Philip Roth Books the Plot Research Proposal

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American Pastoral -- Summary

The novel looks at American history after WWII through the eyes of Nathan Zuckerman, the narrator of the story. Nathan thinks this age of the baby-boomers is a golden era of this country's history up to the discordant sounds of the 1960s and early 1970s.

Focal point of the book is Swede Levov, a Jew, who happens to be the "all-American" success story -- very smart, athletic, thriving businessman, and, of course, loving husband and father. Swede desires only to live in peace -- a pastoral life -- in New Jersey.

However, his not so peaceful daughter, Merry, 16, a rebellious type who is deeply involved in the anti-Vietnam War chaos, places a bomb at the post office which explodes and kills one person. She will later set off more bombs and go underground to hide from incarceration.

Swede's peaceful existence is gone, permanently. For the remainder of his life, he attempts without success, to comprehend what happened.

How did the quiet and calm of post WWII evolve into the assassination, violence and chaos of the 1960s? Swede looks at what "community" means any more, relationships between father and daughter, loyalty to family...and the betrayal of same. Absorption of Jews into society also interests him as well as what happened to compassion and understanding. Finally, he examines the political fanaticism of the day.

Swede has a covert get-together with his daughter many years later who is living in abysmal conditions and claims she has been repeatedly raped while hiding.

It seems the sharp contrast between the peace of the post war years and the maelstrom of two decades later mirrors the collapse of Swede's own need for peace and the decimation of his family by the actions of his daughter.

American Pastoral -- Personal Response I enjoyed this novel tremendously.

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Perhaps because I can almost feel the pain of Swede as he progresses from his dream of tranquility prior to the 1960s -- an America that never will be again -- into the darkness and cold of the years after first John Kennedy, then his brother and Martin Luther King were assassinated.

In using his daughter as the epitomy of the counterculture, hippy, rebel generation that went to war on everyone, he brings the horror of the 60's close enough to sense it even if one has not lived through it. The hypocrisy of the generation who raged against conformity by conforming to the culture of the time is brought out in the personage of his daughter, Merry. Though he does seem to go overboard with his dismal illustration of that time, it is right on with the perspective of those who looked from the outside into the rebellion and the self-absorption of the snotty kids who didn't even know what they were rebelling against.

I enjoyed immensely Swede's perspective on it when he learned "the worst lesson life can teach -- that it makes no sense." Surely, it did not. I have to think of Roth's use of a bomb that his daughter used to kill, which also exploded Swede's dream of peace, and the analogy to the exploding dream of the 1960s and beyond.

His discussions are insightful, believable, and thoughtful. One in particular stabbed me with the reality of it. He talks about how hard we all try to comprehend or understand each other's motivations -- what makes each other tick -- and actions and thoughts, but that we are hopelessly wrong, again and again.

He can't accept what he cannot answer. And he can't answer because "it makes no sense.".....

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