One cannot seriously read and interpret Philip Roth’s American Pastoral without wrestling with the book’s protagonist enigma, Seymour “The Swede” Levov. But in entering the work, it might be useful to offer the same disclaimer that the book’s narrator, Nathan Zuckerman, offered: “The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It’s getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That’s how we know we’re alive: we’re wrong." Perhaps what Zuckerman is saying is that even as his story reveals a shattering of the image he had of the Swede, he is still not certain of the accuracy of where he arrived. Zuckerman’s view of Swede was second-hand; the reader and literary critics hears at least third-hand, which makes the task all the more challenging.On the surface, “everywhere he looked, people were in love with (the Swede)." Swede was the kind of person “for whom there were no obstacles, who appeared never to have to struggle." Even his brother, Jerry, who wallowed in the obscurity of his brother’s shadows, said “Everybody loved him, a perfectly decent person who could have escaped stupid guilt forever." Gary Johnson, in “The Presence of Allegory: The Case of Philip Roth’s American Pastoral,” calls the Swede a “symbol, someone who represents or stands for a multitude of abstract positive ideas” like “hope, strength, innocence, purity." As a high schooler, cheerleaders created a cheer specifically for the Swede, which they chanted at his football, basketball, and baseball teams. He married Miss New Jersey and raised his children in the pastoral setting of Old Rimrock in New Jersey. Zuckerman, a high school acquaintance of the Swede’s younger brother Jerry, described the Swede as “if not divine, a distinguished cut above the more primordial humanity of just about everyone else at school." When the Swede acknowledges his presence as a child, Zuckerman says, “The adored had acknowledged the adoring." But even then, Zuckerman figured “it couldn’t have been as easy for him as it looked, that a part of it was a mystique."
Even though Zuckerman’s awe for the Swede mirrors the god-like status that successful athletes can take on in real life, such fantasy cannot be sustained. Claire Sigrist-Sutton, in her article “Mistaking Merry: Tearing off the Veil in American Pastoral,” says it like this: “The partial narrative, so easily mistaken for the whole, is the Swede’s, one of mythic proportions, worldly success, and terrible tragedy." Zuckerman points out that “Even those who had it all as kids sooner or later get the average share of misery." The misery is foreshadowed by a narrative reflection on The Kid from Tompkinsville, a John R. Tunis book for teenagers that both Zuckerman and the Swede read. While “the kid, the book’s protagonist, played baseball for the Brooklyn Dodgers, “each triumph is rewarded with a punishing disappointment or crushing accident." Zuckerman asks the obvious question: “Did it occur to (the Swede) that if disaster could strike down the Kid from Tompkinsville, it could come and strike the great Swede down too?”
Whether or not Swede made the connection, the next 414 pages tell his tragic story. For starters, he actively contributed to the constructed image that was created for him. Rather than subjecting himself to any conflict that would have resulted from the pursuit of his own desires, he was, as Jerry put it, “fatally attracted to his duty." His other motivation, according to Jerry, was “for the appearance” of his decisions. His adherence to the expectations of others led him to serve in the Marines in World War II and also to choose taking over his father’s glove-making business instead of pursuing a professional baseball offer.
But for all his good intentions, devastation was on its way. There was plenty of conflict with a daughter who would eventually be raped and experiment with lesbianism, political radicalism, and the religious fringe. But his daughter, whose political convictions led her to set off the bomb that “detonated (the Swede’s) life” was far from his only problem. His life was also full of tension with his father, a lost intimacy with his wife, affairs, a quest for who to blame, and political disorder. As Zuckerman observed, “Alone we are, deeply alone, and always, in store for us, a layer of loneliness even deeper." Try as he did, the Swede could not escape the pain, though he did continue to believe in his family and his America: “He was trying hard to continue to exist as himself despite the unlikeliness of everything." So he lived his whole life “with all the shame of masquerading as the ideal man."
It seems like no accident that the Swede, s a middle class Jewish American, approaches life with optimism and a solid work ethic, believing life is and will be good, meaningful, and fulfilling. According to Sigrist-Sutton, “The American Dream becomes one in which, if you work hard, if you can assimilate the best you can, you can gain an honest measure of comfort and respectability in this world." But alas, life did not turn out that way for the Swede, at least not fully. Jeffrey Rubin-Dorsky, in “Philip Roth and American Jewish Identity: The Question of Authentic” speculates that the Swede’s attempt to set himself apart from his Jewishness was destined for failure. Aimee Pozorski, in “American Pastoral and the Traumatic Ideals of Democracy,” goes even farther, saying that “Swede, and the culture, the politics, and the economics system he represents, have at least indirectly produced the nightmares they suffer." Which is why his own daughter’s resentment of his country was so difficult to take. As Zuckerman says, “There wasn’t much difference, and she knew it, between hating America and hating (her family). He loved the America she hated and blamed for everything that was perfect in life and wanted violently to overturn."
In the aftermath of his wife’s face lift and finding out that a friend of his hid his daughter after her political crime, Swede asks an ironic question mental question: “What kind of mask is everyone wearing?” It is ironic because the Swede feeds his own mask as much or more than anyone else does. The scene that began Zuckerman’s search is telling. The Swede had invited him to dinner in New York to talk about the Swede’s father. But during the dinner, the Swede does not talk about his father, but rather about the brilliance of his and his sons’ lives. He simply tells the story that has always been told about him. Everything is great. Happiness and achievements abound. His family loves each other. But that story is (at least partially) a fiction. The real painful story behind the mask is “the worst lesson that life can teach—that it makes no sense."
***Note to the reader: This post has been adjusted from an academic reflection on this topic. The citations have been removed for readability.
0 comments:
Post a Comment