On The Discipline Of Middle-class Values In American Pastoral

Philip Roth is one of the most prominent writers in contemporary America,whose literary themes involve human being's alienation,conflicts between history and human's subjectivity,rebellion and sexuality.This thesis probes the discipline of middle-class values on the protagonist,the Swede,in the novel American Pastoral;it discloses the ideological functions of the middle-class values via shaping the Swede's perception mode and behavior pattern through disciplinary technologies of discourses,normalization and differentiation,and institutional mediators of the family,the community and the school.The conservative Swede represents the social character in the postwar America such as other-directed habitus,paternal authority and materialism,which are identified with middle-class values.Community,school and family participate in the Swede's socialization and promote his identification with social normality via creating the sense of self-empowerment in the Swede.The Swede's other-directed habitus is attributable to the disciplinary power of normalization and naming in the Jewish community.Under the training of his father Lou,the Swede is grown to be a docile body in compliance with paternal authority.The Swede is imbued with materialism in the field of materialistic suburbia.Having internalized the middle-class values,the Swede automatically imposes the values upon his daughter Merry by suppressing her individuality and molding her body in accordance with the normality of"Miss America".However,Merry's cognition of communism,war and Jainism enables her to act in the interest of humanitarianism,justice and equality rather than power.The daughter Merry refuses conformity habitus via behaving against the standard of Miss America,refuses inequality relationship via violent means of bomb and refuses to be materialistic via converting to Jainism.Though confronted with permeating disciplinary power,she is thus capable of reaching the moral and ethical dimension of being.Family gap between the Swede and Merry is the miniature of conflicts between reverse discourses in historical context.Roth is not merely narrating an alternate American history but is investigating the ways in which history is constructed via tensions between history and reality,historical forces and personal fortunes.Therefore,this thesis discloses Roth's reflection on history and care of human beings' existence,and meanwhile discloses the aesthetic and philosophical dimensions of the novel.