency, cruelty, emasculation and vacuity. Once the dream is awake, everything will return to its original form.