| Philip Milton Roth(1933-2018)is one of the most prestigious Jewish writers in the 20th century of the United States.During a writing career over five decades since the 1950s,Roth produces a significant number of novels that have been considered to be classics by ordinary readers as well as literary critics.Despite the fact that Roth was once criticized for writing unsympathetically about his fellow Jewish people,his lifelong engagement with the Jewish questions constitutes a substantial part of his literary output.His presentations and critiques of the very marginalization of Jewish people create a colorful"written world" and stimulate readers to explore and contemplate "the unwritten world."Building upon Critical Whiteness Studies or White Studies,this dissertation,taking the historical background involved in the novels to be studied as the timeline,examines Philip Roth’s critical attitude towards the white problem of the United States by means of detailed analysis of four of his late novels—The Plot Against America,I Married A Communist,American Pastoral and The Human Stain.From the 1940s to the end of the 20th century,whiteness played a significant role in American society,and Jewish Americans’marginalization reveals how it works.In these four novels,Roth seeks to highlight whiteness and deconstruct the "white mythology" of America.The Introduction briefly reviews the writing career of Philip Roth and the academic achievements in Roth studies before introducing the theorectical framework of the dissertation—Critical Whiteness Studies or White Studies—and expounding on its profound relevance to Roth studies.Finally,it describes the topic under examination and outlines the research question or hypothesis,objectives,and methods of the study.The body part of the dissertation is comprised of four chapters.Chapter One looks into,through a critical reading of The Plot Against America,Roth’s critique of the contradiction between whiteness and racial equality.Set against the European War in the 1940s,the novel,following the memory of the nine-year-old narrator,Philip Roth,presents the alternate history of the United States from 1940 to 1942.The European War intersects with the anti-Semitism of America,which results in the predicament of American Jews.The predicament reveals that the complicity between whiteness and power effectively excludes Jews from the mainstream of America and brings racial inequality it its wake.Presenting the marginalization of American Jews in terms of structure,public policies and experience,Roth exposes the real nature of white power as exclusion,oppression and violent force.Chapter Two focuses on Roth’s ruminaitons on whiteness and its relationship with American democracy in I Married A Communist.Set in the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union and McCarthyism of the 1950s in America,the novel impresses the readers through the reminiscences of two narrators and relates how the political illusions of Ira Ringold have crumbled.In sharp contrast to America’s self-proclaimed role as the world’s guardian of democracy based on equity,freedome and individual right,the presence of racial problems only proves otherwise.In the novel,the white ruling class uses Communism in a misleading way to cover up the intense racial conflicts in American society,and Roth narrates the political career of a "little guy" who was one of many angry Jews back in that era and examines the relationship between whiteness and American democracy as exhibited in political system,citizenship and class struggle.It is revealed that American democracy is white democracy born of white tyranny,white citizenship and cross-class political alliance.Chapter Three illustrates Roth’s insights into the relation between whiteness and cultural pluralism in American Pastoral.Set against the Vietnam War and American counterculture movement of the 1960s and 1970s,the novel depicts the cultural dilemma of the protagonist,Seymore Irving Levov.Widely known as a "melting pot," the United States tries to conjure up illusions of cultural diversity and openness to differences.However,cultural assimilation characterized by the one-way adaptation to the mainstream society not only consolidates the dominance of white culture but also counteracts every possible challenge from non-white culture.The assimilation of Seymore Lovov reflects the cultural dilemma of American Jews.The dominance of white culture as shown in the protagonist’s assimilation and his in-between cultural identities as both the guardian of white culture and an outsider inside all reveal that the so-called American paradise or pastoral isn’t free from the influence of whiteness.Chapter Four offers an analysis of Roth’s meditations on the affinity between whiteness and American moral order in The Human Stain.Set in Amercia at the end of the 20th century,the novel describes the painful experiences of a black,Coleman Silk,who passes for a Jew in the post-racial era.Although American society boasts of the realization of racial equity as its moral ideal,"the tyranny of propriety" always denies the moral authority of individuals so that racial justice covers up the injustice with which individuals have to live.In the novel,Roth centers on the injustice experienced by Coleman Silk in his career,academy and private life to present the moral chaos of America through white moral ideal,white moral dilemma and white moral crisis.The novel manifests the message that whiteness disrupts the moral order of American society and racial justice is nothing but a mirage.The conclusion recapitulates the white problems as revealed in the four novels.Roth has always borne in mind the real life of America,its racial problems and other social problems in America throughtout his literary odyssey,and his literary works are the very embodiment of these reflections.Since the 1940s,American society has witnessed great changes,but whiteness and the racial problems continue to haunt the country.While Philip Roth has not become the ghost writer of American Jews,he chooses instead to shoulder the social responsibility of a writer,champion the autonomy of literature and do justice to his poetic duty as a great writer. |
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