A Study On“identity” In Philip Roth’s “American Trilogy”

Philip Roth is one of the most influential representations of contemporary American writers. He became unique in American literature of the 20 th century, based on rich connotation and creative writing skills in his works. Philip Roth is a diasporic writer with a bicultural identity, which makes him more sensitive to the feeling of identity loss. Thus, the “identity issue” had entered into Roth’s consciousness long before and been continually written. Adopting the method of integrating culture analysis and text interpretation, through the relevant theory of postmodern identity, this paper studies the identity issue from space,family ethics, social and politic in “ American Trilogy”,in order to full understanding of the creative idea and the method of Ross’ s works about identity writing.This paper consists of introduction, body and conclusion. The introduction simply introduces Philip Roth and his works, the status of domestic and foreign research about Roth’s works, as well as the research idea and the value of this paper. The body is divided into four chapters. Chapter one outlines the concept of “identity”, mainly discusses Roth’s writing origin and motivation through the needs of age and personal crisis, and then combs the Ross’ s identity writing systematically. Finally it indicates the unique identity connotation in “American Trilogy”. Starting with the Jewish ethnic’s unique special awareness, Chapter two explores the relationship between spatial shaping and identity in Roth’s novels, taking the example of the novel “American pastoral” and “I married a communist”. Chapter three writes about the impact on identity of family relations in “American Trilogy”, mainly from the parent-child relationship and marital relationship to discuss the plight of individual identity. Chapter four explores the relationship between social politic and identity. Roth reveals that the politic are closely associated with the national identity. The concluding part summarizes the contents of each chapter and outlines the connotation and significance of Roth’s writing about identity.“American Trilogy” is Roth’s three epic works in his latter period. In the works, Roth viewed the Jew as a symbol of humanity. He described the Jewish ethnic’s hard experience about building mainstream identity in a heterogeneous culture, for the purpose of showing the attention and thinking of the modern people’s fate and further development.