| Philip Roth is one of the most influential writers in American literature and an outstanding representative of Jewish novelists.His novel The Plot Against America represents the Jewish people’s difficult life under anti-American charges,thus emphasizing the issue of Jewish-American identity.This novel has attracted numerous scholars’ investigations into it since its publication from such perspectives as new historicism,racial memory and trauma,and Jewishness.Although these studies deal with Jewish-American identity in the novel,the further systematic studies still need to be advanced.Due to anti-Semitism,Jewish-Americans in the novel are marginalized and colonized.And since Homi Bhabha’s view of mimicry and hybridity aims to analyze identity of ethnic minorities in post-colonialism,it can offer a new perspective to the construction of Jewish-American identity in the novel and has certain research significance.This thesis,with The Plot Against America as text,investigates Jewish-American identity dilemmas,strategy and significance of identity reconstruction by means of mimicry and hybridity.The main body of thesis is divided into the following three parts.First,according to different characters in the novel,it analyzes the identity dilemmas of Jewish-Americans from three aspects,including class,gender and culture.And it discusses the identity loss and struggles of Jewish-Americans under anti-Semitism.Second,this thesis illustrates the strategy Jewish-Americans adopted for their own survival in order to reveal the process of identity construction.Through mimicry,JewishAmericans become “almost the same,but not quite” variant of white Americans.Identity differences between them break the authority of white Americans and reflect their fight against the mainstream culture.Meanwhile,their similarity promotes the integration of different groups and blurs the boundary between different cultures.Finally,this thesis also discusses the significance of identity reconstruction in the novel.Through mimicry,Jewish-Americans get the hybrid identity to deconstruct the binary opposition between them and white Americans,so that they regain their speaking right in the third space.Therefore,the construction of identity is not static,but a dynamic process of negotiation.In conclusion,by analyzing the identity construction of Jewish-Americans,this thesis not only provides a new perspective for readers to understand The Plot Against America,but also can attract more attention to the issue of identity and focus on the marginalized people. |
