UNIVERSIDAD COMPLUTENSE DE MADRID 
FACULTAD DE FILOLOGÍA 

 
 

 
 
 

TESIS DOCTORAL 
 

The Human Stain in Philip Roth’s Fiction  
 

La mancha humana en la obra de Philip Roth 
 
 

MEMORIA PARA OPTAR AL GRADO DE DOCTOR 
 

PRESENTADA POR 
 

Lluvia de Segovia de Kraker 
 
 

Directores 
 

Gustavo Adolfo Sánchez Canales 
Fabio Luis Vericat Pérez-Mínguez 

 
 

Madrid 
 
 
 

© Lluvia de Segovia de Kraker, 2021 



UNIVERSIDAD COMPLUTENSE DE MADRID 

FACULTAD DE FILOLOGÍA 

 

 

 

 

TESIS DOCTORAL 

 

The Human Stain in Philip Roth’s Fiction 

La mancha humana en la obra de Philip Roth 

 

MEMORIA PARA OPTAR AL GRADO DE DOCTOR 

PRESENTADA POR 

 

Lluvia de Segovia de Kraker 

 

 

DIRECTORES 

 

Dr. Gustavo Adolfo Sánchez Canales 

Dr. Fabio Luis Vericat Pérez-Mínguez 

 

Madrid, 2021



UNIVERSIDAD COMPLUTENSE DE MADRID 

FACULTAD DE FILOLOGÍA 

 

Programa de Doctorado en Estudios Literarios 

 

 

 

 

 

The Human Stain in Philip Roth’s Fiction 

La mancha humana en la obra de Philip Roth 

 

 

Lluvia de Segovia de Kraker 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DIRECTORES 

Dr. Gustavo Adolfo Sánchez Canales 

Dr. Fabio Luis Vericat Pérez-Mínguez 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We leave a stain, we leave a trail, we leave our imprint. Impurity, cruelty, abuse, error, 

excrement, semen - there’s no other way to be here. Nothing to do with disobedience. 

Nothing to do with grace or salvation or redemption. It’s in everyone. Indwelling. 

Inherent. Defining. The stain that is there before its mark. 

 

˗Philip Roth, The Human Stain 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



v 

 

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 

 

This dissertation has given me the opportunity to keep studying literature, and for 

that alone I am extremely grateful. I first became interested in Philip Roth’s work when I 

was an undergraduate student at the UCM, as we studied several of his early short stories, 

the ones published in Goodbye, Columbus and Other Stories. I was interested in the 

subjects and struck by the qualities of comedy and mystery in them, and so over the 

summer I gladly read the rest of the stories in that collection, being particularly struck by 

“Epstein”, for the story unfolded itself in front of the reader in such a vivid way. Later, 

when I finished the Master’s in Literary Studies and was wondering what to look into 

next, I attended a Conference on the translation of the work of Philip Roth into Spanish, 

and Dr. Gustavo Sánchez Canales and Dr. James W. Flath talked about the work of Roth 

in such a way that it stirred my interest. Following their advice, I went on to read The 

Human Stain. When I reached the striking passage about the stain that “is there before its 

mark”, I was reminded of the image of impurity in the description of Epstein’s rash, that 

intriguing imprint in all human beings. It seemed to be central in the meaning of the 

narrative and at first, I was not quite sure of what it meant. As I went on to read the rest 

of Roth’s novels, and talked about them with my supervisors, we set out to explore the 

representation of the human stain.  

I would not have been able to carry out my research without the valuable work of 

the Philip Roth Society, whose members have published such excellent articles and 

books. It was a privilege to meet many of them in person in the Roth Remembered 

Conference which took place in New York City in April 2019. It is my hope that the 

literary analysis and interpretation put forward in this dissertation will be useful to those 

interested in contemporary American literature and Philip Roth in particular. I hope it will 



vi 

 

inspire others to carry out studies that shed light on how recurring images give shape to a 

novel and help readers ask themselves about the meaning and the impact of literature as 

thought provoking as Roth’s. 

 In writing this dissertation I have had the incredibly valuable collaboration and 

advice from many people. I am extremely thankful for Dr. Gustavo Sánchez Canales and 

to Dr. James William Flath, for both have taught me so much about the value of literature. 

To be able to write the dissertation under their guidance is a dream come true. It was 

because of their lectures that I first glimpsed the vastness of the possibilities of literature. 

Their passion for the study of literature and the way in which they teach and speak about 

fiction and life is a permanent inspiration to me. I am glad that they have persevered in 

encouraging me to keep working even though it was difficult to do so, and they have been 

very patient and kind. I would like to thank Dr. Fabio Vericat too, for his invaluable help 

in teaching me how to write a relevant and coherent text, for asking the right questions 

and giving me many ideas, and for his willingness to be my supervisor when Dr. Flath 

had to leave. 

I feel a special gratitude to Dr. Félix Martín Gutiérrez for his wise and insightful 

comments, because he helped me to think in new ways about the human stain, and he 

made me believe it truly is a worthwhile subject to study in depth. Additionally, I am 

indebted to many friends who have listened to my musings about the human stain, for 

their interest has spurred me on. I want to thank all those who accompanied me in this 

journey, encouraging me to go on, and to Rubén, who was at my side and helped me to 

finish it. Finally, I would like to dedicate this dissertation to my family.  



vii 

 

ABBREVIATIONS 

 

The following abbreviations appear parenthetically in the text to identify the reference to 

Roth’s work. All other references appear in endnotes. 

 

AP American Pastoral 

DA The Dying Animal 

GC Goodbye, Columbus 

HS The Human Stain 

PC Portnoy’s Complaint 

ST Sabbath’s Theater 

AL The Anatomy Lesson 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  



viii 

 

RESUMEN 

La mancha humana en la obra de Philip Roth 

 

 La presente tesis doctoral explora la imagen de la mancha humana en la obra de 

Philip Roth. Para ello, se analizan cuatro de las novelas escritas por el autor judeo-

americano: Sabbath’s Theater (1995), American Pastoral (1997), The Human Stain 

(2000) y The Dying Animal (2001). Además, se rastrea la formación de la mancha humana 

en una de sus obras más tempranas: “Epstein” (Goodbye, Columbus and other Stories, 

1959). 

 La mancha humana aparece en la obra de Roth como una marca en la piel, un 

derramamiento de fluidos corporales, la presencia no deseada de algo que, aparentemente, 

no debería estar ahí. En cuanto recurso literario consiste en un conjunto de imágenes: 

sangre menstrual, semen, heces, barro. Dentro de la trama, la mancha –en cualesquiera 

de sus formas– es algo con lo que los personajes tropiezan y a lo que deben enfrentarse. 

Con el objetivo de entender el significado de este recurso literario se lleva a cabo un 

estudio comparativo de las fuentes anteriormente señaladas, análisis que se estructura en 

torno a tres ejes principales: la mancha humana como impureza; en segundo lugar, la 

mancha en cuanto poder de transgresión; finalmente, como expresión humana del 

sufrimiento, la enfermedad y la muerte. Con el apoyo de la literatura crítica sobre Roth 

sobre el tema del cuerpo, la transgresión, el deseo y la muerte, esta tesis desea aportar una 

nueva lectura de su obra al concebir este recurso literario como una lente con la cual se 

pueden apreciar y comprender los aspectos más controvertidos de su obra. Consciente del 

escándalo que provocaba su representación de los judíos, las mujeres y las miserias físicas 

del ser humano en su vulnerabilidad más extrema, Roth utilizó el recurso de la mancha 

precisamente para reflejar aquello que creía que nos caracteriza más como especie. 



ix 

 

 El tema de la impureza es desarrollado en el primer capítulo. Un análisis de las 

influencias del judaísmo en la obra de Roth revela las raíces de la mancha humana. 

Asimismo, se establece una conexión directa entre esta imagen en “Epstein” y su 

desarrollo en obras posteriores. Resulta ser una característica esencial del estilo literario 

del autor, ya que no se restringe a unas imágenes aisladas, sino que refleja los temas 

centrales y se revela en una serie de síntomas que evidencian su presencia en el texto. La 

fantasía de la pureza es el espejismo en el que están inmersos los personajes de Roth. 

Tienen que despertar de su sueño para darse cuenta de su error y ver que sus intentos de 

lavar su impureza son inútiles. La mancha no se puede borrar, y rompe la imagen ficticia 

que forman en su anhelo de purificación. La mancha desvela el peligro de querer imponer 

la pureza en la sociedad --como pretendían los puritanos--. Este anhelo de pureza también 

se encuentra en el sueño americano e incluso en la revolución sexual, y la mancha actúa 

como veneno a la par que antídoto de esa ilusión, al mostrar la ironía y el lado oscuro de 

esa supuesta virtud. 

 El segundo capítulo se ocupa del tema de la transgresión. Primero, se refleja en el 

lenguaje obsceno y en la presencia de lo repelente en la representación de la sexualidad. 

La mancha humana marca lo prohibido, aquello que no debería ser objeto de deseo. De 

hecho, la búsqueda de la transgresión original se realiza siguiendo las señales que deja la 

mancha. El tratamiento de la mujer en la obra de Roth y la acusación de misoginia están 

relacionados con la mancha humana, ya que tanto los personajes masculinos como los 

femeninos se caracterizan por su naturaleza transgresora. Se ofrece una nueva 

interpretación de los personajes femeninos de Roth. No son meros objetos de deseo, sino 

que ejercen su voluntad. La forma en la que se representa su deseo y transgresión sugieren 

una visión de la mujer que, lejos de despreciarla, muestra su complejidad. Por otra parte, 

la mancha humana pone de manifiesto el error de aquellos que piensan que no se 



x 

 

equivocan. Al emitir juicios morales, su error radica tanto en su desconocimiento del otro 

como en su ignorancia de su propio mal, o, en términos de Roth, su mancha, la cual el ser 

humano tiende a juzgar, aunque es parte de su naturaleza. Esto se percibe también en la 

historia de los EEUU. Sus personajes se ven atacados por la plaga de América, 

sorprendidos por el caos de la historia que deshace sus vidas. Demostrando cómo el 

discurso de América se basa en la fantasía de la inocencia, la mancha humana desvela sus 

contradicciones. 

 El tercer capítulo trata del sufrimiento. La mancha humana expresa el dolor de 

descubrir que la vida decepciona, que las expectativas de infinitud no se cumplen. En la 

búsqueda del remedio para su dolor, los personajes tratan de borrar toda señal de la 

mancha, tarea inútil, pues son incapaces de eliminar la fuente de su sufrimiento. Por otro 

lado, en cuanto enfermedad, la mancha humana toma la forma de un tumor escondido que 

destruye el cuerpo. Roth refleja las consecuencias de la enfermedad tratando el trauma de 

la pérdida y los límites de la empatía. Finalmente, la mancha es la marca que indica la 

realidad de la muerte. Aunque el deseo es la forma en la que los personajes se aferran a 

la vida para enfrentarse a la muerte, no pueden burlar al último enemigo. 

 En conclusión, el estudio de la mancha humana en estas novelas aporta un nuevo 

acercamiento a la obra de Roth que permite conectar su tratamiento del tema de la 

impureza con la literatura judía. Las raíces de este recurso literario se encuentran en la 

descripción del pecado como una impureza en el cuerpo en los libros de la Torá. En 

definitiva, mediante este recurso que recalca una mancha inherente en el ser humano, 

Roth señala la imposibilidad de la pureza, además de cuestionar la noción de impureza. 

Palabras clave: literatura judeo-americana, Philip Roth, impureza, transgresión, 

sexualidad, sufrimiento, judaísmo, Biblia, imagen.  



xi 

 

ABSTRACT 

The Human Stain in Philip Roth’s Fiction 

 This doctoral thesis explores the image of the human stain in Philip Roth’s fiction. 

It examines four novels written by the Jewish American author: Sabbath’s Theater 

(1995), American Pastoral (1997), The Human Stain (2000) and The Dying Animal 

(2001). In addition, it looks at the shaping of the stain in one of his earliest works: 

“Epstein” (Goodbye, Columbus and other Stories, 1959). 

 The human stain appears in Roth’s work as a mark on the skin, a spilling of bodily 

fluids, the undesired presence of something that, apparently, should not be there. As a 

literary resource it consists of a combination of images: menstrual blood, semen, feces, 

mud. Within the plot, the stain -in any of its shapes-becomes an obstacle for the 

characters, who have to face its reality. With the objective of understanding the meaning 

of this literary device, this thesis carries out a comparative analysis of the sources cited 

above, a study structured around three main points: the human stain as impurity; secondly, 

the stain as power to transgress; and finally, as the human expression of suffering, illness 

and death. With the support of Roth scholarship about the subjects of the body, 

transgression, desire and death, this thesis attempts to offer a new reading of Roth’s work, 

arguing that this resource is a lens through which it is possible to appreciate and 

understand some of the most controversial aspects of his work. Aware of the scandal that 

he provoked with his representation of Jews, women and the physical frailty of human 

beings at their most vulnerable, Roth used the resource of the stain precisely to write 

about the very feature that he thought most characterizes us as a species. 

 The subject of impurity is developed in the first chapter. An analysis of the 

influence of Judaism in Roth’s work reveals the roots of the human stain. Also, a direct 



xii 

 

link is established between this image in “Epstein” and its development in later works. It 

turns out to be an essential trait of the author’s literary style, as it is not restricted to a few 

isolated images; instead, it is connected with the novels’ central themes and it is revealed 

in a series of symptoms that evidence its presence in the text. The fantasy of purity is the 

mirage in which the characters are immersed. They must wake up from their dream in 

order to see their mistake and realize that their attempts to wash away their impurity are 

useless. The stain cannot be erased, and it breaks the fictional image that they create in 

their longing for purification. The stain uncovers the dangers of imposing purity in society 

-as the Puritans intended-. This yearning for purity can also be found in the American 

dream and even in the Sexual revolution, and the stain acts as a poison as well as an 

antidote to that illusion, showing the irony and the dark side of that alleged paradise of 

virtue.  

 The second chapter deals with the idea of transgression. First, it is found in the 

obscene language and in the presence of the repellent in the representation of sexuality. 

The stain marks the forbidden object of desire. In fact, the search for the original 

transgression leads to the trail left by the stain. The treatment of women in Roth’s work 

and the accusations of misogyny are connected with the human stain, because both the 

male and the female characters are characterized by their transgressive nature. 

Consequently, this thesis offers a new interpretation of Roth’s female characters. They 

are not mere objects of desire; instead, they have a will of their own. The way in which 

their desire and transgression are represented suggests a vision of women that, far from 

being demeaning, shows their complexity. On the other hand, the human stain exposes 

the error of those who believe that they are right. In their moral judgements, their mistake 

lays in their lack of knowledge of the other as well as in their ignorance about their own 

faults -or, to use Roth’s term, their stain-, which people tend to judge despite the fact that 



xiii 

 

it is in their nature. This can also be seen in American history. Roth’s characters are 

blindsided by the plague in the USA, by the chaos of history that destroys their lives. 

Laying bare how the imaginary of America is based on the fantasy of innocence, the 

human stain shows its contradictions. 

 The third chapter is about suffering. The stain reflects the pain of discovering that 

life does not keep its promises of endlessness. In their search for a remedy for their pain, 

the characters try to erase the stain completely, but it is in vain because they are incapable 

of eliminating the source of their suffering. On the other hand, as an illness, the stain takes 

the shape of a hidden tumor that destroys the body. Roth writes about the consequences 

of illness, loss and the limits of empathy. Finally, the stain is the mark that points at the 

reality of death. Although desire is the way in which the characters cling to life to face 

death, they cannot overcome the last enemy. 

 In conclusion, the study of the human stain in these novels offers a new approach 

to Roth’s work that allows to connect his engagement with the theme of impurity with 

Jewish literature. The roots of this literary resource are found in the description of sin as 

an impurity on the body in the Torah. Indeed, it is by means of this resource, which 

highlights an inherent mark on human beings, that Roth points at the impossibility of 

purity and questions the notion of impurity. 

Key Words: Jewish-American Literature, Philip Roth, Human Stain, Impurity, 

Transgression, Sexuality, Suffering, Judaism, Bible, Image. 

  



xiv 

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

 

RESUMEN .................................................................................................................... viii 

ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................... xi 

INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................... 1 

CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY ................................................... 5 

I.1. THE STAIN ON THE BODY ........................................................................................ 7 

I.1.1. The Stain as the Mark of Sin: The Biblical View .......................................... 12 

I.1.2. The First Traces of the Stain in “Epstein” ..................................................... 19 

I.1.3. From Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and “The Birthmark” to 

Roth’s Human Stain ................................................................................................ 35 

I.2. THE GRAPHIC STAIN .............................................................................................. 40 

I.2.1. The Original Stain .......................................................................................... 42 

I.2.2. The Stain of Depravity: The Attraction of the Forbidden.............................. 46 

I.2.3. Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter and Roth’s Human Stain .................................... 49 

I.2.4. The Stain of Violence and Destruction .......................................................... 52 

I.2.5. The Stain of Confusion and Blindness .......................................................... 56 

I.2.6. The Filth of the Stain ..................................................................................... 67 

I.2.7. The Stain of Opposition and Opposites ......................................................... 70 

I.2.8. Impossible Cleansing ..................................................................................... 74 

I.3. THE MIRAGE OF PURITY ........................................................................................ 81 

I.3.1. Images of Paradise ......................................................................................... 82 

I.3.2. Dreams of Purification ................................................................................... 85 

I.3.3. The Stain that Shatters the Fictional Self ....................................................... 88 

I.3.4. The Impurity of Blood ................................................................................... 92 

I.3.5. Bring the War Home ...................................................................................... 94 

I.3.6. From the Ordinary to the Extraordinary ........................................................ 96 

I.3.7. The Danger of Imposing Purity: From the Puritans to the American Dream 99 

I.3.8. The Foolish Illusion of the Purity Binge ..................................................... 101 

I.3.8. The Stain as the Antidote in the Counterpastoral ........................................ 108 

I.3.9. The Stain That Cannot Be Washed Away ................................................... 112 

I.3.10. The Stain Shows There Is No Sexual Healing ........................................... 113 

I.3.11. The Stain that Goes Over the Limits ......................................................... 118 



xv 

 

I.3.12. Freedom from the Illusion of Purity: The Stain of Candor that Opposes 

Virtue ..................................................................................................................... 119 

CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION ............................................. 128 

II.1. THE STAIN IN SEXUALITY ................................................................................... 132 

II.1.1. The Language of Obscenity and Salvation from Obsessive Desire ........... 134 

II.1.2. Letting the Repellent Stain In ..................................................................... 136 

II.1.3. The Cleaning of Physical Impurities: the Mikvah ...................................... 139 

II.1.4. The Fall and The Thrilling Profane ............................................................ 144 

II.1.5. The Stain as the Link between Subjectivity and Materiality ...................... 151 

II.1.6. The Representation of Men and Women in Roth’s Fiction and the Stain of 

Misogyny ............................................................................................................... 153 

II.1.6. The Stain and the Anatomy of Desire ........................................................ 166 

II.1.7. Irony in the Paradox of Freedom and Enslavement ................................... 174 

II.1.8. Wounded Sexuality..................................................................................... 178 

II.1.9. Resisting or Giving in: Power and Vulnerability ....................................... 185 

II.1.10. The Outrageousness of a Stained Sexuality ............................................. 189 

II.1.11. The Language of Transgression ............................................................... 192 

II.1.12. The Irony of the Human Stain .................................................................. 197 

II.2. THE STAIN IN THE EYES OF SOCIETY .................................................................. 204 

II.2.1. The Jews and the Stain of Scandal ............................................................. 209 

II.2.2. The Misconstruction of an Individual’s Artificial and Inner Life .............. 212 

II.2.3. The Equivocal Stain as an Instrument of Unblinding ................................. 215 

II.2.4. The Human Stain Behind Indictment and Beyond Judgement................... 222 

II.2.5. The Question of Morality ........................................................................... 227 

II.3. THE STAIN IN AMERICA ...................................................................................... 237 

II.3.1. Blindsided by History ................................................................................. 245 

II.3.2. The Plague: The Destruction of the American Dream ............................... 247 

II.3.3. An Inheritance of Filth ............................................................................... 254 

II.3.4. Flesh and Blood: The Human Stain in America ......................................... 257 

II.3.5. The Chaos of History .................................................................................. 260 

II.3.6. The Fluidity of the Modern ........................................................................ 265 

II.3.7. Impurity and Transgression expressed with Irony and Paradox................. 267 

CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING ....................................................... 280 

III.1. THE STAIN IN PAIN ............................................................................................ 286 

III.1.1. “The Cruelty of Life”: Images of Injustice from the Book of Job in Roth’s 

Fiction.................................................................................................................... 288 



xvi 

 

III.1.2. The Metaphor of Sickness and the Masks that Hide the Scars ................. 293 

III.1.3. The Hurt that Comes from Being Human ................................................. 299 

III.1.4. “A Symphonic Portrayal of Human Frailty and Filth” ............................. 303 

III.1.5. The Dark Shadow of the Past .................................................................... 306 

III.2. THE STAIN IN ILLNESS ....................................................................................... 310 

III.2.1. The Metaphor of Sickness in the Bible ..................................................... 312 

III.2.2. The Invisible Cancer ................................................................................. 315 

III.2.3. The Invisible Dying ................................................................................... 318 

III.2.4. The Carnal Edifice Caves In ..................................................................... 321 

III.2.5. The Fear and the Trauma .......................................................................... 328 

III.2.6. The Stain that Ruins Desire ....................................................................... 333 

III.2.7. Lessons in Empathy .................................................................................. 343 

III.3. EROS AND THANATOS ....................................................................................... 350 

III.3.1. The Human Stain: The Mark on the Grave ............................................... 354 

III.3.2. How to Keep Death at Bay ........................................................................ 363 

III.3.3. The Desire to Keep Desiring, to Continue Living .................................... 370 

FINAL CONCLUSIONS ........................................................................................... 377 

Future Research Lines ............................................................................................ 387 

BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................... 390 

Primary Sources ........................................................................................................ 390 

Secondary Sources .................................................................................................... 391 

 

 



INTRODUCTION 

 

 

1 

 

INTRODUCTION 

 

The celebrated American author Philip Roth has been praised for the way in which 

he represents human experience in depth, but he is also controversial because of the 

outrageous quality of his fiction, as he is intent on showing what one would rather not see 

about people. The thesis I would like to propose is about the use of a literary resource, an 

image that shapes Roth’s narrative, which I call “the human stain”. The use of this theme 

is intensified in four of his novels written between 1995 and 2001, but it is also present 

in one of his early stories, “Epstein”. In these texts, there is a stain that the characters 

bear, and it appears as a sign that tells them that it is a fantasy to try to be pure. In this 

way, the stain becomes a most powerful and pervasive physical reality, and it 

characterizes Roth’s realism. It is mostly the representation of an experience, so a study 

of the human stain, rather than analyzing it as a concept, must embrace it as the literary 

rendering of a human phenomenon. Its obscure nature has both positive and negative 

connotations, thus escaping an easy definition, but it can be studied in order to throw a 

new light on some of the central issues in his work.  

Even though there are excellent and comprehensive studies that overview the 

issues of moral transgression and impurity amongst many others in Roth’s work, there 

are no studies that focus solely on the stain as an essential device that is used by Roth in 

several novels and as it has a complex meaning, it opens up many relevant questions. 

Some have focused on some aspects, for instance, Alan Cooper’s Philip Roth and the 

Jews (1996) considers how decorum becomes an offense for Roth’s characters, for they 

are seeking to be true to themselves, to their nature (Cooper 62). 



INTRODUCTION 

 

 

2 

 

Debra Shostak’s Countertexts, Counterlives (2004) analyzes how different voices 

engage in dialogue with each other in Roth’s fiction, and she dedicates a chapter to the 

link between Jewish American identity and the male body, and it is why she reads the 

rash in “Epstein” as his Jewish identity. It is with this focus that she reads Roth’s work, 

whilst the reading I propose is an interpretation of the stain as a mark on all human beings 

that can be found in different images as a symptom of impurity and an instrument of 

transgression, as well as the stain of pain and the illness that leads to death. 

David Brauner has shown interest in the metaphorical meanings of the human 

stain, but he has not developed his interpretation of the scenes in which the stain appears, 

and in his study, he does not acknowledge the human stain as a literary device used in 

different novels. He identifies the theme of purity and impurity in the novels but he does 

not make a connection between the way these images are represented. He is instead 

focused on another device: “The thread running through all the different sections of the 

book is the idea of paradox, both as a rhetorical device of which Roth is particularly fond, 

and also an organizing intellectual and ideological principle that inflects all of his work” 

(Brauner 2007:9). However, Brauner’s interest in Roth’s style encourages a close reading 

of Roth’s texts, which leads to an appreciation of the images and words that the human 

stain consists of. Ross Posnock’s Philip Roth’s Rude Truth (2008), likewise, offers insight 

into the detail in the narrative that connotes impurity and the skepticism of purification. 

I find the representation of the stain to be more visible in the following novels by 

Roth: Sabbath's Theater (1995), American Pastoral (1997), The Human Stain (2000) and 

The Dying Animal (2001), with the starting point at his early short story titled “Epstein” 

(Goodbye, Columbus and other Stories, 1959). All of these works form the corpus under 

consideration in this study. As to the methodology, this dissertation offers a close reading 

of the texts and a critical analysis based on a series of concepts found in Roth scholarship 



INTRODUCTION 

 

 

3 

 

related to the rhetorical devices and the subjects that can be found in Roth’s work. In 

order to arrive at an understanding of the meaning of the stain, it is necessary to find the 

instances of these images and place them into the context of the novel as a whole in order 

to analyze them adequately and interpret them in relation with the main themes. When 

analyzing the primary sources, I have chosen a comparative approach to the four novels, 

structuring the thesis in three chapters, each dealing with an aspect of the representation 

of the human stain. Each chapter consists of three sections, which in turn are divided in 

more specific aspects. The choice of the themes of impurity, transgression and suffering 

is due to the importance of these subjects within Roth’s oeuvre, as well as the close link 

between the human stain and these areas in the novels. 

Firstly, the issue of the impossibility of purity is explored, with a focus on the 

images of the stain as an incurable physical blemish which is connected to the larger 

meaning of an inescapable moral problem. From the Bible’s depiction of sin as a stain, a 

transgression and an incurable illness, to Epstein’s rash and Merry’s stutter, the images 

of the stain on the body show the mirage of purity. The key passage in HS is used as a 

definition that may guide a reading of a blemish that is inescapable and once the 

characters’ eyes are open to its reality, they have to admit that purity is only a fantasy.  

The second chapter deals with the question of moral transgression by examining 

the ambiguousness of the stain regarding desire and sexuality. Firstly, at a personal, at an 

intimate level, adultery or transgressive sexuality are described with a language that is 

filled with references to the human stain, even if it is just in the character’s imagination 

or in reality. Secondly, in society and its rules, the fact that people are eager to judge 

others for their stain and to misjudge is always paradoxically due to their blindness, as 

something is darkening their sight like a stain. Eventually the text reveals how everyone 

is stained, and the language and situations are therefore extremely ironic. 



INTRODUCTION 

 

 

4 

 

The third and last chapter explains how the stain is a mark of pain and illness and 

it looks at how it is present in the struggle between Eros and Thanatos. Roth’s characters 

suffer and ask the question of why they have to suffer. Their pain is a burden they cannot 

get rid of and it is represented by means of the stain. When characters are diagnosed with 

an illness, it appears with language and images reminiscent of the stain, and it is likewise 

present in the struggle that characters engage in as they hold onto life by means of their 

love affairs in the face of death. 

 So far, this study has shown that the literary device of the human stain is not just 

a recurrent symbol, but that in Roth’s work, it functions as a network of images, 

symptoms and consequences that represent the complex reality of human impurity. More 

than a symbol with a single and static meaning, the human stain (in all of its forms, 

including blood, semen, waste, etc.) changes its meaning constantly, playing with the 

categories and the values of impurity and purity. It is not just an echo of Hawthorne’s 

mark of sin, for the irony with which it is described allows for a constant questioning of 

moral standards, as in Nabokov’s Lolita (1955), for example. The human stain proves to 

be a lens through which the reader can perceive the conflicts that characterize Roth’s 

fiction in a new light, and it allows for questions about the graphical quality of an invisible 

reality in the novels. 

 

 

 

 

 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

5 

 

CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 Over the four novels that I am going to analyze, this thesis explores how Philip 

Roth presents the only sign striking enough to show that it really is a fantasy to try to be 

pure: a physical stain, a mark that all human beings bear. This type of literary resource 

has been used in the Bible and also in Puritan discourse, as well as in Nathaniel 

Hawthorne’s work. This stained reality is something that both his characters and his 

readers encounter throughout Roth’s fiction. It invades their lives, so they are troubled by 

their transgressive desires, which are signaled by the stain. Roth has described his 

characters as people who tend toward “mischievous provocation, satiric improvisation, 

spirited impersonation, farcical abandon, ironic irreverence, immoderate monologue, 

clamoring corporeality, mock raving, plain mockery, ceaseless craving, and 

besmirchment by the unseemly instincts” (Roth 2017: 371). This word, besmirchment, 

means that his characters are represented as being stained, which is what I intend to 

analyze in this study. 

 This powerful and pervasive experience characterizes Roth’s realism by shaping 

its quality of “ruthless intimacy” (Roth 2013:  54). This intimacy refers to the closeness 

that his narrative strives for, as his characters have to strip down and show everything 

that is hidden in their lives, which is uncomfortable and painful to witness. In 

consequence, the representation of the stain is perceived as an intimate feeling precisely 

because of its concrete rendering as opposed to an abstract, general idea. The complexity 

of its meaning will be interpreted tracing its use in Roth’s work, starting from the short 

story “Epstein” and consequently, in the four novels that will be discussed in this study. 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

6 

 

This thesis relies heavily on the studies carried out previously by Roth scholars, 

but it also aims for a new take on Roth’s work. As one of the most important Roth 

scholars, Victoria Aarons, says, the discipline of Jewish American studies has changed 

significantly over the years. In her introduction to The New Jewish American Literary 

Studies, Aarons states that this discipline used to have a “perceived set trajectory to the 

developing body of literature, a path that roughly corresponded to the shifting cultural 

place and disposition of Jews in America” (2019: 2). Jewish American studies then held 

on to the idea of “an evolving, continuous progression, tracing a point-to-point movement 

of distinct periodicity in the literature of American Jews” (2). This idea of progression 

and the distinct periods in Jewish American literature is closely connected to issues of 

identity (See Schreier (2020) for a book-length study of this issue). And Aarons explains 

how due to the pressures exerted on this literary tradition, the issue of identity had to be 

grappled with by writers such as Roth, and the question of Jewish-American versus 

American-Jewish also had to be addressed by him, even though he wanted to reject that 

hyphenated condition (2). Aarons argues that he and other writers were “opposed to the 

marginalizing hyphen, but they had to entertain it, to engage it, in order to shed it” (2-3). 

In “I Have Fallen in Love with American Names” Roth described himself as American 

(Roth 2017: 331). And this particular American context, identity and language certainly 

marked his writing.  

Now, the new trend in these studies is open to include authors who might have 

been excluded and to leave behind the emphasis on the past in order to embrace a new 

sense of the future (Aarons 2019: 8). It is precisely because of these changing perspectives 

that there are new readings of the work of Roth (14). It is in this context of the new Jewish 

American Literary studies that this thesis offers a new interpretation focused on the 

human stain. 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

7 

 

It is true that the symbol of the human stain might seem opaque and difficult to 

interpret, but this is not necessarily a bad thing, because while it resists interpretation, at 

the same time it invites interpreting. This quality is exactly what Roth himself found so 

fascinating about Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis (1915), for example. Examining the 

way in which the human stain is used will help us understand the meaning of the texts as 

a whole and the reasoning behind Roth’s writing more clearly. Roth stated that “what 

makes an image revealing or significant is not how much meaning we can assign to it, but 

the quality of the whole of the fiction it inspires, the liberty it gives the writer to explore 

his obsessions and talent” (Roth 1975: 70). 

 

 

I.1. THE STAIN ON THE BODY 

 

 “Epstein”, one of Roth’s first stories, was published in 1959 along with four other 

stories and a novella in his first book: Goodbye, Columbus, which won the National Book 

Award in 1960 and was praised by Saul Bellow, Alfred Kazin, Irving Howe and Leslie 

Fiedler (Roth Pierpont 2013: 13). During his years as a student of English literature at 

Bucknell University, Pennsylvania, Roth discovered stories about Jews written in a style 

he had never encountered before. He described these stories from The Hudson Review, 

Kenyon Review, The Sewanee Review and Commentary as “objective, forthright, 

descriptive” (Roth Pierpont 29). It was also in those years that he had absorbed the new 

voice in Saul Bellow’s novel The Adventures of Augie March (1953), which taught him 

that he “could put everything into a book, including thinking”, and he found “the gush of 

language, the epic sense of life, the outsized characters, the passion for American bigness” 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

8 

 

that he admired in Thomas Wolfe also in Bellow’s fiction (28). This inspired him to write 

in a new way about Jews with an awareness of their American identity, in a narrative 

voice liberated from the traditional Jewish Literary tradition, and as Roth also learned 

from Bernard Malamud, stories of Jewish experience were valid material for American 

literature. 

Two literary traditions converge in Jewish American Literature, according to 

Malcolm Bradbury, who argues in The Modern American Novel that there is a strong link 

between the European tradition and the American novel tradition (Bradbury 1992: 168). 

Roth’s work can be analyzed following this double lineage. The Jewish American novel 

developed into a national and international form, and Bradbury argues that while 

Malamud represented the more traditional Jewish world, Roth was “an explorer of its 

extremities and absurdities in the permissive mood of the Sixties and Seventies” (175). 

The story where the first traces of these extremities and absurdities can be found, 

“Epstein”, was written together with “The Conversion of the Jews” in Roth’s year at the 

army in 1955, when he was only twenty-two years old. He had decided to enlist, but as 

he suffered a back injury during the training, he was assigned to a desk job at a Hospital 

in Washington DC and he used the typewriter to write in his spare time. 

“Epstein” was inspired by a true story that Roth’s father had told at the dinner 

table in Newark, years ago, about a neighborhood scandal. Briefly told, this story is about 

a man who cheats on his wife by starting an affair with a neighbor. He is found out 

because of a rash on his penis, and this causes a great outrage in his family. At the end, 

he has a heart attack while he is at his lover’s house, and when his wife sees him in the 

ambulance, she asks the doctor if her husband’s rash can be cured. 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

9 

 

In Roth’s short story “Epstein”, the human stain is depicted as a physical 

condition. The reader may ask himself why this is so. One of the consequences of 

descriptions such as the rash on Epstein’s skin is that it becomes evocative, as it will be 

recognized and remembered, and it has a great impact on the reader, creating a strong 

emotional response. Images of the body are recurrent in Roth’s work and scholars have 

offered several interpretations, especially focusing on the question of body and mind. To 

start with, in her book Countertexts, Counterlives, Debra Shostak stated that Roth 

“inherits the ontological difficulties posed by the Cartesian split between body and mind, 

and frequently his work since the 1970s has traced an effort to understand, if rarely to 

heal, this split.” (Shostak 2004: 21). While Shostak’s reading offers a dialogical view of 

Roth’s work, this study seeks to show how the stain is not only a philosophical device, 

but that it also has an aesthetic sense, a literary framework and a moral dimension, all of 

which provide a new key to explore Roth’s fiction. 

In Shostak’s view, the rash in “Epstein” stands for the mark of his Jewish identity, 

circumcision (Shostak 2004: 73). She interprets the story as Epstein’s attempt to 

overcome his alienation (caused, in Shostak’s reading, by a crisis of identity and of 

masculinity) as a character who is trying to prove to himself that he is still a man. Thus, 

Shostak argues, Epstein’s story about how he was brutally deloused with kerosene refers 

to his Jewish “uncleanness” and it is against this position of weakness that he wants to 

rebel “by expressing such confident masculinity” in his affair (72, 73). However, the 

emphasis of this story on the effect of the rash on Epstein, and the references to the story 

of biblical transgression point towards a deeper experience which is shared by other 

characters of Roth, as we will see. 

Even though I agree with Shostak’s view that the rash might have a connection 

with Jewish identity, I believe it is because the human stain has biblical references, but I 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

10 

 

do not see it as only referring to circumcision or masculinity. That is why in this section 

I intend to argue that there is a connection between this story and Roth’s later novels 

because of the use of the stain. It is not the only thing “Epstein” has in common with the 

novels, for the peculiar comedy mixed with a serious treatment of pain is what accounts 

for the paradox Roth puts across in his narrative. As Jacques Berlinerblau notes that 

“Roth’s fiction reminds us that even those who may not believe in, or practice, their own 

faith, are nevertheless physically and psychically marked by it” (Berlinerblau 2018: 82). 

Berlinerblau quotes from Amardeep Singh’s 2006 study on Literary Secularism, where 

he writes about the markings on the body that appear at moments in Roth’s fiction where 

his characters realize their religiously inflected embodiment, meaning their Jewish 

identity. However, I am more interested in the marks on the body in Roth’s fiction that 

are a universal mark on all of humankind. 

The human stain is represented in many cases, as I intend to show in this section, 

as a physical mark, a rash, or a wound in the characters’ body. This blemish is represented 

with “transgressive body humor,” as David Gilotta puts it, because Roth’s characters are 

so obsessed with their bodies not because they are the victims of torture, but (and this is 

the way Roth achieves comedy and also tragedy) because “their bodily predicaments stem 

from interior struggles.” Furthermore, Gilotta argues there are two options: “either their 

guilt and fear cause them to manifest outlandish and often psychosomatic bodily 

symptoms, or their bodies behave as they should, but they irrationally view every bodily 

quirk and stumble as evidence of some symbolic meaning or existential crisis” (Gilotta 

2010: 94). The issue of guilt and fear is related to the Jewish notion of having broken the 

Law and the fear of Divine judgement, both of which characters such as Epstein, as we 

have seen, experience. As Gilotta points out, it is not easy to figure out the cause for the 

phenomenon of the experience of the stain, and this is what is explored by Roth: “In most 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

11 

 

cases, the line between these two is blurred, and Roth leaves to his characters (and 

readers) the job of sorting through physical symptoms and psychic baggage” (94). 

As seen above in the description of the ambivalent display of shame and innocence 

when encountering the stain in “Epstein”, Philip Roth is attracted by what is “seemingly 

unbelievable” to some people, things that, to him, are “quite believable […] To take 

what’s thought to be the disgraceful side of men –and by no means to apologize for it […] 

But the circus, the circus of being a man –it’s a circus, and the ringleader is the phallus.” 

(Roth qtd. in Shostak 2004: 21, ellipsis mine). The “disgraceful side of men” appears not 

only in “Epstein”, but also in the novels selected for this study by means of symptoms 

and images that can be described as the human stain. As Roth claims, it is expressed 

unapologetically, and the obscene is openly shown. Sabbath is indeed delighted in 

flaunting all that is disgraceful in men, and his sexuality is one of the main subjects of his 

theater. The manifestation of his transgressive appetite marks his story, and this is 

because, as Debra Shostak claims, in many novels by Roth, “selfhood is inextricable from 

embodiment” (21). Shostak analyses the role that the body plays in Roth’s novels and this 

is closely related to the portrayal of the impossibility to be pure, which has also been 

explored by scholars such as David Brauner (2004; 2007). In his study of Roth’s novels, 

Brauner does not consider the story of “Epstein”, but he does analyze impurity as it 

appears in ST, for he finds it interesting to analyze how to Sabbath “bad” means “good” 

and vice versa. Brauner does give an insight as to how paradoxically morality is 

represented in novels such as ST, AP and HS, but he does not consider the stain as a 

device that is used across the different novels in similar ways. 

Brauner does recognize that the insistence on the “comic predicament” is what 

makes Roth’s characters so extreme, and Shostak also argues how the representation of 

the body is essential: “It is his willingness to touch the body, even the body stripped of 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

12 

 

all signs of identity and grotesquely deformed by its own mortality, that provides Roth 

with one of his most enduring, transgressively comic, and, for some readers, deeply 

unsettling preoccupations” (Shostak 2004: 20). This can be applied to Roth’s work as a 

whole but specifically to “Epstein”, DA, HS, AP and ST, so in order to study the symbol 

of the human stain and moral impurity, it is appropriate to study some aspects of this 

study on the representations of the body. ST is probably the most blatant or graphic 

example of a wealth of images and ideas about the human stain in its full exploration of 

the human being in this bodily plight. 

 

 

I.1.1. The Stain as the Mark of Sin: The Biblical View 

 

 When Roth published “Epstein” along with Goodbye Columbus and Other 

Stories, these were perceived to be particularly about the assimilation of Jews to 

American culture. However, it was not only Jews who struggled to live a larger, freer life, 

and Roth saw his work as being about “people in trouble”, as he put it in his 1960 

interview for the New York Post. However, it is undeniable that his characters’ troubles 

have much to do with their Jewish background and the moral rules that come with it, as 

can be seen in the central image in this particular story. As stated in the Introduction to 

the section of “Wandering and Return: Literature since 1973” in Jewish-American 

Literature. A Norton Anthology, even though it can be said that at a sociological level 

Jews were not outsiders anymore, on the contrary, being “deeply embedded in the social 

structures” of the U.S.A., this also meant it was difficult for them to maintain a religious 

and cultural distinction while participating in the American culture and society 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

13 

 

(Chametzki et al. 2001: 979). In Roth’s fiction we see that it is not only difficult to 

maintain that distinction, it is almost impossible as the Jewish religion permeates the 

individual’s morality in his books and actually remains in the background of the novel’s 

conflict.  (Consult Lederhendler’s monograph (2017) for an extended analysis of Jewish-

American identity from a multiple perspective: historical, demographic, religious, etc.) 

As many scholars have acknowledged (among others, see Shostak, 2004), in spite 

of Roth’s reputation as a secular Jew who writes morally provocative fiction, he has 

repeatedly used and revisited the words and stories in the Torah, proving that it is true 

that the exposure to the Hebrew school he attended as a boy did indeed leave a mark on 

him: Roth talked about this when speaking of his 1973 story titled “Looking at Kafka”, 

which can be found in the collection of 2017 Non Fiction collection, Why Write?, but was 

originally also included in Reading Myself and Others. When speaking of this story in an 

interview conducted by Elena Mortara, Roth referred to his personal experience of 

attending Hebrew School as a child: “I attended the Hebrew School. I hated it, but I’m 

happy I did. The teachers, some of them, were refugees. Here was when I had the idea 

because we had these refugees, these poor tormented people. We Jewish kids behaved 

perfectly at the regular school but were rascals at the Hebrew School” (Interview with La 

Stampa, 2018). 

The question still remains of how Judaism informs Philip Roth’s work. Jacques 

Berlinerblau examines how Roth’s work fits into the different categories used by scholars 

when defining the characteristics of “secular Jewish American fiction” (2018). When 

describing Roth’s identity, for example, Alan Cooper speaks about his “secular Jewish 

childhood” (1996: 8); but what is exactly the meaning and the connotations of the label 

“secular Jew”? Roth describes himself as “exactly the opposite of religious” (qtd. in 

Berlinerblau 68); and while some of his characters have forsaken their faith, others respect 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

14 

 

it and are curious about it. Berlinerblau finds that the meanings ascribed to secular Jewish 

literature are the following: Godlessness; Realism; Postmodern Approaches and 

Embodiment; and finally, Self-Critique (69-76). He surveys Roth’s work in order to find 

how he conforms to those criteria, but even though he offers some examples, he does not 

offer an in-depth study of the portrayal of faith, God, worship, atheism and the Law in 

Roth’s work. By examining the use of the human stain, I hope to approach some of these 

subjects more fully in this dissertation.  

In his novel Operation Shylock, the “real” Philip Roth confesses that Hebrew 

School had “marked me indelibly” (Roth 1993: 312). Interestingly, this indelible mark 

led him to create the literary mark that is the human stain in his fiction (In addition, it is 

interesting to note that Roth often uses the language of marks and stains when he speaks 

about life and writing). In “Epstein”, the perception of the stain is accompanied by 

feelings of shame, indignation and guilt and it is connected to a “sin”, even to Adam’s 

original sin. In order to explore this meaning, it may be helpful to look at the subject of 

original sin and its representation from the point of view of Theologians and the study of 

the text from the Bible that inform the narrative that Roth makes reference to. 

Furthermore, studying these images from the Old and the New Testament may cast a new 

light upon the stain in Roth’s fiction. In Exodus 12:5, the Israelites are told that for the 

offering, the “lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year” (NKJV) and this 

sheep or goat had to be perfect, without defect. The Passover lamb, and the sacrifice of 

atonement for the sins of the people of Israel as described in the law in Leviticus and in 

Numbers had to be of a perfect body without blemish, because it signified moral purity. 

In his excellent outline of the historical development of Judaism, Isidore Epstein, 

an eminent Jewish professor, theologian and Rabbi, presents the connection that exists 

between religious and moral laws. Speaking of the laws of bodily cleanliness, he explains 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

15 

 

that while the purpose of the Torah for Israel was to fulfil their call to be “holy unto God” 

and therefore holiness entailed “negatively a separation from all that is opposed to the 

will of God, and positively a dedication to His service” (Esptein 1959: 23). This meant a 

separation from contamination and impurity and a dedication to purity which is reflected 

in the laws. However, Epstein argues that this did not mean that the human body was 

essentially impure, which is why it had to be cleaned, to be kept pure: “[…] nor did 

Judaism ever regard the body as contaminated and the appetites as rooted in evil. […] To 

neglect the body and its physical requirements is to offend against God, and to wash daily 

is a religious duty” (156). 

On the other hand, Henri Blochner, a professor of systematic theology in Vaux-

sur-Seine, France, published a survey and a philosophical discussion of the biblical 

evidence for original sin in a study titled Original Sin: Illuminating the Riddle (1997). As 

the title suggests, both the reality and the representation of original sin are a riddle: it is 

natural, but also contrary to human nature, and it involves reconciling the contradictory 

elements of a shared fallen condition and an individual responsibility. Blochner starts off 

by warning that original sin cannot really be explained rationally, and his study only 

means to cast some light upon it, understand its paradoxes and thereby illuminate the 

human phenomenon, which is equally intriguing.  

To start off, the Bible presents sinfulness as “the human problem, which alone 

causes separation between the Creator and his creatures [...] none escapes the reign of sin 

and no part of the human person is left untainted” (Blochner 1997: 20; ellipsis mine). This 

is stated in numerous instances and implied in many texts. One that summarizes it is the 

following: “Who can say, “I have made my heart clean; I am pure from my sin”?” 

(Proverbs 20:9). Accordingly, Blochner lists several illustrations used in the Bible and 

developed by the theologians’ interpretations to convey the meaning of sin. Firstly, sin 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

16 

 

appears as a beast crouching at the door, like a snake that seems to lie dead but springs 

alive with the law. This image signifies the impulse, the desire that may overcome man 

so he has to try to master it (see Cain’s story in Genesis 4:7), and also the fact that it is an 

inordinate passion, the desire to be free and the impulse that issues in disobedience to 

God (Blochner 1997: 20). 

In Genesis 3:5, when the serpent tells Adam and Eve that, after eating the apple, 

they will be like God, it can be understood that what is tempting is not so much the idea 

of disobedience – they actually ignore what that is – but the idea of becoming like their 

Creator. This stubbornness and desire of Adam and Eve in the Fall can be found in Roth’s 

character Sabbath most explicitly, but it is actually found in most of his characters, as it 

is a universal stain. As Ihab Hassan wrote in his book Radical Innocence: The 

Contemporary Novel (1961), the Garden of Eden has an important place in American 

Literature: “It appears that even the Romantic hero in America cannot disentangle himself 

from the webs of Eden” (Hassan 1961: 55). As we will see with Sabbath’s story, there is 

a tension between freedom and enslavement, and this can also be found in the Bible’s 

description of sinfulness, which means that human beings desire to be free from God’s 

rule, morally autonomous, but on the other hand, God tells his creatures that instead of 

becoming free, they became slaves to sin (Jesus insisted on this point in John 8:34).  

However, in the Bible sin is a reality that often has to be discovered by people or 

revealed by God, for many do not realize that they are sinners and cannot be rid of it. This 

happens in Roth’s fiction too, when some characters tend to think that defilement resides 

in physical filth or in others’ actions, while that darkness is actually within them. In 

Matthew 15:17-20, Jesus explains to his disciples that what really defiles people comes 

from within themselves, not from outside, and that is why when the Pharisees asked why 

he did not wash his hands before eating, Jesus tells them their tradition is a false doctrine 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

17 

 

and betrays that even though they try to show that they seek purity, they do not understand 

their impurity: 

 

Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into 

the sewer? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what 

defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false 

witness, slander. These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not 

defile. (New International Version, Matthew 15:17-20) 

 

In the Bible, “flesh” connotes frailty, transitoriness and vulnerability, and sin also 

carries a sense of futility, vanity and frustration at the emptiness of life (see the book of 

Ecclesiastes and Romans 8:20). Job considers sin when he is suffering horribly: “Who 

can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? No one can” (Job 14:4). Blocher explains how 

the Psalmist also writes about this in Psalm 51: “as far back as he can go, he sees his life 

as sinful. Therefore, his radical confession issues in his request for purification in the 

innermost parts of his person (v.7). Even the ‘man according to God’s heart’ has to 

acknowledge that he is corrupt and guilty ‘by nature’, like the wicked who are wayward 

‘from birth’, ‘from the womb’ (Psalms 58:3)” (Blochner 1997: 28-9). 

But as Blochner says, the “master metaphor” is the one that uses illness as a 

metaphor for sin: Theologians have described it as an infection, “a contagious alteration 

of human nature”, “an inborn disease”, which seems apt as sin is like a sickness that 

“once contracted […] goes on being transmitted; it produces uncleanliness and leads to 

death”. However, Blochner warns against the danger of taking sin to literally be a genetic 

disease, for sin involves willful intent and responsibility, whereas this is not the case with 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

18 

 

illness (Blochner 1997: 110, ellipsis mine). However, it is found as a metaphor in 

Jeremiah 17:9, Romans 5:6, and Matthew 9:12 ff., and leprosy and blindness often have 

a symbolic value. Blochner also has a warning against the danger of reading too much 

into this metaphor for it implies a dualist view of biological vs. spiritual reality, while, as 

he argues, the Bible puts forward man as a synthesis of biology and spirit (122). 

The link between body and spirit is also explored by Roth and one of the biblical 

aspects that allows him to do so is the issue of the laws: about the concept of “kashrut” – 

literally “the appropriate thing” and pronounced as “kosher” in Yiddish. This term is 

applied to what can and cannot be eaten and is explained in Leviticus, which is the basis 

for Judaism’s dietary norms. In addition, Mary Douglas, the anthropologist and cultural 

theorist, has also analyzed the Old Testament texts in order to explore the meaning of the 

division between the profane and the sacred. In her influential book Purity and Danger: 

An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (1966), Douglas argues that every 

society has their own concepts of what is impure, and she examines how the boundaries 

between the profane and the sacred are delimited. She classifies these as internal and 

external limits and some of the most important aspects are dietary norms, bodily fluids, 

sexuality and death. What is relevant in the light of these studies is that Roth questions 

the categories of impurity through literature, by showing in his writing that impurity is a 

symbol and a ritual. 

To sum up, this metaphor that Roth draws upon in his work has got a meaning in 

the Bible that is relevant for this study, related to moral uncleanliness and transgression. 

Interestingly, Roth is not the only writer who has used this kind of images. For instance, 

Nathaniel Hawthorne has written several stories in which the image of a physical stain 

connotes impurity. In order to better understand the function of this symbol as a literary 

device, we will compare Hawthorne’s use of the stain to Roth’s. The image of the stain 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

19 

 

can be found in other works of fiction too, such as in the Spanish Benito Pérez Galdós’ 

Fortunata y Jacinta (1887), where a boy is jeered at for being born out of wedlock and 

is covered in a stain. This stain is directly referred to as the stain of sin- of course Galdós 

is here criticizing the social prejudices of his time, in a way not too far from Roth’s use 

of the stain in HS, for example. 

 

 

I.1.2. The First Traces of the Stain in “Epstein” 

 

Interestingly, the image of the stain can be identified as early in Roth’s work as in 

his short story “Epstein”. In my view, this story encapsulates the use of the stain as found 

later in ST, AP, HS and DA and it puts a spotlight on the literary resource of describing 

a wound as symptomatic of the moral battle that explodes in the plot. In consequence, this 

use of the stain will illuminate further interpretations and set the foundations for a 

thorough understanding of the focus that can be found in Roth’s work.  

The setting at the beginning of the story provides some clues which have a 

remarkable significance in light of the themes developed by Roth later on. At the Epstein 

household, two types of candles are lit: The first ones are the Shabbos candles, which 

flicker in the dining room to honor the Jewish Shabbat, the day of rest, observed because 

the Lord asked his people to remember that he created the world and then rested (Genesis 

2:1-3), and also to commemorate how he delivered them from slavery: 

 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

20 

 

Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 

but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, 

neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, 

nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the 

earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord 

blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. (Exodus 20:8-11) 

 

Additionally, these candles are meant to create domestic peace. Ironically, 

“Epstein” will reveal that because of what happens, that day will not be a day of true rest, 

but the very opposite: deep unrest will arise in Lou Epstein’s heart. Likewise, we will 

find that in ST, the novel that Roth wrote in 1995, the main character (significantly named 

Sabbath) is characterized by unrest, unlike his name would suggest. Also, instead of 

domestic peace, the families of these two characters experience everything but blessing, 

as marriages are broken and adultery takes place. In fact, both Epstein and Sabbath come 

to see their family as a trap. To sum up the plot of the novel of ST very briefly, it revolves 

around Mickey Sabbath’s struggle with life. He is an old former puppeteer who has 

experienced much loss in his life, which the reader discovers as he evokes scenes from 

the past, while in the present he is looking for a grave for himself because he intends to 

commit suicide. He has lost a brother, a lover, a wife, a former girlfriend, a friend, etc. 

But he has not lost his desire to break rules and he delights in his sexual exploits. In fact, 

the issue of transgressive desire, which is very important in Roth’s work, will be 

examined in more detail in Chapter II.  

Now, to return to “Epstein”, the second candle in the story is the Jahrzeit candle, 

which is lit in memory of the dead. After the Holocaust these lights have also been lit to 

commemorate the loved ones killed in concentration camps. Even though it was not in 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

21 

 

the Holocaust, the Epsteins have lost their son Herbie, and so the reality of death and the 

pain of loss shadow the life of the main character, as happens in some of Roth’s early 

stories, such as in “The Conversion of the Jews”, “Eli, the Fanatic” and in so many of 

Roth’s novels later: Patrimony, ST, HS, DA, Everyman and Nemesis, among others. With 

regard to that theme, Chapter III will explore the representation of the human stain in 

relation to suffering and death. 

Not only does death plague the life of Epstein, but aging also marks his life, as he 

notes the decay of his wife’s body: Physical reality overrides his attempt to remember the 

beauty they enjoyed in their youth. With age, the body has lost its appeal, and so Lou 

Epstein finds himself incapable to feel desire for his wife Goldie, whose golden age is in 

the past (her name could be read as an ironic reference to this). This painful reality is even 

more extreme when set in contrast with the young people Epstein sees having sex. It 

makes him feel even older, and it shows how he is going through a crisis, not only having 

lost a son, but also disappointed in his daughter. The future looks bleak, and all his effort 

and work for his business seem to have been fruitless. He is also frustrated because he did 

not get on well with his brother. In light of all of his troubles, he is in such a vulnerable 

state, that what he sees on the night the story starts, the naked body of a young girl, may 

inspire him to try to change his life. This is an important Rothian theme, the search for 

personal freedom and moral autonomy, which I will explore further on in this chapter. 

The power that both family and religion exercise upon individuals has been a 

theme of Roth’s, as he himself acknowledges as he describes how characters such as 

Ozzie from “The Conversion of the Jews” or Portnoy in Portnoy’s Complaint suffer from 

an oppressive feeling, an imprisonment (Roth 1975: 20). In “Epstein”, there is also a 

strong presence of this power choking the main character. In DA, Kepesh explains how 

he had to break free from his family because he felt oppressed by it, and in ST, Sabbath 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

22 

 

seeks to rebel against family and religion. But, as Roth says, what he has developed over 

time is an affinity for the very practice of putting the influence of those powers to the test. 

It is the test itself which he cannot get rid of (Roth 1975: 21). The focus of my 

interpretations is not in Judaism not on Jewish identity in Roth’s work, although it is 

necessary to address the sources from the Torah and aspects relevant to the aspects of the 

human stain, but not solely about Judaism, which has already been addressed extensively 

in studies such as Alan Cooper’s Philip Roth and the Jews (1996). 

Epstein is in search for an explanation, like Seymour will be in AP, when he 

desperately looks back at his life trying to find a reason for disaster, the origin for what 

has exploded in the present. Thus, Epstein asks: “How far back must you go to discover 

the beginning of trouble?” (Roth 1959: 192). This question implies how hard it is to find 

the origin of the human stain. Similarly, in AP, Seymour faces the past with similar 

despair as he looks at the relationship he had with his daughter, looking for clues. The 

conclusion he arrives at is that it is impossible to know why something happened. 

Likewise, Epstein feels that everything spirals out of control when he is tempted by the 

sight of what brings his illicit desire to the surface, the body of a young girl. Searching 

his feelings, he remembers the fury and the passion he felt when his son got sick and the 

letdown he experienced when he was wrongly accused by his daughter. Even so, although 

these moments are on his mind, “maybe to look for a beginning was only to look for an 

excuse” (Roth 1959: 192).  

In Roth’s fiction we find other characters that are also immersed in the search for 

the “beginning” of the stain. To summarize the plot of AP (1997) very briefly, it tells the 

story of the Swede, a man whose daughter Merry has changed his life by planting a bomb 

in the post office. The narrator of AP, writer Nathan Zuckerman, is intent on discovering 

Seymour’s doubleness, and he wants to find the origin of his human stain. Nathan, as a 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

23 

 

narrator and functioning as a detective, is “working with traces”; traces not only of the 

story of what really happened, but also of the human stain. So, the Swede’s mysterious 

story is characterized by traces, and these will lead to his daughter Merry, whom he loved 

so much and who blew the dream of his life into pieces. Roth’s narrative device allows 

the reader to see how the story is built by successive conjectures, gradually infiltrating 

into the Swede’s mind. The Swede, who is loved by everybody, has to face the hatred 

from the one whom he loved the most- his daughter. In the beginning, he is described by 

the narrator as strong and brave as “a god” (Roth 1997: 5). It seemed as though he were 

indifferent to the degree of love he excited in everyone around him. In this initial 

description, he is portrayed as divine, without a trace of the human stain in him.  

The Swede is likened to a god, Zeus, but he is not arrogant or vain -he is modest 

because he has not known any obstacles or struggles in his life. But that changes 

dramatically when Merry’s bomb went off, that is the beginning of all the struggles in his 

life. Zuckerman speculates about the Swede’s apparent purity: He was a stranger to 

“irrationality”, “wayward temptations”, “guile”, “artifice”, “mischief”, “striving”, 

“ambivalence”, and “doubleness” (Roth 1997: 20). The very qualities that are proudly 

embraced by Sabbath in ST are rejected here by the Swede. AP was written right after 

ST, and Roth said he had grown sick of Sabbath’s cynical and angry personality, so he 

wanted to write about “a good man”, for a change (Roth Pierpont 2013: 207). However, 

Zuckerman suspects that the Swede’s perfection is a mask, because “no one gets through 

unmarked by brooding, grief, confusion and loss” (Roth 1997: 20). This expression, 

“unmarked”, refers to the mark left by painful experience, but it can also be read as the 

mark that follows the invisible stain. Zuckerman will unveil both the stain and the mark 

in the Swede. Zuckerman confesses that when he first met the Swede he was “childishly 

expecting to be wowed by his godliness, only to be confronted by an utterly ordinary 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

24 

 

humanness” (72). He is interested in his story because of “the shocks” that the Swede 

claims his family have suffered, shocks that reveal the impact of the stain and its mark. 

As Zuckerman comes to understand, the Swede was referring to his daughter: “she was 

the shocks” (80). 

Gradually, Epstein’s language betrays his sense of guilt, for in the end, his crisis 

leads him to find refuge in an affair with his neighbor, Ida Kaufman, the mother of the 

naked girl he saw. The affair is described in humorous terms, both lovers finding 

satisfaction in each other even though they are both looking for younger lovers. Epstein 

certainly has some features of the schlemiel,the character of the fool in Jewish humor. 

Even though this character is not usual in Roth, as only Alexander Portnoy behaves like 

a schlemiel in some moments, there’s a long tradition of Yiddish and Jewish(-American) 

literature in which this figure plays a key role. (See Pinsker (1991) and Wisse (1972), 

among others, for a detailed study of the Jewish fool in writers such as Sholom Aleichem, 

Isaac Bashevis Singer, Bernard Malamud, Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, just to cite a few.) 

While Epstein is thinking about his lover’s daughter, Ida is thinking about his 

nephew. They find that they look a bit alike to the true object of their desire, and so they 

settle with the substitute at hand. It helps their desire as it gives them the chance to feel 

young again. In the midst of the exhilarating affair, Epstein feels unable to tell right from 

wrong, and tellingly, he gets tickets for speeding and driving through red lights. As he 

says, he is in no shape to “tell the green lights from the red ones, fast from slow” because 

he has lost control in the midst of enjoying the thrill of his affair (Roth 1959: 195). He is 

in no state to make a thoughtful moral decision because he is not even seeing clearly, he 

is so ecstatic. This aspect of moral blindness and a feeling of childlike innocence is also 

conveyed in the discourse of ST and DA, as this thesis will outline in Chapter II, because 

both Sabbath and Kepesh seek this type of relief from responsibility. Furthermore, in his 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

25 

 

joy, Epstein loses control and thus disregards all rules, experiencing freedom as he cannot 

even measure the speed at which he is moving, for he has totally lost track of all limits. 

In AP, the narrator believes that the Swede denies the experience of a human stain: 

“It was as though he had abolished from his world everything that didn’t suit him -not 

only deceit, violence, mockery, and ruthlessness but anything remotely coarse-grained, 

any threat of contingency, that dreadful harbinger of helplessness” (Roth 1997:36). It is 

precisely these aspects of life which the Swede has known first-hand, against his will, 

unexpectedly, and he has no control over the situation. However, the Swede’s innocent 

smile betrays no trace of mental disorder, and the narrator creates suspense by formulating 

the question of who he really is over and over again, in different ways. The image of snow 

conveys purity: “I could not decide if that blankness of his was like snow covering 

something or snow covering nothing” (37). One of the sources is Jerry. According to the 

Swede’s brother, he had a “big, generous nature” which people took advantage of -

especially “the monster Merry” (67). In his view, the Swede is just a victim, too good, 

and Merry is too evil.  

But what do father and daughter have in common? The Swede’s tears for his 

daughter, his letting go in front of his brother when he learns she died, and all of his 

efforts to be with her prove his love for her. The facts that she is a killer and that she is 

mad do not erase his bond with her. In a way, Jerry is wrong when he says Merry does 

not belong to anything the Swede was. Because she did belong to him, he wants to 

recognize her as his daughter, which is difficult, and that is why there is tension that 

tortures him. It is as if she were disfigured by the impact of her actions and words and he 

has to find her under that disfigured face. But even love becomes a stain, for after the 

bomb, the Swede was unable to “shed completely the frantic possessiveness, the paternal 

assertiveness, the obsessive love for the lost daughter, shed every trace of that girl and 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

26 

 

that past and shake off forever the hysteria of ‘my child’” (Roth 1997: 81). Seymour’s 

love for Merry despite of her actions is like a big blot on his life, something dark that he 

cannot get rid of; it has become a part of him, shaping his identity.  

 However, Epstein’s feeling of freedom comes to an end when the stain makes its 

appearance, bursting his happy bubble. As he discovers the rash on his penis, he is startled 

by his wife just when he is “contemplating his blemish with the intensity of a philosopher” 

(Roth 1959: 195). The scene is portrayed not with a detailed physical description of the 

stain, but with the characters’ thoughts as he asks himself what he has on his skin and 

how it is possible he has it. First, he feels like a child as he considers “prickly heat”, and 

the comedy of the scene starts building up as soon as he trips and falls over when he tries 

to cover himself in his embarrassment. The shame he feels and his gesture immediately 

reminds the reader of the theme and the images of the biblical story of Adam and Eve 

after the Fall: 

 

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and 

also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her 

husband, who was with her, and he ate it.  Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and 

they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for 

themselves. Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking 

in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the 

garden.  But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” He answered, “I heard you 

in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.” And he said, “Who told you 

that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” 

(Genesis 3: 6-11) 

 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

27 

 

 Roth actually makes several explicit references to this account (nakedness, hiding, 

transgression, the “fig leaf” with which Epstein covers himself), thus conveying a wider 

meaning to Epstein’s predicament, while adding a lot of humor to the scene: “So there 

they were, naked as Adam and Eve, except that Goldie was red all over, and Epstein had 

prickly heat, or a sand rash, or -and it came to him as a first principle comes to a 

metaphysician” (Roth 1959: 195-6). This first principle in metaphysics would be the fall, 

original sin, and the narration hints at this in a playful way.  

Thus, Roth purposefully links the rash caused by the adulterous relationship to the 

experience of shame in recognizing one’s sin. Goldie calls her husband a pig and a liar, 

thus characterizing him with the most disgraceful charges she can think of. Her 

exaggerated threats speak of her desire to purify her husband’s skin, to clean the stain that 

is the result of his impure deed. On top of that, Goldie threatens to burn the bedsheets, to 

make him drink ammonia…  And she seems to be worried about catching the rash, even 

though he assures her it is not contagious (Roth 1959: 197). Nevertheless, Goldie does 

not want her husband to touch her, and as they fight hysterically over the bed sheets, 

tearing them into shreds, she laments about her “nice clean sheets”, adding to the wealth 

of imagery conveying purity that has been defiled. Goldie’s outrage and her tears may 

look comical, but they show the emotional upheaval she suffers as the rash signifies that 

destruction and filth have taken over her life. Unrest has won over domestic peace. 

Comedy reaches its peak when every single person in the house, guest included, ends up 

going to the bedroom to see what is going on and they all see the rash, so everybody 

knows now. The human stain eventually comes to the surface in Roth’s work when the 

story reaches an emotional climax. 

In AP, the stain makes its appearance in a disruptive way and interestingly, the 

image is invisible in this case, as it is not a stain one can see, but something one can hear. 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

28 

 

It is a stain on the voice, an imperfection in speech. Merry’s speech impediment, her 

“wound”, could be “the indelible imperfection itself or those who had fostered in her the 

imperfection”, meaning her parents, who wanted to cure her of her stuttering (Roth 1997: 

92). The indelible imperfection is the image of the human stain. In his interview with 

Alain Finkielkraut, Philip Roth points out that Merry’s stuttering is the first sign of the 

entrance of imperfection in the pastoral, as it becomes a problem that proves unavoidable 

and unsolvable for the family (Roth “Interview” 121). In spite of her parents’ love, Merry 

had become “tainted”, inexplicably, “twisted” and “crazed” (Roth 1997: 92). A kiss may 

seem innocent, and yet, looking for an explanation, its power of destruction is likened to 

a bomb. This kiss will be analyzed in Chapter II, as an example of an image of 

transgression. Thus, tainted by the human stain, the mystery of Merry haunts her father’s 

imagination as he seeks for his own original sin: His happiness and his success may have 

been “the cause of their blight”, “his very virtues came to seem vices”, the good things 

became meaningless, and his innocence became evil (93). The Swede’s self-examination 

makes him realize that he falls short of every standard, for nothing was satisfactory, every 

time he spoke and every time he did not speak. The image he conjures up is terrifying and 

it resonates with despair:  

 

He had been admitted into a mystery more bewildering even than Merry’s stuttering: there 

was no fluency anywhere. It was all stuttering. In bed at night, he pictured the whole of 

his life as a stuttering mouth and a grimacing face -the whole of his life without cause or 

sense and completely bungled. He no longer had a conception of order. There was no 

order. None. He envisioned his life as a stutterer’s thought, wildly out of control. (1997: 

93)  

 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

29 

 

 This image means that the longer the Swede looks at his life, his actions and 

words, instead of finding clues or answers, the less and less assurance he finds that he did 

the right thing, as he comes to doubt everything and he is caught between responsibility 

and accident. Even so, there is an urge to fix the stain, as we see in “Epstein”, when he 

insists that his rash can be fixed, so he wants a doctor to clean him, and he tells himself 

he must be clean because his lover has got to be clean too. At this point, he is only 

referring to the physical rash. But then another question arises: “He was innocent! Unless 

what made him guilty had nothing to do with some dirty bug” (Roth 1959: 200). This is 

the introduction of the moral significance of the story. So, the character realizes that there 

are several interpretations to the facts, and Roth’s focus is on how this affects him. Epstein 

seeks for the origin of his personal fall much like Job in the Bible, who loses everything 

and is covered in a horrible rash, and asks why this had to happen to him, for he was a 

good man: 

 

I say to God: Do not declare me guilty,  

    but tell me what charges you have against me.   

Does it please you to oppress me,  

    to spurn the work of your hands,  

    while you smile on the plans of the wicked? (Job 10: 2-3) 

 

 There is a difference, though, because Epstein knows that he has undergone a 

transformation and acknowledges that he has indeed sinned. He is not the same anymore, 

and it is described as the horror, with emphasis: “the change, the change [...] I don’t even 

know when it began. Me, Lou Epstein, with a rash. I don’t even feel anymore like Lou 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

30 

 

Epstein.” (Roth 1959: 200, my ellipsis). In this way, Roth’s characters undergo a deep, 

unsettling transformation and a questioning of their identity due to the stain. 

 The representation of the rash is a type of human stain in that it means the 

character cannot rid himself of the mark of moral defilement. Aside from an identity 

crisis, Epstein undergoes a confession with his nephew. In this conversation, he does not 

just address his nephew, he rather feels like he is speaking to society as a whole, or to a 

Judge. He claims all his life he tried “to do right” (Roth 1959: 201). Then, he proceeds to 

talk about a traumatic experience from his childhood: being very poor, once he was 

deloused and cleaned very aggressively with kerosene. The violence of such a purge 

seems unfair, especially considering a young innocent child. The comparison is clear: 

Why should a man be judged so harshly for his stain? Epstein says he had something on 

his mind but could not find the words for it. This unsaid idea is the question that runs 

through the narrative. 

 As Epstein reminisces about the transgressive naked pictures he took of Goldie in 

their youth, he cannot help but asking who is to judge: “I admit it. Maybe to someone else 

it would seem wrong, a sin or something, but who’s to say […]” and his nephew replies 

that “somebody’s got to say. Some things just aren’t right.” (Roth 1959: 202, ellipsis 

mine). Epstein does not see himself as a sinner and he certainly does not see why some 

people are so eager to judge others’ actions. That is why he is enraged by his nephew’s 

judgement, who points his finger at “Uncle Lou the Adulterer”, immediately labelling 

him as a sinner, a person who bears a stain unlike he does. But Epstein fights back: “Right, 

Wrong! [...] Who are you, what are you, King Solomon?” (202, ellipsis mine). Again, 

there is an echo of Job, who questions the judgement of his “friends” who think they have 

the authority and that they are very wise, and so they do not hesitate in judging him 

harshly.  



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

31 

 

 But Epstein wants to show that good things can come out of wrong things too, 

paradoxically: His beloved son was probably conceived that time he took those 

scandalous “dirty” pictures of his wife. Maybe even because of that transgression his son 

was born. Who knows, that is the conclusion. The turning point happens when, in response 

to Michael’s protests, Epstein points at his nephew’s own “rash” in his eye, which is a 

moment that can be compared with Jesus’ reasoning in his famous warning against 

judging others, as it is told in the Gospels: 

 

Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own 

eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ 

while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, 

and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye” (Matthew 

7:3-5). 

 

 Although it is not clear that Roth would have drawn on the Gospels, given his 

early education in Judaism, and without making the assumption that Roth read this text 

from the New Testament, this image is only offered as a comparison with the image of 

the stain as I believe it works in a similar way. This does not mean that Roth makes a 

direct reference to Jesus’ words here, of course. That is, I think that the speck and the log 

function in a similar way to the rash in Epstein in order to point at the error in the 

judgement of other people’s faults, as the vision of those who think are righteous is faulty. 

The problem, in Roth’s story, is that Michael is so busy pointing at his uncle’s stain that 

he does not see his own. Another reality he is blind to is the depression his uncle has been 

immersed in for a long time. Epstein explains how he felt so deprived that his despair led 

him to try to take possession of something, inadequately though it may be: “When they 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

32 

 

start taking things away from you, you reach out, you grab -maybe like a pig even, but 

you grab. And right, wrong, who knows? With tears in your eyes, who can even see the 

difference!” And he challenges Michael, for while he committed adultery, his nephew 

had casual sex before marriage: “For you it’s right?” (Roth 1959: 203). Epstein ends up 

crying, and this is told in a simple way, so that the reader is moved by his honesty. Later 

on, when considering ST, we will see how Sabbath also breaks down in tears in his despair 

and helplessness; but Epstein is less scheming than Sabbath, and his crisis is more 

straightforward.  

 In fact, Epstein has lost his dignity in his family’s eyes, as is evidenced by the fact 

that his daughter is not respectful to him, up to the point that she refuses to call him her 

father. As in Job’s life, he feels everything falls apart as he feels he has lost all he had: 

No wife, no children, and no home. So impulsively, he runs to his lover when he sees her, 

because it is the only thing he still has. And tragically, he suffers a heart attack. When 

Epstein’s wife, Goldie, asks the doctor why this happened and how he can recover, the 

doctor’s advice is for him to “live a normal life”, implying “normal” for his age means 

not indulging in excessive sexual activity.  

Goldie immediately thinks of solutions meant to purify him like going “to 

Saratoga, to the mineral baths” (Roth 1959: 211). Will the baths clean his stain, though? 

Finally, she asks the doctor if he can clean up Epstein’s rash, and the doctor’s words, 

assuring him he will, are the last words of the story: “So it’ll never come back” (212). 

What does this end mean? Is the doctor being sarcastic or is he just trying to reassure her? 

He may cure the rash, but can a doctor fix Epstein’s deeper, moral, original trouble? Is 

there, after all, a cure for the human stain? These questions are left unanswered, for the 

reader to wonder, but one thing is certain: Firstly, the blemish signifies moral impurity. 

Secondly, even though the perpetrator of the moral transgression claims he does not know 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

33 

 

what’s right and wrong, others judge him because of the stain, and there is a strong desire 

to clean it and search for purity. Finally, the text shows with irony that this is impossible. 

This is the aspect that we will focus on in this chapter.  

Ironically, in AP, the mark of the human stain, Merry’s stutter, is gone when she 

appears to be pursuing a life of perfection and purity as a Jain but is actually living as the 

complete embodiment of the human stain. Her flawless speech that was not cured by any 

therapy was now cured “by going mad”, and so her twisted intelligence marked by danger 

and isolation “was no longer impeded by the blight of stuttering” (Roth 1997: 246). This 

reality causes a reversal of values and the meaning of the stutter changes. The stain was 

a false human stain, another mask, a deceitful appearance. The stutter is no longer what 

Merry needs to get rid of, she is cured, but it is even worse, now she has become a lunatic. 

Her fluent speech serves a sick mind, she is rid of the blight of the stutter but she is 

nevertheless completely damaged. The text compares her stutter with a storm, which 

reveals the calm once the stutter is gone, and the awful surprise is that it is an “insane 

clarity” (250). That eye of the storm, so light and calm, is the new human stain. It deceives 

because it seems to connote purity, but madness is a worse imperfection. The dark and 

the storm may seem the problem, the imperfection, and yet, the absence of perfection 

would signify life for Merry. In seeking perfection, she will find her death.  

When the time has come for the Swede to see his daughter as she really is, he has 

to look reality in the eye, in a way that he did not dare to when he met Rita. He will be 

finally face to face with the human stain. In dismay, he laments the loss of sanity in his 

“sweet, sweet child and girl”, sits down on the filthy floor, and tries not to lose control 

(Roth 1997: 251). There is no light in the room, because she lives in the dark while he 

lives in the light. But he really lives in the dark too because she is not with him and she 

was the light of his life. At that moment, he realizes that in his respect and love for her, 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

34 

 

in his avoidance of violence, he had been naive. His values, his morality, were good for 

nothing in that they had enabled him to save his daughter: “The idiocy of the uprightness 

of the goals he had set” (252). However, the Swede cannot accept the fact that she really 

is a killer, so he tries to find every possible way to deny it. He tears the veil from her face, 

and even the way the human stain is covered is filthy in itself, because she puts her mouth 

up against the most fetid thing. It consists of impurity upon impurity. She refuses to speak, 

so he opens her mouth, and from her mouth comes the pungent smell of death. It is 

impossible to endure it, “at last the true smell of her reached him, the lowest human smell 

there is” (265). This was a “human being”, that which before he did not want to call 

human, now he has to acknowledge her human condition, and it is foul. 

This scene is an extreme example of the image of the human stain, the meaning is 

built by all the foreshadowing and the previous images. It is what the Swede has been 

seeking but did not expect to find: “Her foulness had reached him. She is disgusting. His 

daughter is a human mess stinking of human waste. Her smell is the smell of everything 

organic breaking down. It is the smell of no coherence. It is the smell of all she’s become. 

She could do it, and she did do it, and this reverence for life is the final obscenity” (265). 

As Joshua Lander notes in his essay on AP, “the embodied humanness of Merry’s 

foulness is what Seymour finds most horrifying” (Lander 2019: 56). 

Confronted by the symptoms of the stain, the characters cannot remain clean, they 

inevitably share in its filth. That is why the Swede’s body reacts by throwing up, against 

his will, he cannot control himself because his body does not have a mechanism to stop 

him from “sliding still further into the filth” (Roth 1997: 265); and at the same time, as 

he makes her face even more filthy, he cries out “Who are you!” (266). But, despite the 

dark, now he sees. Once he was blind, but now he sees the truth, for the mark that was 

the stutter has disappeared, and instead of it he sees another mark, an old mark: her eyes, 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

35 

 

and “the eyes were his [...] She was all his” (266; ellipsis mine). He identifies himself 

with her and with her stain. She is the stain and she is imprinted on her family and her 

house, in the Swede’s eyes. The Swede realizes that Merry hated the stone house 

“imprinted with her being” as well as her family, who were also imprinted with her being 

(420). He can never rid himself of her and her stain -that is why he will keep her in his 

life till the end.  

 

 

I.1.3. From Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and “The Birthmark” to 

Roth’s Human Stain 

 

At this point, it is appropriate to consider a story and a novel by Nathaniel 

Hawthorne, in relation to Roth’s representation of the human stain, because they feature 

the image of a mark that can be compared to the stain and develop a surprising meaning. 

In their book titled From Puritanism to Postmodernism: A History of American 

Literature, published in 1992, Richard Ruland and Malcolm Bradbury explore the 

representation of morality and adultery in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, and they offer 

an interpretation which I think is useful in order to understand Roth’s work too. As 

Ruland and Bradbury point out, Hawthorne had a Puritan ancestor with a dark history: 

“William's son was a judge at the Salem witch trials and was thereby marked with 

Puritanism’s own sin: the witches’ blood may fairly be said to have left a stain on him. 

Such guilty stains of human nature are everywhere in Hawthorne’s work” (Ruland and 

Bradbury 1992: 148). 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

36 

 

Now, Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850) is not the first instance of a type of 

image similar to the human stain, but this novel is important and it will be included later 

on in this thesis. There is a chapter entitled “Pearl” – Hester Prynn’s daughter of sin – 

where Hawthorne addressed a similar issue as Roth’s image of sin, and there are specific 

allusions, such as the girl’s “fiendish” that are relevant to this analysis of the human stain. 

However, even before that novel, Hawthorne wrote about a similar subject in 1843. The 

original idea for the story titled “The Birthmark” can be found in his notebooks: “A 

person to be in possession of something as perfect as mortal man has a right to demand; 

he tries to make it better and ruins it entirely. For instance, a noble mansion, and in his 

attempts to improve it, he causes it to fall to the ground” (Hawthorne 1883: 165). To sum 

up, the search for purity leads to destruction. Hawthorne explores the futile and 

misleading human attempts to find purity and perfection just like Roth does.  

And Hawthorne developed his idea into the following plot: “A person to be the 

death of his beloved in trying to raise her to more than mortal perfection; yet this should 

be a comfort to him for having aimed so highly and holily” (Hawthorne qtd. in Zanger 

1983: 364-365). This story by Hawthorne is about a woman who has a mark that she 

considers natural, charming: “a singular mark, deeply interwoven, as it were, with the 

texture and substance of her face” as the narrator puts it, to convey that it is a part of her, 

foreshadowing how wrong it would be to take it away from her (Hawthorne 1843: 6). To 

her husband Aylmer, however, the mark is too awfully distinct and it comes to mean 

something horrible to him. First, aesthetically, the narrator points out how it is conceived 

as ugly, ruining the woman’s beauty, only by those driven by envy. This is dismissed by 

common sense as the narrator points out that likewise nobody would consider that a 

sculpture’s beauty would be marred by a common blue spot in the marble.  



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

37 

 

In his essay, Zanger explores the following question: “how do the images, 

regarded in the light of that theme, flesh it out and extend its illumination of the tale? 

Why a marriage, why a red birthmark? Such questions of particularity suggest levels of 

meaning beneath the thematic, meanings that have to do with the images of the story” 

(Zanger 1983: 365). Zanger finds mentality of submission and traces of vampirism, and 

although he acknowledges the explicit reference that the narrator makes to the divine 

signature in the mark of the hand, he chooses to focus his interpretation of the mark as 

the taboo of menstruation. However, in my opinion, this would reduce its meaning to the 

area of sexuality, while the text portrays the idea of a moral and aesthetic imperfection 

that is actually broader: Aylmer tells his wife: “No, dearest Georgiana, you came so 

nearly perfect from the hand of Nature that this slightest possible defect, which we 

hesitate whether to term a defect or a beauty, shocks me, as being the visible mark of 

earthly imperfection” (5). This “earthly imperfection” is the object of Aylmer’s 

obsession, who “selecting it as the symbol of his wife's liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and 

death, Aylmer's somber imagination was not long in rendering the birthmark a frightful 

object” (7).  

Because of this horrible feeling, Aylmer is no longer capable of appreciating his 

wife’s beauty, as the mark becomes his main obsession and he dreams he tries to get rid 

of it, but it goes so deep he has to dig deeper till he touches her heart and kills her. Even 

though Aylmer does not utter his harsh thoughts of judgement, his awful staring affects 

his wife, so she is forced to bring the matter up and she asks him to remove it, for he 

really believes he can fix the problem with his science. At the beginning of the story, the 

narrator introduced this idea by stating he was uncertain up to what point Aylmer thought 

he had the power to control Nature. In the text there’s a reference to the frustration man 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

38 

 

experiences when he realizes he cannot change imperfection into perfection, nor create 

life.  

Likewise, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) explored this idea of a man who 

causes trouble and even pollutes life when he meddles with it, as the story shows the 

dangers of playing God. In “The Birthmark” the reader finds the theory of alchemy, the 

belief that it is possible to find gold in the impurity of a stone; in this way, the mark could 

be turned into something valuable. Hawthorne refers to Paracelsus and others, and 

explains that even though they were ahead of their times, their philosophical and 

scientific theories were often wrong. This highlights the fact that human wisdom is 

limited, just like science -this is what Aylmer’s wife learns about him when she reads 

about his failed experiments in his records. Furthermore, she discovers his fear that his 

solution may prove to be lethal; but she is nevertheless willing to take this risk, out of 

love. Eventually she undergoes this sort of purifying ritual out of her own accord.  

In conclusion, the use of the mark in Hawthorne’s story and of the stain in Roth’s 

work show that earthly imperfection cannot be fixed, for it brings about death. Now, the 

question is whether this story is implying that the stain is not really bad after all. Only 

Aylmer interprets the mark as human impurity and he is blinded by his desire to eliminate 

it. However, as the reader finds out in the epiphany revealed by the narrator at the end, 

erasing the stain is not liberating, it is rather more like seeing how the rainbow fades in 

the sky, which is a surprising image that points not only at the beauty of the mark, but 

also at its miraculous nature. So, the mark, instead of being an ugly image, now becomes 

a beautiful, colorful reality and it is clear it is a mistake to wish it away. It is even 

considered as a divine sign, speaking of God’s goodness. This image of the rainbow used 

by Hawthorne subverts the meaning of the stain just like Roth does when, for example, 

Epstein says that good things come out of transgression. Roth goes even further when his 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

39 

 

character Faunia in HS wishes she could become the crow, which is a living stain, so to 

speak. Faunia loves, embraces and feels identified with the crow which is used by Roth 

to explain the idea of the stain. 

• • • 

To recapitulate, the human stain appears in Roth’s work as an incurable blemish 

because of various reasons. Firstly, as observed in the seminal story of “Epstein”, it shows 

the lack of innocence in the characters, for it functions as a marker of their transgression, 

in reference to the imagery in Genesis. The characters try to find the original moment of 

transgressive desire to have moral autonomy, but they find it difficult to discover the 

cause and they reveal how wrongly they are judged and how maybe there is something 

good about the stain. Secondly, it allows Roth to use the body as an image of the invisible 

stain. While the aspect of the body and its meaning in Roth’s work has been explored in 

depth by scholar Debra Shostak (1999), and on the other hand, the meaning of impurity 

has been studied by David Brauner (2004; 2007), I find that these two aspects are 

inextricably connected and that they take shape in the human stain. 

Additionally, drawing on David Gilotta’s study of the humor raised by the 

transgressive meaning of the stain (2010), I have pointed at how the stain is presented not 

only in serious but also in humorous narrative modes. Additionally, Elaine Safer’s 2006 

book-length study about the use of irony and humor in Roth’s work supports my reading 

of a key passage in ST where tragedy and farce work together to emphasize how the stain 

functions with irony to highlight the impurity present in what is apparently pure and vice 

versa. This study, however, considers the human stain as the main rhetorical device used 

to convey not only the meaning of impossible purity, but also to speak about the 

contradictory transgressive desires in the narrative, and finally, to understand how this is 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

40 

 

connected to the representation of the experience of death. In order to accomplish this 

task, it is essential to consider the biblical texts as a source for the image of the stain and 

it is also helpful to establish comparisons with other literary texts such as Hawthorne’s. 

The next section of this chapter will deal with the graphic nature of the stain in Roth’s 

fictional style, focusing on the symptoms that can be found in Roth’s writing at many 

levels, especially in ST. 

 

 

I.2. THE GRAPHIC STAIN 

 

The human stain is not only written on the skin of Philip Roth’s characters, it is 

also written on the skin of the literary text. Its images permeate the text, through the 

representation of many aspects of human experience, and it infuses Roth’s style, which is 

what I will analyze in this section. Roth’s fiction portrays the author’s obsession with 

“hypnotic materiality” (Roth 2017: 393). I intend to show how the human stain has found 

its dwelling in this materiality. After looking at the meaning of the stain as a blemish on 

the body, this thesis goes further by proposing that there are a series of symptoms of the 

human stain that can be found throughout these novels and all of these indicate not only 

the impossibility of moral purity, but also the fact that it is a sign of an all-encompassing 

problem and cannot be evaded. When Roth’s style is examined, it will show how the stain 

affects the characters’ lives, because they are troubled by the following symptoms of the 

stain: restlessness, weakness, vulnerability, blindness and lack of control. In this section, 

it will become evident that this stain is inescapable, as is shown through images of the 

ineradicable, that all the characters suffer from it, and, finally, that there is no possible 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

41 

 

solution to it. They are learning to live with the stain, which is not exactly the same thing 

as accepting it.  

When Roth spoke at the celebration his 80th birthday in 2013, in the speech he 

gave, he explained why he had stopped writing. Among other reasons, he named the 

following: “I don’t wish any longer to contemplate in fiction the destructive, the blighted, 

the bruised, the assailable, the accused, their accusers, or even those who are whole, sane 

and beautifully intact” (“The Ruthless Intimacy of Fiction” 2013: 394). Roth’s choice of 

words is very appropriate for an analysis of the human stain, as his description sets 

divisions between people’s experiences and they are marked by blights and bruises and 

they accuse each other (because of the stain). Overall, the stain is made visible in Roth’s 

fiction by means of images, but it also spreads throughout the novels’ style. Even though 

this will be explored in the other novels, it can be seen especially in ST, where the text 

reveals the nature of the stain as in no other of Roth’s novels. 

Now, Roth studies tend to focus on his subject matter rather than on his style, 

which is considered particularly malleable and versatile, as it changes from book to book. 

Pia Masiero, for example, has focused on Roth’s form, and she has written about his 

particular “storyworld” in the Zuckerman books (2011). However, it is worthwhile to 

consider how the author’s ideas are expressed because of his prose style, which cannot 

simply be labelled as realism. The purpose of this study of the use of the human stain is 

to define the style and its meaning, because his narrative is experimental as Roth plays 

games with the question of what the real story actually is, and also plays with the reader’s 

expectations Roth’s relation to postmodernism has led to the study of his use of 

metafiction, autofiction, narrative indeterminacy, etc. Debra Shostak has explained how 

he uses these devices to attack the idea of a stable identity and self (Shostak 2004: 189). 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

42 

 

The play between life and fiction is a postmodernist experiment that Roth 

participated in especially when writing the Zuckerman novels. As Shostak argues, Roth 

“finds his subject (the driving force and central material of his writing) where he finds his 

subject (the complexities and contradictions of indeterminate, shifting, and discursively 

constructed selfhood)” (Shostak 2004: 9). I would like to add that Roth also finds his 

subject through the use of the human stain, and that his style resides in the way in which 

he tells the characters’ story and shows their predicament through the stain and its 

symptoms. That is why I believe a study of the human stain can throw a new light on his 

subject. 

 

 

I.2.1. The Original Stain 

 

If Roth finds his material in the complexities of discursively constructed selfhood, 

in order to understand the use of the human stain it is necessary to look at a key passage 

of the stain which is in his novel HS (2000). This novel is about Coleman Silk, a professor 

who is accused of racism because of the use of his word “spooks” and he is forced to 

resign. After the death of his wife, which he also sees as a consequence of what happened, 

he begins a relationship with Faunia, a much younger woman who works at the College 

as a janitor. Silk contacts Zuckerman to ask him to write his story. Later, Silk and Faunia 

are killed in a car accident and at Zuckerman meets Coleman’s daughter, who tells him 

her father’s secret: that he was an African American who has been passing as a Jew. It is 

in this novel where Roth presents the image of the human stain through Faunia, 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

43 

 

introducing the question of the original stain that is present in everybody and at times is 

visible, while at other times it is invisible. 

Likewise, in ST, the stain seems to be clearly visible from the very beginning, in 

Sabbath’s affair with Drenka, but it cannot always be seen with the bare eye, as Sabbath 

suggests when he looks at the dirt on his hands in the scene at the graveyard: “I have to 

go down in the dirt with more than these fingers if I hope ever to make straight in me all 

that is crooked” (Roth 1995: 363). In that scene the dirt is the visible stain on his hands, 

a stain which he paradoxically wants to use to clean himself with, but he acknowledges 

that the stain -everything that is crooked in him- will not be cleaned. The paradox of the 

visibility and the invisibility of the human stain is found, first of all, in a central passage 

in the novel of HS, which starts off with Faunia’s thoughts about a crow, and this provides 

the basis for a reflection by the narrator about the nature of human beings. 

 

‘That’s what comes of being hand-raised,’ said Faunia. ‘That’s what comes of hanging 

around all his life with people like us. The human stain,’ she said, and without revulsion 

or contempt or condemnation. Not even with sadness. That’s how it is –in her own dry 

way, that is all Faunia was telling the girl feeding the snake: we leave a stain, we leave a 

trail, we leave our imprint. Impurity, cruelty, abuse, error, excrement, semen –there’s no 

other way to be here. (Roth 2000: 242) 

 

This stain, then, is left everywhere by people, the unavoidable mark of a mess that 

is a consequence of life. The attitude that Faunia has towards this stain is similar to 

Sabbath’s, it is one of acceptance, of coming to terms with it, and seeing it as something 

natural that ought not to be punished. Interestingly, in this description of the image of the 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

44 

 

stain, it seems the stain is actually not the image, not the mark, nor the sign. It is invisible 

to the bare eye, and rational thoughts or religious concepts fail to grasp it. It is so deep 

inside of everybody that it is impossible to try to erase it. 

 

Nothing to do with disobedience. Nothing to do with grace or salvation or redemption. 

It’s in everyone. Indwelling, inherent. Defining. The stain that is there before its mark. 

Without the sign it is there. The stain so intrinsic it doesn’t require a mark. The stain that 

precedes disobedience, that encompasses disobedience and perplexes all explanation and 

understanding. It’s why all the cleansing is a joke. A barbaric joke at that. The fantasy of 

purity is appalling. It’s insane. What is the quest to purify, if not more impurity? All she 

was saying about the stain was that it’s inescapable. (Roth 2000:  242) 

 

The setting of this scene contains many elements and some of the novel’s most 

important themes are present here. Firstly, Faunia states that she has learnt all there is to 

know about human kind even though she allegedly cannot read (240). She is fascinated 

by Prince, the crow, who prompts her speech. This animal can be compared with her 

lover, the protagonist of the novel, Coleman, because he is ashamed of its past and has 

invented his own language, because he does not recognize his own species, which is 

called “imprinting” (Roth 2000: 241-243). Similarly, Coleman renounces his African 

American identity and he pretends to be white. The girl who explains this to Faunia is 

feeding a snake that lives in a cage. This snake could be a reference to the story of the 

Fall, with the devil tempting Eve with the body of a serpent. 

In a nutshell, this passage introduces not only a definition of the human stain, but 

it is placed in the middle of a scene that shows the very marks and symptoms that Faunia 

has presented. She has run away from what she realizes is a fantasy, her relationship with 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

45 

 

Coleman (235-237). In these pages, there is a whirlwind description of all the symptoms 

of the stain: confusion, restlessness, weakness, lack of control, blindness and 

vulnerability. For instance, after offering her ring to the crow, Faunia recalls the various 

moments in her life when she fell prey to despair and wanted to die (245).  

The fact that Roth chose the phrase of “the human stain” as the title for the novel 

points to its significance as a concept and an image, but in Roth studies there are different 

interpretations of this stain. Sam Bluefarb, for example, commenting on the passage that 

describes the human stain, asks why it could not just be named “original sin” instead of 

“human stain”, and he argues that this choice of words should be judged by other than 

literary means (Bluefarb 2010: 226). He thinks “Roth got himself trapped in a web of 

tortuous weavings built around an archetypal stain that loses itself in a language meant to 

clarify, but never quite succeeds in doing so” (227). Sánchez Canales, on the other hand, 

defines the representation of the human stain in this novel as “man’s/woman’s imprint, a 

reminder of his/her imperfections, something that everybody shares. The actual condition 

that connects all of us seems to be everybody’s defective nature […] The human stain, an 

inherent part in the individual’s nature, makes everybody flawed” (2009: 111, ellipsis 

mine). Sánchez Canales describes the characters in HS as “irate, over-sexed, self-serving, 

and vindictive” (111). The paradox being that in trying to get rid of the stain, people 

actually deepen and darken the mark they are leaving, because the understanding and 

obedience to moral laws is not something that will help people reach into that inherent 

human stain. This is why Sánchez Canales interprets the human stain in this passage as 

the description of the flaw in human beings not because of original sin, but because of the 

failed attempt of people to clean their impurity: “According to the narrator, evil seems to 

originate in the human quest for purity. When individuals seek to become pure and holy, 

they actually become more impure and vicious. Purity, then, would be something to elude, 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

46 

 

rather than something to pursue” (116). In my view, if it is true that there is no alternative 

when living in this world, if all we can do is to live in impurity, then what Roth implies 

is that it is absurd to believe that purity can be achieved, but he also shows how people 

continue to attempt to find it. 

The complex narrative structure of novels such as HS and AP together with the 

role of Zuckerman as a narrator have been analyzed in depth by Pia Masiero (2011). She 

outlines these novels’ structure in the following way: First, Zuckerman learns something 

about an old friend, and then, he tries to reconstruct what happened during the rest of the 

novel, and as Masiero discovered, the strength of the novel as a whole lies in the mixture 

of its different parts (Masiero 2019: 88-89). As Zuckerman sets out to imagine the story, 

both in AP and in HS, we are introduced to the story as if it were a vision, for the narrator 

finds himself “inexplicably” seeing his characters in another place (Roth 1997: 85). In 

my view, this leads Zuckerman in a sort of detective quest to find the human stain. For in 

his story, Zuckerman learns about the symptoms of the stain, he tracks their traces and 

sees their consequences in his friends’ lives. As he imagines the stain, he sees it in a 

visible way and so he creates it through fiction by describing it with words. 

 

 

I.2.2. The Stain of Depravity: The Attraction of the Forbidden 

 

The stain is linked to the dark aspect of desire that Roth is interested in exploring 

from early on in his work: craziness, dissoluteness and depravity. Some characters seem 

to be emblems of this depravity. For instance, in ST, Mick Sabbath; in AP, Merry Levov, 

and in DA, David Kepesh. In HS, Faunia is the best example and so it makes sense that 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

47 

 

she should be the one to introduce the stain in the narrative. As Sánchez Canales writes, 

Faunia, rather than being a symbol for fertility, signifies on the contrary, barrenness, for 

she “seems to be a bestower of fruitlessness on the people she loves”, which is why she 

“serves as an embodiment of disgrace and death” (Sánchez Canales 2009: 115). 

Interestingly this is another thing she has in common with Sabbath, who feels that 

everybody hates him and that everyone thinks he has ruined other people’s lives. Sabbath, 

too, has no children. Other characters such as Epstein, complain about the world’s desire 

to call them impure, and others, like Marcus Messner, in Indignation, are angry as it seems 

that the world is set on making his life impure.  

The characters in AP or in Indignation need to believe that they are pure at the 

beginning of the novel because only then they can fall in the irony trap and discover that 

they are not pure, they never were; in fact, all of them are bearing the human stain from 

the beginning. However, Faunia’s identification with the human stain is stated in a 

different, very straightforward way: 

 

That, naturally, would be Faunia’s take on it: the inevitably stained creatures that we are. 

Reconciled to the horrible, elemental imperfection. She’s like the Greeks, like Coleman’s 

Greeks. Like their gods. They’re petty. They quarrel. They fight. They hate. They murder. 

They fuck. All their Zeus wants to do is fuck […] There is never enough flesh for the king 

of the gods or enough perversity. All the craziness desire brings. The dissoluteness. The 

depravity. The crudest pleasures. (Roth 2000: 242) 

 

Faunia’s belief in the human stain in this passage is linked to an understanding of 

the worlds and the myths or religions that allow people to make sense of it. The narrator 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

48 

 

provides a hypothetical view of Faunia’s morality, and as she is characterized by desire 

and sexuality, and this can be interpreted as a negative or as a positive quality: “Roth 

seems to have debased Faunia into just a mock figure of desire” (Sánchez Canales 2009: 

115). However, more than a mocking portrait, in my view as she has the revelation about 

the stain, her role is to show she is not the only one to suffer debasement or to appear to 

be a mock figure, as she knows everyone suffers from the same condition, Coleman too. 

In fact, there is a redeeming quality in the sexual relationship between Coleman and 

Faunia, for it seems to provide Coleman with an experience of love that is greater than 

his grief. Recently, Judie Newman has analyzed how she represents somebody who is in 

the margins of what is clean and wholesome and therefore she is dangerous and impure. 

Newman draws on Purity and Danger, by Mary Douglas (1966), the anthropological 

study mentioned at the beginning of the previous section of this chapter. In her book, she 

defines “dirt as disorder” and points out that “dirt is relative, depending on the place”, 

and looking at the dietary restrictions from Leviticus, it seems that “any blurring of the 

demarcation lines of a class constitutes pollution, uncleanness” (Newman 2019: 86-87). 

Following these ideas, this dissertation seeks to further Newman’s argument by 

examining the ways in which Roth employs the human stain as a literary device to 

represent transgression in general. While Faunia works as a cleaner and is “the 

embodiment of a freshening, sweetening country purity” (Roth 2000: 88), this description 

is undermined by the description of the cow’s excrement, a clear image of the human 

stain which serves to debunk the false ritual of purity. Newman interprets Faunia’s 

sexuality as transgressive because she is described as unclean, which supports my reading 

of the stain in this novel, and she also sees the irony used by Roth in placing images of 

false purity with the stain. This will be further looked at in more detail in Chapter II, but 

it is important to note how throughout the novel, Roth uses a character as a living human 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

49 

 

stain, who can be read “as a performance escaping categorization, an impure 

performance” (Newman 91). Faunia’s transgressive focus on the body leads to an 

understanding of the meaning of the human stain in Coleman’s life.  

 

 

I.2.3. Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter and Roth’s Human Stain 

 

The question of how to represent the conflict that takes place in the body can be 

tackled by comparing his work with Hawthorne’s, as in the previous section. Is the 

resource of the human stain a symbol? And what does that mean? How does Roth express 

his meaning through the human stain? And what do readers seek from it? Ruland and 

Bradbury explain the following about Hawthorne’s novel: “The Scarlet Letter can be read 

as a work of either allegory or symbolism. In a sense, it is a work where allegory is 

dispersed, freed of fixed moral meanings, and then reconstituted. It is a novel of signs and 

symbols, concealments and revelations, hidden truths of self and expressed public 

utterances and confessions; and a book in which the very nature of meaning, of how we 

express it, what we seek from it, and why we need to do so, is a central concern” (Ruland 

and Bradbury 1992: 146). 

In Roth’s work, the stain serves to show that everyone is debased, in the sense of 

being corrupted, and Faunia is aware of this. Such a forbidden desire is an experience that 

is also found in the relationship of Sabbath with Drenka in ST, which portrays the joy of 

an extremely lustful affair. Roth’s characters realize their desire is part of their nature and 

they cannot be rid of it, just like in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Dimmesdale realizes 

that his desire for Hester is the same, even after years of trying to silence it. As Ruland 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

50 

 

and Bradbury argue, speaking about the mark on Dimmesdale: “the letter that Hester 

shows, he hides, as he seeks to read himself and not be read by others. But the sign driven 

inward keeps insistently manifesting itself -on his body in the form of physical stigmata 

which are seen and interpreted by the vengeful husband, Chillingworth, and outwardly in 

nature, imprinted on the heavens” (Ruland and Bradbury 146). Consequently, because of 

these “flawed and stained narrators and protagonists”, Patrick O’Donnell sees a clear link 

between Roth and Hawthorne in their portrayal of human nature (2019). Moreover, he 

claims: “No American novelist I know of, with the exception of Hawthorne, understood 

how deeply riven with contradiction the ‘nature’ of ‘human nature’ can be” (O’Donnell 

2019: 111). O’Donnell believes that in spite of Roth’s rendering of the “opacity” of the 

human (meaning the impossibility to read and understand human nature), Roth tried to 

see through it by filling in the blanks, so to speak (111). 

Considering this literary connection, more scholars have asked themselves about 

the meaning of pain and marks in Roth’s and Hawthorne’s fiction. While Catherine 

Morley points at Roth’s reference to Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter in My Life as a Man, 

when he suffers migraines and sees them as “standing for something” (Roth 1974: 55), I 

think the connection can be found in both the form and the meaning of this metaphor. In 

the previous section, the illustration of Hawthorne’s story “The Birthmark” allowed for a 

comparison with a narrative that featured an image of the stain with questions about the 

nature of human imperfection. However, in this novel, the stain is secret and then 

uncovered, like in Roth’s work. For further discussion of how Dimmesdale’s true nature 

of his condition is revealed to him, see Stubbs in Gross et al. (1961: 384-392). 

But how is the stain made visible in Roth’s style? It is not by means of a letter, a 

giant “S”, but it is true that the word “stain” is present in many of Roth’s novels. Overall, 

the clarity of the depiction of depravity is the imprint of Roth’s style and it shows how 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

51 

 

universal impurity really is. Likewise, Hawthorne suggested that idea when in The Scarlet 

Letter, which deals with the same theme as Roth’s HS, Hester realizes “the outward guise 

of purity was but a lie, and that, if the truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter 

would blaze forth on many a bosom” (Hawthorne 1969: 86). Just as Dimmesdale refuses 

to confess his sin and thereby he adds hypocrisy to his sins, in Roth’s novels many 

characters choose to hide their human stain and pretend to be good, but eventually the 

stain must be revealed (Baughman in Gross 1961: 207-213). Seeley brilliantly sees how 

“the letter is itself a stain of sorts: imposed from without, it is but a mirror of the internal, 

which is why Hester sees it everywhere. Governor Bellingham thinks Hester is not able 

to be a good mother “because of the stain which the letter indicates” (Hawthorne 1969: 

111). The same truth that Hawthorne insinuates is stated by Roth: “The fantasy of purity 

is appalling. It’s insane. What is the quest to purify, if not more impurity?” (Roth 2000: 

242). If the ultimate hypocrisy is of those who presume to identify in others the impurity 

that resides in everyone, Roth points out by the means of the human stain, that we are all 

“inevitably stained creatures”, although this has “[n]othing to do with disobedience”, as 

it “precedes disobedience” (242). Here, Roth rejects a religious reading of the stain as 

disobedience to God as in the Bible’s account and instead offers a different view of human 

beings as originally stained creatures. 

In HS, even the president of the nation bears the mark of the stain, and it makes 

no sense to describe Clinton’s “incontinent carnality” as if others were pure, an idea which 

is ridiculous from the narrator’s point of view. Roth, “like Hawthorne uses the word 

‘stain’ as a metonym for the inherent disorder humans create.” (Seeley 2011: 105). If 

being human means bearing the stain of sin, the narrator of Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet 

Letter has the following advice: “be true! Be true! Be true! Show freely to the world, if 

not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred!” (Hawthorne 1850: 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

52 

 

260). Because, according to Hawthorne, “he who shows himself in a false light becomes 

a shadow or, indeed, ceases to exist” (145). In the search of a true light instead of that 

false light, Roth’s characters try to show their real selves. Coleman and Faunia do so in 

their intimate encounters in HS, and this can be compared to the representation of the 

scene between Hester and Dimmesdale. According to Ruland and Bradbury, “Hawthorne 

creates a conflict of nature and culture. The act of love that sanctifies itself in nature 

(‘What we did had a consecration of its own’, Hester tells the minister, Arthur 

Dimmesdale, in the forest) is for this culture an act of sin, requiring guilt, confession and 

penitence” (1992: 145). Similarly, Coleman and Faunia are judged and punished for their 

affair. 

 

 

I.2.4. The Stain of Violence and Destruction 

 

In his book Radical Innocence, Ihab Hassan argues that there are various 

contemporary novelists who concur that “violence and distortion must be the means of 

projecting a vision to which society is hostile” (Hassan 1961: 4). If the human stain is 

meant to reveal corruption, how is this represented in Roth’s work? Hassan further argues 

that “the contemporary world presents a continued affront to man, and that his response 

must therefore be the response of a rebel or victim, living under the shadow of death” 

(1961: 5). Roth’s characters, like Epstein, as seen in the first section of this Chapter, will 

respond in similar ways. Furthermore, they will act like Portnoy in PC, because, as Hassan 

says: “The contemporary self recoils from the world against itself. It has discovered 

absurdity” (5). Hassan then agrees with Bradbury that absurdity is a key feature of the 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

53 

 

contemporary novel. Interestingly, in my view, this absurdity becomes heightened when 

linked with the Jewish sense of humor. 

 In Roth studies, when considering crazed monologues and outbursts of anger and 

frustration, the first novel that must be discussed is Portnoy’s Complaint (1969). This 

“somewhat obscene” book features a young man’s struggle with the restrictions of the 

Jewish law and his sexual urges. Through “self-control, sobriety and sanctions” Jews try 

to avoid contaminating humanity, but what Portnoy feels is the impulse to break the law 

(Roth 1969: 79-80). This book was a best-seller, a social phenomenon and also caused a 

stir in the Jewish community, and it has even led to accusations of anti-Semitism, which 

have been met by Roth’s own defense and as they are still relevant, they have recently 

been addressed by scholars such as Sánchez Canales (2021). The question is: What is 

Roth’s character exactly directing his anger at? When Roth was asked about his satirical 

approach to Jewish urban life, he replied: “I can’t deny having feelings of anger and 

censure as a human being and a Jew, although I would say this is not particularly a Jewish 

problem, but an American problem” (Searles 1992: 2). To Sánchez Canales, this is 

particularly true in Portnoy’s case, where the biblical references are used to explain 

everything that was meant to be done to be kept pure, and presented in opposition to 

Portnoy’s desires (2021). 

The human stain carries with it an outpour of indignation, of outraged and 

outrageous speech. This happens in different degrees in the texts: in “Epstein”, for 

instance, there is only a veiled reference to the suffering experienced in the past, but in 

ST, violence makes an appearance in the form of rage. Sabbath becomes furious and 

quarrels with most of the characters, for different reasons. The representation of violence 

is also present in the War that took his brother’s life and in the consequences of that loss 

in his family, which will be analyzed in the last Chapter of this thesis, when looking at 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

54 

 

the descriptions of illness and death. In AP, Merry struggles to control her anger at the 

world around her and the war in Vietnam and the burning of the monk are the epitome of 

violence and destruction. Merry is the carrier of the stain and she is the one that plants the 

bomb and introduces violence into the peaceful setting of the story. Merry’s mounting 

feeling of rage is expressed in her silence and in her arguments with her parents, during 

which she shouts at them.  

In HS, Les Farley is a tormented violent Vietnam vet. The stain also can be noted 

because of the feeling of indignation, even from characters with opposing mindsets. For 

instance, in HS, Coleman Silk is a man who has undergone a terrible “moral suffering” 

which makes him age rapidly and grow bitter and angry. This is because of the ordeal he 

went through due to the false accusation of racism that ruined his career. However, even 

before his outrage, there is a previous fracture, in his own identity. The stain lies at the 

core of his secret life. Coleman has the desire to escape his fate and he does so by 

pretending to have a different identity, but as Sánchez Canales points out, it is a failure 

because his fate is not in his control (2009: 112). Now, the resource of the stain allows 

for a vivid portrayal of how Coleman loses control and how his true identity cannot be 

erased. For example, when he is beaten up because of his race when he is in the navy, 

when he is badly hurt and bleeding, Coleman hears his father’s voice ‘speaking back to 

him –the old admonishing authority rumbling up against the ‘tragic, reckless thing that 

[he’s] done’ (Roth 2000: 182-3). As Seeley argues, Coleman’s “white uniform marred 

with a real human stain of ‘caking blood,’ Coleman feels that ‘this is what came of failing 

to fulfil his father’s ideals… of deserting his dead father altogether’ through renouncing 

his race and family” (182; Seeley 2011: 103). The description of the “hideous, raucous 

dive”, “the worst, the most abominable” is the setting that is filled with the human stain, 

which is awful for Coleman, who tries to avoid the “human wreckage” (Roth 2000: 181). 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

55 

 

But the fact that he is covered in blood and he cannot wipe it off his white clothes means 

that he has to face reality, and it is the time for him to decide on the course of his future 

career. 

 Ironically, what remains of this episode is also a stain, made of ink, on his body: 

a tattoo, apparently insignificant, but to him, it reveals how he had to face his real identity. 

To return to another important literary reference for Roth, close to Hawthorne’s, it is 

timely to look at Herman Melville’s tale White Jacket (1850), written just a year before 

Moby Dick (1851), features an image of a white jacket that will be covered with a stain 

of violence and cruelty, and it is precisely about this: the loss of innocence and the 

impossibility to escape from the world of adults, which is what the Swede has been trying 

to do, living in his world apart, only to discover, through the stain, that there is no escape 

from reality. 

Similarly, in AP, when Seymour has to face his daughter and discover the stain in 

himself too, this takes place in an apartment which is also stained with human waste. 

Merry, too, bears indelible marks of her filth, as she has renounced to basic personal 

hygiene. This scene is filled with tension and the weight of the knowledge that somebody 

is responsible for the violent death of various people. And there is a series of images of 

violence and destruction in HS: The label of the accusation that stains Coleman’s 

reputation is like a tattoo that he cannot erase: “First a racist and now a misogynist” (Roth 

2000: 290). That stain is similar to the accusation of adultery in “Epstein” or the charges 

of indecency that Sabbath has to put up with. In addition, the death of the children of 

Faunia in a fire, and the wrath and revenge of Les, who has suffered from participating in 

the violence of the Vietnam War create an “atmosphere of destruction and death” 

(Sánchez Canales 2009: 116). Now, this destruction is represented by the means of images 

of darkness and filth. 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

56 

 

The nearness of death is most striking when Faunia describes how she cleans a 

cabin where a man committed suicide: Not even strong-stomached Faunia could bear “the 

smell of death” and the sight of the man’s remains, and not even the disinfectant and the 

hot water could not clean it properly (Roth 2000: 340). Coleman feels safe with her 

because she has seen the worst, and he knows she will not run away if he tells her the 

truth about his race and what he did. In the ending scene of HS, Seeley points to how Les 

seems to be calm, “though it is a menacing, threatening calm, which is yet another 

deception –of nature, of human nature. […] Moreover, the complicated irony of the last 

sentence is as chilling as that icy lake: a ‘pure and peaceful’ vision of terror (361; Seeley 

2011: 108-9, ellipsis mine). In DA, destruction is present both in the feelings and thoughts 

of fracture that come with love and also in the effect of cancer on the body. Aristi Trendel 

addresses this issue, focusing on the dynamics between master and pupil (2007) and 

Sánchez Canales analyzes this subject too when looking at the literary references and 

connections between art, erotic desire and death in this novel (2014). 

 

 

I.2.5. The Stain of Confusion and Blindness 

 

He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach—that it makes no sense” (Roth 

1997: 81). The stain creates confusion in the mind of Roth’s characters, and this is a very 

important symptom because it leads them to the realization that what they thought they 

knew is wrong and nothing makes sense anymore. Such confusion can also be considered 

the acknowledgement of the extent of their ignorance, meaning the impossibility to know 

oneself and others. In “Epstein”, confusion appears as a secondary effect of desire, when 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

57 

 

the main character cannot tell a red light from a green one, or when he is clueless as to 

how to behave now that his adultery has been discovered by his family.  

In HS a major state of confusion can be found in Delphine, who, despite her 

intelligence, does not know herself nor Coleman, and to make matters even worse, she 

makes other people believe lies about him. As Sánchez Canales says, it is interesting to 

compare her actions to the oracle of Delphi of Greek mythology, with its obscurity and 

ambiguity, which in the person of Delphine appear alongside to a desire to manipulate 

and control the people around her and also forge her own life (2009: 117). Mistaking 

appearance for reality and falsehood from truth is a symptom of the tragic flaw, as 

Sánchez Canales explains (122).  

Truth is revealed in surprising ways, as children, for example, see things for what 

they really are. Seeley compares Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter to HS, noting how 

“family ties have a crucial place in both novels, for Coleman and Hester are parents of 

children who, they fear, perceive their secrets. […] Mark questions his father about his 

origins; he ‘wanted the knowledge of who they were and where they came from,’ and he 

is ‘never satisfied’ (Roth 2000: 176) with the inventive narrative Coleman provides.” 

(Seeley 103, ellipsis mine). As explained before, when speaking about The Scarlet Letter 

and its use of the stain, Pearl is a character who reveals the stain and also sees it clearly. 

Pearl also asks about the meaning of the scarlet letter that her mother wears and she tells 

her that “it is for the same reason that the minister keeps his hand over his heart!” 

(Hawthorne 1969: 179). That is why Hester “often fancied that Providence had a design 

of justice and retribution in endowing the child with this marked propensity” for knowing 

the meaning behind the letter (Hawthorne 1969: 180). Just like Merry in AP or Coleman’s 

children in HS, here Seeley says that “the children’s role is to unnerve their parents, to 

keep conscience afflicted” (Seeley 2011: 103). 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

58 

 

But even children can be wrong, as we see in AP, where Merry is the child who 

apparently sees the reality of injustice in the world in a way that others choose to ignore. 

As the narrator of HS states, “our understanding of people must always be at best slightly 

wrong” (Roth 2000: 22). “We are slightly wrong about our parents, our children, our 

lovers, and even ourselves –for Roth’s line reads ‘our understanding of people,’ not ‘other 

people’” (Seeley 2011: 104). There is a similar warning in The Scarlet Letter, as “nobody 

really knows anything about Hester, even though the townspeople believe they do.” (104). 

Just as in HS, where the section titled “Nobody knows” is filled with irony because people 

believe they know but they actually do not really know. Self-deception and transgression 

are inextricably linked through the use of the stain in these narratives. For a further 

discussion of transgression and the mark of sin in The Scarlet Letter, see Foster in Gross 

(1961: 423-435). 

A quality that both novels share is “the inherent messiness of life” (Seeley 

2011:104). In Roth’s novel, there is a scene in which Coleman is in “a hideous, raucous 

dive” and he is beaten in a bathroom which was filled with all the fluids of body waste, 

described in detail to create a disgusting effect (Roth 2000: 181). It is clear that “blood 

and excrement and sweat are raceless fluids, simply part of the larger mess of being 

human” (Seeley 2011: 105). The image of the human stain makes its appearance here in 

a way that can be compared to ST with the bodily fluids of Sabbath and Drenka. Even 

those who wish to appear as clean will show their stain eventually. For example, as Seeley 

points out: “Delphine Roux, in a rare moment of clarity, calls herself ‘a mess of 

uncertainty’ (Roth 2000: 276). […] But Delphine is not alone: we all, Roth suggests, are 

natural-born bunglers of communication and wreckers of situations” (Seeley 2011: 105, 

ellipsis mine).  



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

59 

 

The lack of meaning in life appears in ST too, when Sabbath speaks of the only 

pattern being chaos. In Seeley’s interpretation of HS, “There is no future for Roth. And 

without a future, there can only be ‘pointless meaningfulness,’ because there is nothing 

to be learned, not even fragments to be shored up for the future against the ruins of today. 

[…] The only real choice we have is to live fully now, which Roth acknowledges in the 

next line that Zuckerman says, “The sensory fullness, the copiousness, the abundant –

superabundant- detail of life, which is the rhapsody.’ There is nothing more than this. 

That’s why Roth ends that section with the enigmatic lines: ‘Nothing lasts, and yet 

nothing passes, either. And nothing passes just because nothing lasts.” (Roth 2000: 52; 

Seeley 2011:108, ellipsis mine). 

The emphasis of living in the moment and in the body has not only been noted by 

Newman, as seen before when looking at Faunia’s role, but it is also supported by 

Posnock: 

 

Faunia’s illiteracy also heightens her affinity with the ‘human stain.’ Illiteracy immunizes 

her from the solicitations of textual representation, in particular written language’s rage to 

order, its tendency to drain the refractory from experience, to, in effect, purify it of human 

stains. Her body, as in the scene of her dancing, speaks as intensely as her spoken words. 

But by making her illiteracy feigned, Roth is able to resist the temptation to sanctify the 

primal as a ‘solution’ (Posnock 2006:218) 

 

Faunia’s role in passing as something she is not is like acting, similar to when 

Coleman passes for white. She does not want to learn more than what she already knows 

about the struggle of the human race, a fight between “the ruthless and the defenseless” 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

60 

 

(Roth 2000: 240). This emphasis on the meaninglessness of life and the acknowledgement 

of ignorance can also be seen in Roth’s novel DA, where there is a transition from a 

feeling of confidence based on knowledge and the realization that there are no certainties 

and that knowledge does not explain everything in life. DA (2001) tells the story of the 

relationship between professor David Kepesh and his former student Consuela Castillo. 

He finds himself consumed by his fear of aging, his desire and jealousy, discovering that 

he cannot control his feelings, and eventually, they break up. When she returns to tell him 

that she has breast cancer and she could die, he is finally confronted with her as a whole 

person. 

In DA, Kepesh is left clueless when Consuela starts having power over him and 

when she leaves him. Finally, his confusion reaches its highest peak when she falls ill. In 

this novel, sexual desire and the jealousy that comes with it are feelings that are 

characterized by confusion. It does not make sense that Consuela would be the first to 

die, being so young, and so she experiences meaninglessness to the extreme, facing the 

prospect of death as they watch TV on New Year’s Eve. As Debra Shostak argues, just 

as in ST Sabbath “exposes the false promises art makes to the reality of the decaying 

body”, in DA, Kepesh exposes the false promises of sexual desire (Shostak 2004: 61).  

The reality of death and how it puts a radical end to human desire and dreams is 

what creates the most extreme confusion. Does this hopelessness lead to a negation of life 

in Roth’s fiction? Some have taken his skepticism for pessimism and utter cynicism. 

Though it may seem so in some cases, I would like to argue, as other scholars have, that 

there is still an affirmation of life in his work. There is hope, after all. The human stain 

plays an important role in this point. On the one hand, the human stain could be the mark 

that prompts people to give up, to abandon life, or on the other hand, it can be accepted 

and lived with. Illustrating the first point is Posnock’s interpretation of the human stain 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

61 

 

scene with the crow named Prince, as he sees that Faunia, being someone who has 

suffered so much in her life, having lost her children in a fire, and attempted suicide, is 

‘looking for ways to leave the human race’ (Roth 2000: 239). To Posnock, her ‘marriage’ 

to the crow declares her radical alienation from human hope, what she terms 

contemptuously ‘the fantasy of forever.’” (Roth 2000: 208; Posnock 2006: 218). 

Posnock sees a double meaning to Faunia’s connection to the crow: Firstly, she 

identifies with him because he is a misfit, which happened as a result of his acting, his 

imitation. “Prince participates in the unstoppable circulation of mimetic and inferential 

impressions; his mimicry of mimicry infers and fashions a voice.” (Posnock 2006: 219). 

This is connected to Zuckerman’s conclusion in The Counterlife (1986): “I am a theater 

and nothing more than a theater” (Roth 1986: 325). As Posnock says, “The Human Stain 

ratifies this abolition of the self as a ‘natural being’ rooted in a solid core of fixed identity” 

(Posnock 2006: 219). But Posnock adds that “[t]he bond of mimesis means, in effect, that 

Art lurks in the heart of Nature; and this mingling topples the primordial opposition 

between them, the opposition that grounds the always lethal ‘fantasy of purity’” (219). 

Posnock interprets the fact that it is an animal which elicits an epiphany about the 

human condition as the idea that “the ‘human stain’ links us to the animal; stains, trails, 

imprints are common to both species” (2006: 220). In my opinion, this is not an 

appropriate interpretation of this scene, because it is clear that Roth uses the crow to speak 

about humans, he is not writing about animals. Unraveling the meaning of the stain is not 

a straightforward task, as Posnock argues: 

 

The equivocation makes sense when we consider that if the ‘stain’ were understood to 

function as an absolute, as an essentialist term of immutable difference, it would embody 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

62 

 

the very ‘fantasy of purity’ that it is intended to rupture. The phrase, in other words, to 

enact its slippery ubiquity, rather than marking a limit, must embody transit or 

transfiguration. […] In sum: inhabiting the ‘human stain’ is the stain of mimesis, its 

disruptive energies unraveling Roth’s titular phrase from within. (2006: 220, ellipsis 

mine) 

 

The evidence Posnock provides as clues that point at this interpretation is about 

the meaning of Faunia’s name, (Faunus being the Roman god of animals, and the 

references to Greek gods which lived in a world “where metamorphosis is the only law” 

(Posnock 2006: 220). However, as Sánchez Canales (2009) has studied in his article on 

the influence of Greek Tragedy on this novel, these very references actually point to the 

flaws in the human condition, the hamartia. The references to Greek Tragedy “call to 

mind ideas of fate, retribution, hubris” (Seeley 2011: 102). Now, the word “hubris,” 

which is closely connected to the term “hamartia”, is important because its significance 

is connected with key subjects in all of Roth’s work. Its etymological meaning, from the 

Greek hybris, means “wanton violence, insolence, outrage”, originally “presumption 

toward the gods”, which in turn brings the nemesis, the vengeance and justice of the gods 

towards the perpetrator (For an analysis of the concept of hybris, see Rodríguez Adrados 

2014; 158-159). So if according to the Greek classics, it was a sin committed by human 

beings when they wanted to be like God, this connects with the interpretation of Adam 

and Eve’s sin in Gen. 3: 5 as pointed out above, in the first section of this Chapter. Another 

paradigmatic example from the Bible is when the human beings wanted to build The 

Tower of Babel and God confused them to stop them. In HS, there is no direct mention 

of an offense to God or the gods, but it is true that Coleman had an excessive confidence 

in his ability and power to craft his own life.  



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

63 

 

To return to my disagreement with Posnock’s interpretation of the human stain, it 

is important to note that Posnock sees destruction as a surprising element in the plot of 

HS, because “Inevitably, death also lives at the heart of this pastoral of entrancing 

simplicity and purity” (2006: 234). However, death is the logical outcome as a result of 

hubris.  

An important lesson Coleman learns is that his successes are always linked to his 

failures. His biggest joys are connected to moments of deep sadness. For example, when 

he tastes freedom he has to renounce to his mother; and later, when his son is born and 

he is at the peak of his career, he also feels an impulse to go to see his mother, which is 

impossible by then. And when he is at the Navy, he is mistreated for being black. That 

night he gets a tattoo which ends up having the following meaning to him: “it was the 

mark evocative not only of the turbulence of the worst night of his life but of all that 

underlay the turbulence –it was the sign of all of his history, of the indivisibility of the 

heroism and the disgrace” (Roth 2000: 184). The stain is like the eye of the storm, 

signifying the turbulence and everything behind that conflict. It signifies that who he is 

can never really be erased and it also reminds him of life’s unexpectedness, of how 

dangerous it is to expose oneself or to conceal oneself.   

The vulnerability that appears in such a time in Coleman’s life can be compared 

with the weakness experienced by Kepesh in Roth’s next novel, DA: In the beginning 

Kepesh refers to the young girls he likes as the “meat” he will eat and he describes 

Consuela’s beauty as most remarkably noted in her breasts, which are described as 

“powerful, beautiful” and he repeats that she is aware of this power and beauty and still 

figuring out how to use it (Roth 2001: 3). From the way that she carries herself, merely 

from her body language, he makes the deduction that she does not really know what to 

do with her body yet or what she is going to use it for. And the comparison Kepesh uses 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

64 

 

(the body as her weapon) introduces the idea that sexuality is a power that can be used to 

abide by the law or to break it, to look out for your safety or to hurt or threaten others.  

 

So you understand that she’s aware of her power but that she isn’t sure yet how to use it, 

what to do with it, how much she even wants it. That body is still new to her, she’s still 

trying it out, thinking it through, a bit like a kid walking through the streets with a loaded 

gun and deciding whether he’s packing it to protect himself or to begin a life of crime. 

(Roth 2001: 3-4) 

 

The comparison with the loaded gun means her power can be used for good or bad 

purposes, pointing at the moral implications of sexual behavior. She knew what her body 

was worth and she knew what she was, but not completely. Kepesh will show that to her, 

because he acts as if he knew everything about the power of her body, which can be a 

dangerous thing, but he actually will be surprised by how far it goes. Her body is 

described by Kepesh as a tool Consuela has, but it also defines her very being because 

her story will be written on her body. It will experience sex and illness. The erotic power 

of Consuela’s body is very strong, and as it turns out, Kepesh is unable to control it. When 

noticing the contrast between the description of Consuela’s body, treated as an object that 

can be known, and the mystery that shrouds her personality, how she puzzles the man, it 

may be helpful to recall how this question is treated in other works by Roth, such as The 

Breast (1972) or The Professor of Desire (1977). In the latter, according to Debra Shostak, 

Kepesh suffers from a “perplexity over the contradiction between woman-as-object and 

woman-as-subject” and he is “awed by the power of the object, which by all reasoning 

should possess no power, the dominion of the subject” (Shostak 2004: 25). 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

65 

 

Posnock argues that “sexuality in Roth does not have the status, say, of a 

Lawrentian redemptive wholeness joining man and woman. Neither erotic nor lyrical, but 

raw and explicit, sexuality in Roth’s portrayal as easily enslaves and isolates as 

emancipates” (2006: 18). While in ST sex emancipates, in DA there is an ambiguity as to 

the effects of sexuality. This starts to be evident from the initial confession that Kepesh 

makes of not being able to really know her, he feels isolated and enslaved, not really 

united to her. But Kepesh also locks out this possibility of knowing her with his thinking: 

“With a self-contained woman of such sexual power, you have no idea and you never 

will. The tangle that is her character is obscured by her beauty.” And still, what he is 

moved by is her underwear, her body (Roth 2001: 27). Before, Kepesh declared about the 

appeal that he found in one of the girls: “Everything’s hidden and nothing’s concealed” 

(8) but now, with Consuela everything seems to be concealed too. Because of that, he 

praises what he can see: Her breasts were “round, full, perfect” (28), the description of 

the beauty of her body is the only thing that is visibly important and meaningful. The 

paradox is that the stain is hidden under the image of this beautiful body. 

Sexuality is complicated as attraction turns into disgust, and just as the cancer will 

grow in Consuela’s body, the attraction she once felt for Kepesh is contaminated and 

fades away. There is an echo here of the “Everybody/Nobody knows” theme in Roth’s 

previous work, HS, as mentioned above when speaking about the blindness and confusion 

generated by the stain. Consuela diagnoses the problem she finds in Kepesh when at the 

end of their relationship she accuses him of “playing the wise old man who knows 

everything” (Roth 2001: 96) and she claims he actually did not know her at all, “Me da 

asco. Ordinary idiom meaning “It makes me sick”” (97). However, though he does not 

know her as a person, she acknowledges that he does know her body, and this is no small 

thing to her, when she is sick.  Clearly this story does not follow a set pattern of an erotic 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

66 

 

relationship between a teacher and his pupil, for throughout the novel the reader must ask 

himself what it really is that is being taught and learnt by the characters. Is Kepesh 

teaching Consuela anything at all? Does she acquire any knowledge? Aristi Trendel deals 

with this issue at the study mentioned earlier and claims that “at this point in the master-

pupil relationship, which has turned destructive, subversion plays a part. What draws 

Consuela to her master is precisely what drives her away,” and the letter she sends Kepesh 

demonstrates “the limits of his mastership” over her (Trendel 2007: 3). And not only is 

there a movement from attraction to disgust on Consuela’s part, but also on Kepesh’s, as 

he finds that at the same time that his meaning and knowledge disappears, and he 

dwindles into insignificance, his sexual appetite also vanishes as he finds himself unable 

to sleep with Consuela when she comes to him with her illness. Miriam Jaffe-Fogger has 

seen in her study of the narrativization of illness how this unexpected turn of events shows 

how body and mind are connected and how the character’s anxieties about aging and 

illness are connected to their desire and lead them to a new understanding of their value 

and identity as human beings (2014: 4-5). Even though the subject of dominance and 

transgression in sexuality will be covered in the next Chapter of this thesis, at this point 

it is important to acknowledge the way in which Roth introduces the stain in that area of 

his writing too. 

There is no greater, no purer power than sex, according to Kepesh, who wants to 

portray sexuality as powerful and pure (as opposed to people who think it corrupt and 

refuse to give it its due importance) but at the same time the story unveils how he finds 

weakness and dissatisfaction in his sexual experience. As the story develops, both the 

power of desire and the power of death startle Kepesh, who comes under their influence 

and cannot flee from them. By exploring the complex paradoxes of attachment and 

freedom, Roth makes the reader question what these realities actually are. In a similar 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

67 

 

way, by portraying scenes that represent actions or behaviors that may be considered 

moral or immoral in an ambiguous way, he questions our view of purity and impurity. 

This is done by offering descriptions of the body that become images or metaphors and 

can be interpreted alternatively as negative or positive, or as disgusting or desirable. 

Especially the images of cancer in the breast or of drinking menstrual blood are linked to 

the human stain, a dirty reality or an illness that affects human beings deeply and for 

which there is no solution. A close reading of the use of these images will help us 

understand the meaning of the experience of the human stain. 

 

 

I.2.6. The Filth of the Stain 

 

When displaying a life of impurity, Sabbath is a teacher in the estrangement from 

the ordinary, so he is seeking that defamiliarization—to use the term coined by Russian 

formalist Viktor Shklovsky—which goes hand in hand with exaggeration, grotesque 

actions and the use of irony. His novels are filled with scatological images, from 

Portnoy’s masturbating in the liver meant for dinner to the many obscene actions of 

Sabbath. Besides the image of the girl’s underpants in Sabbath’s pocket, there are other 

images that have this effect. Considering Roth’s work in general, as David Brauner 

humorously points out, “there is a lot of shit in Roth’s novels […] because of what it 

symbolizes for him: namely, human life in all its visceral, indecorous, noisome 

messiness” (Brauner 2007: 163, ellipsis mine). In order to gain a better understanding of 

the role of the description of visceral realities in Roth’s fiction, Brauner and Shostak, 

among others, have analyzed the scene in Patrimony: A True Story (1991) in which Roth 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

68 

 

has to clean his sick father’s excrement from the bathroom floor. Interestingly, Roth 

compares this overwhelming task of cleaning with his task of writing: “It’s like writing a 

book […] I have no idea where to begin” (Roth 1991: 173, ellipsis mine). As Brauner 

says, the analogy is of course, humorous, and also the emotions aroused by the task 

(horror and exhilaration) are comparable to writing about the experience of the human 

stain (2007:163). 

There are two meanings of the word “pristine” in English: original, from the 

biblical Paradise, the Garden of Eden (in reference to Adam and Eve’s pristine world, 

before they sinned); and by extension, something very clean. If, as seen before, once 

Adam and Eve sinned, sin and corruption entered the world as a consequence, the world 

cannot longer be pristine. Consequently, there is no way back, which is why the images 

of the human stain show how ridiculous it is to pretend that impurity can be purified. And 

the text reveals everything that a human being is ashamed of, which is, paradoxically, the 

mark that makes him or her human. Sabbath, as was stated at the beginning of this study, 

cannot find rest, so he is unable to let go, to find repose anywhere, but he chooses to face 

the troubled mess of his existence as he considers his nature. It is in that sense that one 

can say that he can “let go”, as Posnock puts it, “Sabbath’s ‘letting the whole creature 

out’ is a performance whose very meaning resides in being immoderate, (relatively) 

indifferent to economy and selection –elements in the making of facticious order –and 

immersing himself in the mess of experience as it spills over with glancing meanings, 

flickering moments of human exchange, abrupt surges, and losses of opportunity” 

(Posnock 2006: 180). Interestingly, it is through this embracing of the human stain that 

the character experiences life to the full, like Zuckerman describes in HS. Posnock argues 

that this “overflow and byplay forms the ‘rhapsody’ of ‘sensory fullness’ evoked in and 

through Sabbath’s naked receptivity.” (181). This interpretation leads to a positive 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

69 

 

reading of the human stain as an imperfection that is welcome as it is full of life. However, 

even though this is partly true, in my view it has to be compared with other important 

aspects of the meaning of the human stain. 

For example, in the beginning of DA, as Kepesh introduces himself and his 

lifestyle, he exhibits his assurance in his ability to attract females because of his status as 

a professor who appears in the media. At first glance, he is enjoying life to the full while 

being aware of his human stain. He is self- confident in what makes him attractive and 

proud of his success, knowledge and experience. His victims, young female students, are 

impressed by his fame “they are helplessly drawn to celebrity,” so he is shown to be 

powerful, in control, while the girls are placed in a weaker position (Roth 2001: 1). But, 

paradoxically, he sees himself as weak too: “Now, I’m very vulnerable to female beauty, 

as you know. Everybody’s defenseless against something, and that’s it for me. I see it and 

it blinds me to everything else” (2). That vulnerability, defenselessness and blindness will 

become more evident when he becomes obsessed with Consuela, as he will no longer feel 

in control of his life.  

On the whole, the human stain is overbearing in ST when compared to the other 

works because of a number of reasons. First of all, as Brauner says, “Sabbath is, finally, 

an advocate of immorality and mortality, the two essential conditions of humanity” (2007: 

145). Sabbath presents his sexual organ “as an unruly, unreliable but undaunted vehicle 

of pleasure”, in delight, celebration, self-aggrandizing, “but at the same time rueful and 

self-satirical” like when Sabbath compares it to an old car without much potency (128). 

“If Sabbath was Roth’s ultimate portrait of a man behaving badly, his next novel, 

American Pastoral, featured a protagonist whose main vice seemed, paradoxically, to be 

his lack of vices” (146). In AP, according to Brauner, Roth is “explaining how an apparent 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

70 

 

paragon of virtue might become a monster” (146).  Brauner also sees HS as a continuation 

of Roth’s “analysis of the inherent dangers of moral idealism” (146). 

 

 

I.2.7. The Stain of Opposition and Opposites 

 

Throughout his work, Roth delights in pursuing oppositions, and these reside not 

only in the meaning of the human stain but also in the attitude, beliefs, characters and 

tone of these four novels. In Countertexts, Counterlives (2004), Debra Shostak has written 

in depth about how Roth places a voice in opposition to a countervoice, in a dialogical 

method that offers a constant source of self-critique (Shostak 2004: 4). The stain 

participates in this game of opposites by signifying these changes and connections.  

The irony that is expressed in ST by the contrast between a shameless phone 

conversation and a narrative that explores its moral complications and consequences can 

be explored in terms of the meaning of purity and the questioning of innocence. As 

Brauner puts it, “it is no coincidence that text one contains so many allusions to lost 

innocence” (2007: 132). In addition, there is an invocation of the biblical account of the 

Garden of Eden in Sabbath’s description of his naked revels with Drenka. There is a 

transition “from the fresh to the stale, the ripe to the rotten, and from the good girl to the 

bad one”. At the end of The Facts, Zuckerman suggests that Roth’s work is “always in 

transit between the good boy and the bad boy” (Roth 1988: 167). In ST the narrative veers 

to the extreme of the bad boy, as Sabbath has got a “fight for the lost human cause” (Roth 

1995: 235). Brauner claims that Sabbath’s compulsive taboo-breaking is the expression 

of a credo of antagonism, his immorality an article of (bad) faith” (Brauner 2007: 125). 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

71 

 

The will to contradict, to be an antagonist, has been evident in many of Roth’s characters 

and their attitude towards the world.  

According to this perspective, as Brauner points out, to Sabbath good means bad 

and nice means boring, and selflessness is just a threat to purify one’s impure humanity. 

As Brauner says, there is an inversion of terms, from positive to negative (134): “Once 

again, a word that is customarily a term of appropriation –‘perfect’- assumes negative 

connotations” (134). This can be noted in Sabbath’s description of Norman’s ‘perfect’ 

home. Sabbath is offended by Norman’s earnest morality and he responds by being 

offensive “to flaunt his own immorality” (135). To Sabbath, behaving badly is a way to 

prove he is more potent than his ‘nice’ and ‘perfect’ rival (140). This could be compared 

to Nietzsche’s idea of a wild, beast-like man vs. the docile, domesticated man. Sabbath 

would definitely opt for the former, as it is filled with life, more human.  

Brauner sees how the novel is full of paradoxes with implications about the nature 

of morally transgressive acts. In this interpretation, Sabbath is both “a comic apologist 

for his own ‘shit-filled life’ (where ‘shit’ signifies authentic degradation) and a comic 

scourge of the ‘genteel shit’ (where ‘shit’ signifies bullshit, hypocritical pretense) on 

which polite society is built” (145). 

But what is the value of that human filth exactly? What is hiding behind the traces 

of the human stain after all? There is a clue in one of Roth’s most straightforward novels: 

“Once you sidestep disgust and ignore nausea and plunge past those phobias that are 

fortified like taboos, there’s an awful lot to cherish” (Roth 1991: 175). Roth means that it 

is worthwhile to consider the human stain because in it there is something that is valuable, 

what makes us human. This is most clearly expressed in AP, but the main character, the 

Swede, fails to understand this because he lives in a mythical world of his own. However, 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

72 

 

his world falls apart overnight as his daughter forces him to consider what it means to be 

human. As Posnock remarks about Sabbath’s words “say what you will about me, it’s 

been a real human life!” (Roth 1995: 247), “As often in Roth, what counts as human being 

and human life remain open questions, and Sabbath insists on keeping them open, as he 

does everything else” (Posnock 2006: 164). Posnock also quotes Henry Miller, who 

shares Sabbath’s ideas, and to him being human “seems like a poor, sorry, miserable 

affair, limited by the senses, restricted by moralities and codes, defined by platitudes and 

isms” (qtd. in Posnock 2006:  165).  Miller too loves “everything that flows […] rivers, 

sewers, lava, semen, blood, bile, words, sentences. I love the amniotic fluid when it spills 

out of the bag… I love the urine that pours out scalding and the clap that runs endlessly” 

(Miller qtd. in Posnock 2006: 165, ellipsis mine). Posnock sees how Sabbath’s flow has 

its source in the human body, and this mix of fluids of body and art recall Henry Miller.  

Roth’s father’s struggle to clean his mess is described with the verb “cleanse”, 

which, as Brauner observes, “connotes moral or spiritual purity as well as physical 

hygiene” (163). Brauner does not develop this interpretation, unfortunately. But it is 

related to the idea of the body as signifying one’s whole story and identity, and it identifies 

human waste as spiritual sin, following a metaphor that can be found in the Bible. As to 

human waste, such as blood, filth, and also nakedness as a result of sin, see Ezekiel 16, 

for instance, in which Jerusalem is compared to a baby that has been abandoned and is 

filthy, covered in blood, despised, and then the Lord cleans and clothes it. 

Roth makes various references to Macbeth (1606), so it is important to look at 

how the human stain is described in this play, which also uses imagery from the Bible. 

Shakespeare’s character, Macbeth, is “sick at heart” too, and begs desperately the Doctor 

to help his wife: “Cure her of that: Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas’d,/Pluck from 

the memory a rooted sorrow,/ Raze out the written troubles of the brain,/And with some 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

73 

 

sweet oblivious antidote/Cleanse the stuff’d bosom of that perilous stuff/ Which weighs 

upon the heart?”(Act 5, scene III, 41-48). The doctor replies “therein the patient must 

minister to himself”, which enrages Macbeth, but he still asks him to “find her disease, 

And purge it to a sound and pristine health” (Act 5, scene IV, 40-52). This desire to purge 

the illness, the foul darkness that ails his wife can be compared to the cry of the wife of 

Epstein (in Roth’s short story “Epstein”), who asks the doctor if her husband will be 

cleaned from the rash, the human stain, in the sense of a moral problem that is grown 

deep within people and cannot be cured by doctors.  Another image of the stain can be 

found towards the end of ST, when the “odors that exist only within women” envelop 

Sabbath: 

 

[…] in the violent misery of everything lost. If irrationality smelled, it would smell like 

this; if delirium smelled, it would smell like this; if anger, impulse, appetite, antagonism, 

ego…. Yes, this sublime stink of spoilage was the smell of everything that converges to 

become the human soul. Whatever the witches were cooking up for Macbeth must have 

smelled just like this. No wonder Duncan doesn’t make it through the night. (Roth 1995: 

440, ellipsis mine) 

 

Of course, there must be also a comical turn and it turns out the bad smell came 

from garbage that had been strewn everywhere out of the can by raccoons: “That 

explained the smell of spoilage” (1995: 442). Shostak interprets this passage as 

reinforcing a paradox: “the equivalence between the two apparently opposed desires, eros 

and thanatos, sex and waste” (2004: 55). By establishing a comparison rather than an 

opposition between sex and waste, Roth overturns the categories of purity and impurity. 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

74 

 

 

 

I.2.8. Impossible Cleansing 

 

The impossibility of purity is treated with irony in the eulogies to Coleman and 

Faunia in the final chapter of HS, titled “The Purifying Ritual”. As Judie Newman notes 

in her essay on the concepts of impurity in this novel, Faunia is praised for her work as a 

cleaner and Coleman is also “cleaned up” in order to integrate him in the community, 

while the reality is very different, as the narrative has shown earlier (Newman 2019: 93). 

No matter how much people try to clean the human stain, its contamination will prevail, 

there will still be traces of it on the floor, so to speak. In Patrimony, the scene in which 

Zuckerman has to clean his father’s shit, he realizes it is impossible to clean all of it, there 

will always be traces left (1991: 176). Shostak explains the character’s realization that 

“the materiality of the body itself is his patrimony,” because: 

 

What Roth cleans up may be only itself -the shit is ‘lived reality’ and not a metaphor, for 

the Philip Roth in the text -but, once placed in narrative, the act of cleaning as well as the 

excrement itself are inescapably metaphorical. The thing and the act represent, and in this 

case, they represent not only Roth’s attempts to situate himself as subject in relation to his 

familial history and the fact of death but also the quidditas of fleshly decay, the fact that 

nature causes each human identity to cross the border into abjection. (Shostak 2004: 47) 

 

As Shostak writes, “In its descent into -and embrace of- the gross materiality of 

the body and its inevitable decay, Sabbath’s Theater plays a riff on this central metaphoric 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

75 

 

scene in Patrimony” (2004: 47). In this sense, ST has taken the resource of the human 

stain to the limit, which is why there is such a wealth of images and scenes to be analyzed 

in this novel, but also comparisons that can be made with the rest of his work. 

Now, of course, Roth is not the only writer to have touched upon this subject, as 

besides Hawthorne, Melville and Shakespeare, W.B. Yeats has also written about the 

struggle of life and art and the agony of the body. The relationship between literature and 

life is important to Roth, as can be seen in his references to these writers throughout his 

work, and in the example of characters such as Kepesh and Sabbath (Consult Sánchez 

Canales (2010) for an in-depth analysis of the interrelation between literature and life). 

Roth engages in conversation with the poetry of Yeats in PC, ST and in DA, among other 

works. As Jack Knowles has argued, Roth invokes Yeats at important moments which 

are characterized by the recklessness of the style (Knowles 2017: 91). These scenes, 

which are a reflection of Yeats’ influence on Roth, deal with a similar subject, for, as 

Knowles points out, they are “marked by the irreducible insistence of the materiality of 

the human form” (90). Knowles notes that Roth owes much to Yeats for he gives him the 

language and the way to approach the subject of the “aspiration towards literary 

transcendence and the anchoring constraints of life” (89). This influence had already been 

noted by Shostak, who quotes verses by the poet Yeats with images that Roth uses 

similarly when he writes about “the gross materiality of the body and its inevitable 

decay”: “Love has pitched his mansion in/The place of excrement.” (qtd. in Shostak 2004: 

47). Thus, “Roth revives the modernist image of the proximity of the reproductive organs 

to the orifices of waste, which, in turn, signify death and bodily corruption” (47). 

Shostak also refers to the way in which the ghost of the mother comes out of 

Drenka’s sexual organs or the fact that Drenka’s cancer grows in her ovaries. As Shostak 

interprets the account of Sabbath and Drenka urinating on each other, it is referring to the 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

76 

 

decay of the body, to death, “an act that may be transgressive largely because it 

acknowledges the eliminatory function of the genitals. That is, ‘golden showers’ strip 

away from the sexual organs the cultural meaning of reproduction, replacing it with the 

signification of pure waste” (57). By visiting Drenka’s grave, Sabbath realizes that just 

like the people who died, he will also become waste. But as Shostak says, “His urination 

on Drenka’s grave, however, in its overt reference to their erotic union, represents within 

Sabbath’s private symbolism a celebration of the very process of living that must 

inevitably drive toward death, an enactment of the mutually dependent erotic and thanatic 

impulses” (58). Indeed, here “imagination sheds the burdens of all affectation” in order 

to “reject the obligations of value”, as Knowles writes about the characteristics that Roth 

and Yeats have in common in their writing (91). 

To sum up, nothing human is alien to Sabbath; he is familiar with the abject, and 

to him to be human means to freely indulge in his desires. Shostak warns that “Sabbath’s 

nihilism, however, should not be mistaken for Roth’s. It is, in fact, in Roth’s performance 

of the transgressive desire through Sabbath that he can test the nihilistic vision itself as 

well as the plausibility and efficacy of the kind of system-disrupting self-invention in 

which Sabbath engages” (2004: 48). If theater is the main metaphor of ST, as Shostak 

argues (49), then this theater is also closed down by reality, when he faces deep pain and 

loss. Sabbath expresses himself through his salacious performance and his promiscuous 

sexuality but, as Shostak says: “If Sabbath’s theater is his body, however, then time must 

inevitably ravage his capacity to perform the self, and it is for this reason that Roth’s 

novel is as obsessed with death as it is with the erotic” (51). The stain is the trail of his 

life but it also leads to death, which is a subject that will be looked at in more detail in 

Chapter III of this dissertation, where it will be compared to Kepesh and Consuela’s story 

of desire and death in DA. 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

77 

 

Roth seeks to demystify male sexual power, according to Shostak, “uncovering 

masculine powerlessness in unprecedented ways, especially when Sabbath discovers that 

he cannot constitute his subjectivity through the exercise of sexual prowess” (2004: 52). 

Shostak believes that Sabbath’s flight is from death (52). He lost Nikki, his brother, his 

mother... When he thinks about his childhood’s memories, when his brother was still 

alive, he stresses its feeling of “endlessness” (Roth 1995: 31). Shostak points at an irony 

bomb as “Later in the novel, Roth makes the ironic connection between Sabbath’s 

nostalgic yearning and his central fear when, conversing with his dead grandmother in 

the cemetery where she is buried, he says” (2004: 52). “But then, death is endlessness par 

excellence, is it not?” (Roth 1995: 369). And this is why his mother appears as a ghost 

and remains close to him from the very beginning of the novel. 

Shostak reads Sabbath’s behavior as an attempt to master loss: “Death motivates 

the way Sabbath’s life takes narrative shape much as it has motivated his choices. 

Drenka’s death serves as the initiating incident to the novel, just as Morty’s death is at 

the origin of Mickey’s unstable and transgressive subjectivity, his attempt to defy death 

by living only for the erotic” (2004: 53). This is why, as we will see in Chapter II, Sabbath 

holds on to stolen underwear during a funeral, for example. 

Sabbath seems to be entranced by how his grandmother ate her corn and cleaned 

the fish, gutting it with the bare hand. These images, which may be generally considered 

disgusting, were somehow attractive to him. When Sabbath tries to find hope as he visits 

his old cousin Fish, he describes his dirty clothes and it seems like this time he does not 

appreciate its filth, the stains are described in detail and Sabbath expresses his angry 

thoughts about the cleaner who is not doing her job. The old man is unaware of the filth 

that surrounds him. Posnock sees this description as a good example of the rhythm of the 

novel, “the present is stymied by the intrusive past, death deferred by stubborn life […] 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

78 

 

with its detritus of detail spilling out, forming, in this case, the ‘impasto’ texture of Fish’s 

cardigan” (Posnock 2006: 174). In this passage there is a shocking contrast between purity 

and impurity, both of which are found in Fish’s attire, for even though his sofa and his 

cardigan are filthy, his shirt and his breath are clean. 

The novel abounds in detailed descriptions that stress the material reality of the 

world and its importance to people. The detailed account of all of the girl’s underwear, 

and the vivid scene of the fish Sabbath and his brother caught brings the reader back to 

that awareness of the materiality and the richness of our existence stained though it may 

be, as has been explained previously in this study as Shostak notes from Roth’s farewell 

anniversary speech: “Roth's renunciation of storytelling took the form of an aesthetic of 

the real, of the "passion for specificity, for the hypnotic materiality of the world one is in" 

("A Celebration")” (Roth 2013: qtd. in Shostak 2014: 8). The real is the material world 

and the physical body, just as the human stain and its traces, which are signs that help the 

human being realize its own condition. Thus, the real human stain works against the 

mirage of the arcadia, the paradise that does not exist, the purity that is nonexistent in 

human beings. That is the reason why Roth describes the real in such detail. 

 Shostak’s conclusion about ST is that “the human comedy exists precisely in that 

we are desiring subjects who, despite our improvisations on the stage of the body, cannot 

erase the embarrassing traces of our own transgressive desires […]. Because these traces 

are all that exist materially to represent our selves, to embody us and allow us to enact 

our narratives, Roth finds reason to celebrate them” (2004: 59).  If the traces Shostak 

mentions are the human stain, then it is clear that these traces of our desires are a means 

of representation, and so the stain is the style at its core. Shostak also sees that the 

paradoxes in Roth’s themes result from this: “The result is a startling set of paradoxes –

the novel argues at once that thanatos is eros, hatred is passionate life-force, the 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

79 

 

performative subject is transcendent self-hood, the body is not-self and irreducible self, 

and masculinism is its own critique” (2004: 59). In my view, with the use of the stain, 

these paradoxes appear not only in that novel but also in the rest of the novels under the 

scope of this study. In this regard, Shostak’s reading supports the idea of the importance 

of the “embarrassing traces” of transgressive desire, which are part of the image of the 

human stain that cannot be erased and marks us as human.  

Roth highlights these traces when Sabbath turns wild in nature, masturbating at 

the graveyard, and also breaking a window like an angry gorilla. In all of these scenes he 

expresses grief and rage but it is also a performance, like one of his King Lear acts. 

Sabbath takes desire to the extreme and everything makes him hungrier. In Shakespeare’s 

play Macbeth, apart from the reference to the stained hands, there are also examples of 

this kind of excess. For instance, in Macbeth, Malcolm (even though he later claims to be 

speaking falsely against himself) describes his vices, which are “confineless”: “there’s no 

bottom, none,/ in my voluptuousness: your wives, your daughters,/ Your matrons, and 

your maids, could not fill up/ The cistern of my lust; and my desire/All continent 

impediments would o’erbear/ That did oppose my will” (Macbeth, act 4, scene III, 59-

65). This character goes on to describe a “stanchless avarice” that can be compared with 

hunger: “And my more-having would be as a sauce/To make me hunger more” (Macbeth, 

act 4, scene III, 81-82). 

• • • 

To sum up, in “the graphic stain” there is a transition from skin to text, as there is 

a movement from the image of the stain to the whole of the style of Roth’s novels. The 

human stain is more than just a word, and as it represents more than the body, it becomes 

flesh as “the Word became flesh” (an image used to describe how God became incarnate 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

80 

 

in the body of Jesus Christ in John 1:14). Rather than a mysterious, miraculous process, 

Roth uses the literary resources available to fiction writing to portray how the spiritual 

reality is linked to the material reality, creating a set of paradoxes in which there is a play 

between oppositions. While Bluefarb (2010) sees the language of the human stain as 

confusing, I have argued that it clearly shows the presence of impurity. In addition, 

Sánchez Canales (2009) interprets the stain in HS as the imprint that reminds human 

beings of the imperfect and flawed nature, supporting my reading of the stain, which I 

believe is also present in the other novels. While there are characters who seem to embody 

the whole of the stain, drawing on interpretations such as Judie Newman’s (2019) about 

the character of Faunia, I find that the symptoms of the stain are revealed through different 

aspects that imply that all human beings bear this stain. 

While Ross Posnock (2006) reads the metaphor of the stain as the connection 

between human beings and animals, I have argued that it is specifically about a human 

problem and its consequences. But Roth sees something valuable in what initially seems 

like a mere image of filth or depravation. Most importantly, Debra Shostak (2004) sees 

that Roth celebrates the traces of transgressive desire that exist as a representation of our 

selves, so I conclude that if we read those traces as part of the human stain, this constitutes 

a means of narrative representation, and therefore, an important characteristic of Roth’s 

style. 

In conclusion, the symptoms of the stain that are made visible in the text can be 

seen in the representation of violence, destruction, blindness, confusion, ignorance and 

unlimited desire. This analysis stems from the original explanation of the human stain in 

HS, as seen by Faunia, who makes the stain visible and even embodies the whole stain, 

as the inevitable imperfection in human beings. Just like Hawthorne’s “S” in The Scarlet 

Letter is revealed, and the girl is the one who sees it, Faunia and her embracing of the 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

81 

 

human flaws expose the false purity present in society. In the next section, this idea of 

exposing false purity through the stain will be further explored by looking at how the 

human stain exposes paradise as an illusion. 

 

 

I.3. THE MIRAGE OF PURITY 

 

In what is probably one of Roth’s first depictions of an earthly paradise or an 

American pastoral, “Goodbye, Columbus”, the promised summertime dream of freedom, 

love and wealth makes an appearance. However, even though initially Neil Klugman 

seems to find satisfaction in his affair with Brenda, he finally sees how he does not belong 

to her world, as she would rather go on without him and so he is left without her at the 

end of summer. Roth first considered writing this story in 1957, inspired by his experience 

of living in the house of a girlfriend’s family in the upscale Jersey suburbs. This 

disillusionment would appear with more force later in Roth’s career, in AP, where the 

stain invades the pastoral. Debra Shostak also sees a connection between “Goodbye, 

Columbus” and AP, regarding the meaning of fruit and food and the Fall. She claims that 

just as the apple is present in the story of original sin as told in Genesis, the refrigerator 

filled with fruit in “Goodbye, Columbus” and the scenes with an abundance of food in 

AP are placed there by Roth with the intention to mark the temptation and the Fall that 

these characters participate in (Shostak 2004: 117-118). This is not an isolated image, 

because it works together with many other images in the text. 

 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

82 

 

 

I.3.1. Images of Paradise 

 

As seen earlier in the first sections of this chapter, the presence of the images of 

Paradise and the Fall is very important in American Literature, the Bible being its main 

source for the creation of the American Dream. This is due to the Puritan legacy, as 

Ruland and Bradbury explain in their History of American Literature (1991): 

 

The Puritan imagination, it was acknowledged, was central to the nature of American 

writing. One reason for this was that it brought to the New World not only a Judaic sense 

of wonder and millenarian promise -the “American dream” […]- but a vision of the task 

and nature of writing itself. Puritan narratives defined a shape for the writing of America, 

but they also questioned how and whether language could reveal the extraordinary 

experience. (Ruland and Bradbury 1991: 9, ellipsis mine). 

 

As an American writer who has inherited this legacy, Roth has been interested in 

this kind of narrative structure until the end of his career, and he too is interested in the 

use of literature to delve into the hidden revelations of the country. In his last novel, 

Nemesis (2010), there is a paradise of the summer camp in the Poconos, a place which, 

in the end, is not immune to the polio epidemic and many children fall tragically ill. The 

polio is the human stain, which act in an invisible and fatal way. The main character, 

Bucky Cantor, thought he could escape from death, but he finds out that it was precisely 

because of his escape to paradise that he spreads the illness to the people who thought 

they were safe in that idyllic place.  



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

83 

 

Victoria Aarons studies the connection between the representation of a paradise 

early in Roth’s fiction in Goodbye, Columbus, and late in Roth’s fiction in Nemesis, 

arguing that neither the man-made paradise (the summer haven, a refuge from the city) 

nor the divine paradise (nature) proves to be a real refuge for Roth’s characters (Aarons 

2017: 33). As Aarons notes, the characters of both novels, Neil and Bucky, fail in their 

attempt to step from one life into the other: “For Roth’s protagonists, early and late, 

believing oneself to be autonomous, self-determined, and free from internal combustion 

is invariably a fall into a psychoanalytically inflected failure” (33). While Aarons 

interprets characters with a focus on their psychological dimension, I will focus my 

reading on the aesthetic and moral dimensions through the literary lens of the human 

stain. Aarons claims that “Roth stages lines of narrative flight that return his characters 

inescapably to the conditions of their own compulsions” (33). This narrative flight is 

connected to the discovery of the human stain, in my reading, because as the characters 

seek authentic freedom, blinded by their self-deceit, the narrative will reveal the human 

stain in them. Throughout Roth’s work, the image of paradise is closely connected to the 

human stain because the stain exposes the paradise for what it is: just a fantasy, an 

illusion, a mere dream, something that is eventually lost. 

As Jay Halio writes, AP is a complex novel that allows for different interpretations 

and it is not till the second part that the pieces fit together and create an overwhelming 

effect (Halio 1999: 137). By looking at the role of the stain in these different pieces it will 

be easier to understand the final effect. It all starts with an image of paradise. In AP, the 

Swede’s life in Old Rimrock is portrayed as if it were in an ideal pastoral landscape in a 

painting, and Roth uses rapturous language, long lists and long-winded paragraphs to 

convey the character’s delight in it. Sánchez Canales addresses the importance of the 

name “Old Rimrock” in connection with the theme of purity in his essay about the 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

84 

 

Classical Greek archetypes in AP, published in a book edited by Velichka Ivanova (2011). 

When looking at how the Swede crafted a new identity for himself, Sánchez Canales 

points out that it meant to “efface—his true self, his (Jewish) background, which he 

regarded as an imperfection or impurity” (2011: 25). But by getting rid of what could be 

perceived as the stain of Jewishness, he needs to create a new world which, as Sánchez 

Canales says, ironically looks back at an old one: “trapped between two opposing worlds, 

the idyllic world inhabited by the Swede and his wife summarized in the name of his 

house and property—Old Rimrock—and the world inhabited by his daughter Merry 

symbolized in the names of her cities of residence, New York and Newark” (25). This is 

the Swede’s paradise, characterized by an amazing abundance, but unexpectedly, what is 

loved by him will be hated by his daughter. Likewise, the town of Newark, that allowed 

for the Levov’s progress, is shown to be apocalyptically destroyed.  

  Regarding a sociopolitical reading of this novel, the focus on the human stain 

shows that it affects everyone equally regardless of their class, as all sorts of paradises 

are shown to be false. The Swede’s pastoral life causes much controversy because 

throughout AP, all the characters will present their different ideas of what life should be 

like. It is important to bear in mind that the author is not endorsing any of the ideologies 

described in the novel. AP, just like his other novels, is characterized by 

counternarratives, different discourses and idealisms, and Roth is interested in what 

happens to the characters who believe these things than in proving them right or wrong: 

“I don’t write about my convictions [...] I write about the comic and tragic consequences 

of holding convictions” (Roth Pierpont 2012: 218, ellipsis mine). It is this lack of a direct 

response, a solution, an answer to the question, that makes his work so strong and 

unsettling, and it is the reason why this open-ended novel is so thought provoking. It is 

not only AP that is deeply unsettling, but also ST. The representation of the idea of 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

85 

 

paradise and the resource of the stain appear in both novels in different ways and yet, 

there is a close link between them.  

 

 

I.3.2. Dreams of Purification 

 

Philip Roth started writing ST when he was looking for a place to be buried, as he 

explains in his Web of Stories interview (2011). Claudia Roth Pierpont explains how he 

had just lost his friend and former lover Janet Hobhouse, who died of ovarian cancer at 

forty-two (2013: 189). They had been lovers in 1973, when she lived upstairs from him 

in an apartment building in New York, and she was married. It was Roth’s task to arrange 

her burial in a cemetery in Connecticut near Roth’s home, and he had to acquire a stone 

for her grave too. This is what gave him the idea of finding his own cemetery plot.  

Besides this, there were several experiences that had marked Roth and took him 

to the point of writing this novel. Firstly, he had experienced an extremely difficult 

marriage to Maggie Martinson, whom he had married in 1959, at the beginning of his 

career. She embodied the American dream and at that time, when he started teaching at 

the University of Chicago, he wanted to fully exercise his freedom (Roth Pierpont 2013: 

36). Finally, they separated in 1963 and she died in an accident in 1968.  

In 1992, Roth started suffering from a recurrent back pain which made life very 

difficult for him, and as the months went on his mental health also suffered, and in the 

summer of 1993, he was overcome by a suicidal depression. Fearing that the pain would 

never go away, he was not able to sleep, and when he called his doctor, he arranged for 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

86 

 

him to be sent to a psychiatric hospital, where he stayed for seventeen days, returned 

home, became ill again and after one more stay came back with medication and medicine, 

feeling better. He had experienced something terrible, and yet, after he said it was “a 

merciful affliction”, and he immediately started to write and filed for divorce from Claire 

Bloom, his second wife. Roth Pierpont says that it was at this point that Roth began ST, 

thinking about grief, loss, pain and death, while at the same time feeling great relief and 

freedom (2013: 187-188). 

Just as in ST the human stain illustrates the theme of impurity and the exposure 

of the fantasy of purity, in AP, the images and the plot take up the thread and give it 

another twist. As mentioned before, the human stain is particularly present in Merry 

throughout the novel of AP. Merry, the Swede’s daughter, is first portrayed as a happy 

child, which is connected to the meaning of her name, but ironically, the change she 

undergoes leads to a bitter turn of events, making her own life and her parents’ miserable. 

Firstly, because of her stuttering, which signifies imperfection, she has to find 

purity. As Merry is passionately immersed in “an improbable dream of purification that 

had taken possession of her”, her parents let her grow these passions because they think 

it does her good. However, just as she cannot achieve fluency, just as she cannot achieve 

purity, not by means of the baptism her mother provides for her (cleansing her of her 

“original sin”), nor by her adoration of Catholic images or of Audrey Hepburn’s innocent 

face. Similarly, therapy does not cure her stuttering, and it gives the family a burden of 

responsibility that foreshadows the Swede’s load of guilt regarding Merry’s crime. 

Therapy cannot erase the human stain in the same way therapy cannot completely cure 

Roseanna, Sabbath’s wife, in ST. When a psychiatrist makes Merry feel responsible for 

her stuttering, to the Swede this seems ludicrous because it is something she obviously 

cannot control, and he becomes very angry. Not only that, the psychiatrist’s theory is that 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

87 

 

the cause for her choice to stigmatize herself is her parents’ perfect life. The Swede 

protests, trying to make the point that she has not “adopted” the stutter, and it is obvious 

to him that she is not in control of the situation, but the very opposite: the stuttering is 

what makes her lose control (Roth 1997: 97). These two contrasting ideas reflect on the 

one hand, Merry’s viewpoint, and on the other hand, her father’s. Therefore, these ideas 

present the stain as something that can be willingly adopted as a reaction against purity 

in order to denounce it; or, in contrast, as something that invades paradise against the 

victim’s will. 

The stutter is a representation of the human stain because it is something 

uncontrollable, and people do not make a conscious choice to have it. Secondly, the 

stutter, as the human stain, has no cure. Additionally, there is no way of understanding it, 

as Merry’s stuttering diary shows, “she stuttered in all situations” and she is always aware 

of her condition as a stutterer. Likewise, to the Swede it is ridiculous to ascribe an 

unconscious meaning to the letters that prompt the stuttering, and frustration grows to its 

extreme as there is no cure: “Nothing anybody said meant anything or, in the end, made 

any sense” and nobody was able to really help Merry, who is trapped in the invisible 

hands of a horrible power, her impediment (Roth 1997: 99). This is also a foreshadowing 

of her situation as a bomber: she will be trapped in the hands of something evil. Her words 

can also mirror the existential crisis her father goes through, as everything becomes an 

unintelligible sound, like “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying 

nothing” (Macbeth, act 5, scene V). 

 

 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

88 

 

I.3.3. The Stain that Shatters the Fictional Self  

 

The ironic implications of Merry’s name, mentioned earlier, are a consequence of 

the stain that she bears. If Merry harbors a considerable frustration because of the stutter, 

she has an even stronger sense of indignation and a rage that turns her into an altogether 

different person. This kind of transformation can be seen in other characters: In the same 

novel, AP, Seymour sees himself change as he becomes prey to irrational thoughts, 

haunted by obsession, discontent with the life he has created, and disappointed as he can 

no longer hold on to the certainties that were once his. Sabbath, in ST, is also somebody 

who takes decisions that are unexpected and he shocks everyone around him with his 

behavior. Alan Cooper interprets the characters’ excess, that drive which pushes against 

the boundaries of decorum, as the consequence of the fact that “decorum embraced for 

itself might be an offense to one’s personal freedom” (1996: 62). That is why, Cooper 

reasons, when a character tries to be true to his own nature rather than suppress it, he 

chooses not to betray himself, so he has to “betray his friends and relatives by refusing to 

live their fiction of him” (62). For example, Epstein needs to have that affair, indulge in 

his desire, and show his frustration and despair to his family. This experience is 

complicated by the fact that the character may have believed in that fictional self, and so, 

“being his own betrayer, couldn’t his struggle to leave the abyss of decorum be almost 

heroic?” (62). This is clearly Seymour Levov’s case, as he struggles to abandon his old 

patterns of thought, embraces the improbable and chooses to speak with his daughter in 

spite of her crimes. 

I would like to highlight how the experience of “writing and rewriting of 

ourselves” that Cooper refers to is represented by means of the human stain (1996: 62). 

In the search for one’s identity, the human stain is like the ink on the page, allowing the 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

89 

 

text to show how characters write and rewrite their lives. When Cooper refers to “the 

fiction we are asked to live”, this brings to mind Roth’s description of the clean, pure, 

successful, perfect life that characters such as Seymour Levov are trying to achieve. There 

is another turn of the screw when Cooper refers to “the fiction we oppose to the fictions 

imposed”, because the characters also project fictitious images of themselves (62). The 

transgressive quality of Roth’s novel is that it reveals how “every fiction is a betrayal of 

an opposing fiction” (62). 

At this point, it is worthwhile to look at the accusations and criticisms that Roth 

received during his life for the way he conducted himself in his relationships or for his 

choice of subject or his portrayal of Jews or women. In the second Chapter, this will be 

looked at in more detail, but taking into consideration the difficulty of tackling the 

relationship between Life and Work, it is relevant to note that the author provoked 

people’s anger but he also tried to defend himself and he struggled to control the narrative 

of his life by choosing his biographers carefully. And yet, the recently published 

biography by Blake Bailey (2021) offers provocative details and raises scandalous 

reviews. In some reviews, like the essay written by Joshua Cohen for Harper’s Magazine 

(2021) we find the question of whether Roth’s life and work also reflect “the fiction we 

oppose to the fictions imposed” that Cooper referred to, as mentioned earlier. 

Is the stain merely a device to show how to overcome what is wrong and do what 

is right? Quite the opposite. In Roth’s novel The Anatomy Lesson (1983), there is a 

passage in which the character has to listen to an analysis of his enemy’s discourse. The 

opposite of what Roth does in his texts: “You draw stories from your vices, dream up 

doubles for your demons –he finds criticism a voice for virtue, the pulpit to berate us for 

our failings. Virtue comes with the franchise. Virtue is the goal. He teaches, he judges, 

he corrects –rightness is all.” (Roth 1983: 365). In contrast, Roth insists that in his work, 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

90 

 

virtue is not the goal: “Literature is not a moral beauty contest”, as he said in his interview 

with Hermione Lee when speaking of the authorial mask (2017: 147). 

In his book The Modern American Novel, Malcolm Bradbury places Roth in the 

context of a Jewish American Literature that was concerned with the question of morality. 

He argues: “If Bernard Malamud is a writer of ‘ethical Jewhood’, the much younger Philip 

Roth is a writer exploring the world of its collapse; one of his novels is very appropriately 

titled Letting Go” (Bradbury 1992: 177). So if his representation of the collapse of virtue 

is what distinguishes Roth’s fiction from writers like Malamud, the question remains of 

how this is accomplished in his writing. Bradbury agrees that Portnoy's Complaint is 

Roth's “revolt against the 'moral seriousness' of the fiction of the 1950s” as Roth himself 

also explained in his interviews, as pointed out earlier in this chapter (Bradbury 1992: 

178). 

In trying to understand this turn from moral seriousness to playfulness in order to 

represent the collapse of virtue, firstly one must see that in Roth’s work, what initially 

appears to be right or pure is eventually revealed as false. In fact, decent behavior is used 

as a mask to hide what is really underneath it. In AL, Zuckerman’s critic, Milton Appel, 

behaves “mannerly, decently, courteously, decorously, uprightly, civil” and as 

Zuckerman says to point out his hypocrisy, “oh, what a gorgeous Torah cloth you throw 

over your meat hooks! How clean you are!” (Roth 1983: 369). In AL, after hearing the 

story of the pornographer’s life, the narrator’s chauffeur tells him she finds him 

unacceptable not because she is a feminist but because she is a human being: “You don’t 

just debase women. […] You debase everything. Your life is filth. On every level. And 

you make it all the more awful because you won’t even shut up.” (Roth 1983: 419, ellipsis 

mine). He calls debasement power, though, and justifies it by saying that if the porn actors 

are well treated and that if people love it, nobody has the right to take away their freedom 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

91 

 

to enjoy it. In this way, the human stain of debasement entails individual freedom, the 

right to relish anything one wants. This ambition to lead one’s life independently from 

others’ judgement can also be considered a motivation to create a new fictional self. 

For example, in HS, it is this ambition that drives Coleman to create his fictional 

self. In order to do so, he “murders” his mother “on behalf of his exhilarating notion of 

freedom,” by pretending she is not his mother in order to create his new identity (Roth 

2000: 138). Paradoxically, as he tries to pursue more freedom in abandoning his black 

identity, his own mother tells him he always “thinks like a slave” because he feels so 

imprisoned by his family. His father would have told him there is no escape from his own 

prison, “that all your attempts to escape will only lead you back to where you began,” but 

his mother tells him she believes he can successfully pursue his goal of autonomy, even 

though his life would probably not turn out as he believed it would (140). Coleman 

eventually reaches the point where he realizes that “freedom is dangerous” indeed (145).  

This discovery of Coleman that there is no escape from himself and that there are 

unavoidable consequences of his search for freedom is closely connected to Roth’s 

treatment of character, according to Victoria Aarons. She explains how Roth’s characters 

Neil and Bucky (in Goodbye, Columbus and Nemesis) “find, through the pursuit of their 

reckless capers, that they can escape neither themselves nor the inevitable consequences 

of their precipitous, reactive flight” (Aarons 2017: 33). This, Aarons finds, is because of 

Roth’s interest in the “making and revising of character” and because of their will to 

create new possible selves, even though they deceive themselves (33). Even though I 

agree with Aarons on that point, I think that instead of saving themselves, Roth’s 

protagonist do not manage to find a successful salvation or a full pleasure in their self-

deception. The human stain shows how ultimately in their failure they experience loss 

and pain.  



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

92 

 

 

 

I.3.4. The Impurity of Blood  

 

Blood is connected with life on the one hand, because it is what runs through the 

body to give life, but on the other hand, it is connected with death, as it is shed. This can 

be found in the Jewish law: “But be sure you do not eat the blood, because the blood is 

the life, and you must not eat the life with the meat” (Deut. 12: 23). Morally speaking, in 

the Talmud, blood is also considered impure, as has already been mentioned in the first 

section of this Chapter, especially if it is menstrual blood. “Then the woman must wait 

thirty-three days to be purified from her bleeding. She must not touch anything sacred or 

go to the sanctuary until the days of her purification are over” (Leviticus 12:4). 

 The question is whether blood is clean or if it is a stain. As a symbol in the old 

Testament, blood could redeem if it is a sacrifice, and its color, red, is considered 

ambiguous, as it can be either good or bad in some cultures. There are several striking 

images of blood in Roth’s novels, which turn the image of Paradise upside down. As 

Aristi Trendel points out, “every Roth novel has in store a most compelling event whose 

uncanniness could be disquieting to the reader, such as Mickey Sabbath's masturbation 

over his mistress's tomb in Sabbath's Theater. In The Dying Animal, Kepesh's licking of 

Consuela's menstrual blood right at its source ‘like a feeding infant’ (Roth 2001: 72) 

certainly represents a constellation of the novel's themes in one forceful image” (Trendel 

2007: 5). Taking this point even further, I would like to argue that these images of the 

human stain are the literary device used in order to show the change that takes place in 

the characters or even to bring about the change in the illusion of paradise. 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

93 

 

Firstly, it is important to analyze how Roth describes the image of Consuela 

menstruating while her lover watches and licks her blood. The first time this description 

appears, its transgressive nature surprises Kepesh, who is shocked that Consuela has done 

such a thing, and he feels jealousy, he wants it too. At that point, he uses it as an image 

of that impurity inherent in all human beings which will rise inevitably even in the most 

unexpected situations (that story was of Consuela’s teenage years in Cuba, in the upper-

class traditional society). However, later, as she bleeds while he watches, he feels thrilled, 

delighted, mesmerized, but mostly he feels “like a boy” (Roth 2001: 71). And this 

indulging in a transgressive act that he desired out of envy proves an addictive experience 

for him. Kepesh is getting a taste of the human stain and this means he is surrendering 

and loving her. In his friend’s interpretation, licking Consuela’s menstrual blood means 

that he is worshipping her in an extreme, unhealthy way, putting himself at her mercy: 

 

I had set out to demand the most from her, and when she shamelessly obliged, I wound 

up again intimidating myself. There seemed nothing to be done- If I wished not to be 

humbled completely by her exotic matter-of-factness -except to fall to my knees to lick 

her clean. Which she allowed to happen without comment. Making me into a still smaller 

boy. One’s impossible character. The stupidity of being oneself. The unavoidable comedy 

of being anyone at all. Each new excess weakening me further -yet what is an insatiable 

man to do?... I was at her feet. I was on the floor. My own face was pressed to her flesh 

like a feeding infant’s. (Roth 2001: 71-72, ellipsis in original) 

 

 Kepesh sees himself as weakening and helpless in this situation, not in control or 

powerful anymore. Trendel sees this episode as a way in which Kepesh learns something: 

“Kepesh is a man who has to learn the basics of love. The method of learning is not 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

94 

 

through instruction but through osmosis” (Trendel 2007: 5). Through this unconscious 

assimilation, and not through studying a theory, love is understood not intellectually but 

physically through the stain. The man becomes a child, and the child feeds helplessly, but 

this is how he is truly nourished. Kepesh is “denuded of his realism, pragmatism and 

cynicism” and “helpless as a baby, instinctually directs his mouth to the gateway of life.” 

As Trendel notes, he is weak and lacking too, because of his old age (98). Miri Jaffe-

Fogger has reflected on this issue and she argues that Roth is a writer who writes out of 

his own wounds: “Someone who gives voice to the body engages in a complex dualistic 

enterprise. When one gives voice to one’s own body, the use of words requires the mind 

to reflect on the body, causing a separation” (2020: 1). This will be looked at in more 

depth in Chapter III, when dealing with the representation of illness. 

 

 

I.3.5. Bring the War Home 

 

If the image of paradise is characterized by peace, the human stain brings war and 

opposition to it. The arrival of the element of conflict is shown through the body, so that 

the rage of war is visible in Merry, who at first seemed a peaceful child. Additionally, 

Merry’s beauty withers as she purposefully leads an unhealthy lifestyle, and her 

contentment is gone when she starts unleashing words of anger and hate towards Lyndon 

Johnson and the War in Vietnam. She stopped caring about how her parents felt about her 

stuttering, and she became more concerned about what she was saying. This was her 

freedom, the choice she made to become a new person with a new priority, a new identity 

and a new appearance. She was no longer a charming good girl, as she turned against her 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

95 

 

parents’ values and focused her energy on opposing the war. Merry’s change and her 

aggressiveness cause not only the Swede but also Dawn to wonder at their share of 

responsibility. Dawn is horrified as she does not recognize her own daughter and does not 

know how to deal with her. The Swede’s plan is to hold on to his daughter as long as 

possible, believing patience and communication will eventually solve the problem, 

change her again back into a sweet, content girl. Their struggle, day in and day out, 

seemed hopeless and endless, but the Swede’s gentleness only made her angrier and she 

taunts him speaking of his fears, asking him to think about what is really extreme. Merry 

embraces the discourse of the repellent, the reality that people would rather not see. 

Eventually, in his effort to protect her, the Swede actually gives her the idea to plant the 

bomb in Old Rimrock: “bring the war home to your town”, of course he cannot imagine 

her protest would go to such an extreme. All his patience could not avoid the bombing. 

Confronted with Merry’s tale, the Swede sees the vanity of his life. Everything he 

has done is futile in the light of her story. All his work, dedication, values, obedience, and 

his presence… all of these are useless. He sees he had no influence or power over her. He 

realizes “we are all in the power of something demented” (Roth 1997: 256). The evidence 

is in the brutal death that his century had seen, and in the injustice suffered by so many 

throughout American history. Roth’s vision of history has been analyzed by scholars such 

as Aimee Pozorski (2011) and will be looked into in Chapter II. 

Regarding the physical harm on the body, to return to the image of blood, it is 

important to note that the knowledge that Merry was raped plagues the Swede’s 

imagination. Therefore, he tries to recover her pure, innocent body from the past, from 

her childhood. But he obsessively keeps thinking of how she was raped. Her body has 

been violently corrupted. It is a mystery, how could a child so beautifully made become 

somebody so broken and bad? Her body as a child is a beautiful image of purity: 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

96 

 

“perfected creation”, a body “freshly ironed -no folds anywhere”, “naive freedom”, “her 

uncorrupted paws”, “the anatomical precision”, “eyes unclouded (...) washed windows”, 

“preternatural fineness”, “the health of it”, “the absoluteness of their intimacy” (Roth 

1997: 270-271). This description is so powerful because the reader knows that all this 

beauty was marred. He looked after her but she ended up not looking after herself: “You 

protect her and you protect her -and she is unprotectable” because she is free and she used 

her autonomy in the most awful way. In a discourse of pain that resonates like Job’s, the 

Swede says “The worst of this world had taken this child. If only that beautifully chiselled 

body had never been born” (272). 

What the Swede comes to understand is that “deviancy prevailed” (Roth 1997: 

422). The order of their life did not work and “the breach had been pounded in their 

fortification, [...] and now that it was opened it would not be closed again” (423, ellipsis 

mine). Faced with this destruction and condemnation, the final question of the novel 

resonates, unanswerable, “what is wrong with their life? What on earth is less 

reprehensible than the life of the Levovs?” (423). This question goes back to the book of 

Job, but also to characters such as Kafka’s Joseph K., as they are punished without 

knowing the reason for their suffering; and, like Job, Roth’s Sabbath and the Swede are 

constantly asking the question of why they have to endure this pain. 

 

 

I.3.6. From the Ordinary to the Extraordinary  

 

The same question that resonates at the end of AP returns in HS, as the narrator 

seems to ask the same: What on earth is less reprehensible about the life of Coleman Silk? 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

97 

 

In this novel, the stain makes it possible to make the leap from the ordinary to the 

extraordinary as the material world is filled with meaning. In HS, Faunia is associated 

with images of purity. Firstly, as to her appearance, she is described as a “clean-cut 

woman” (Roth 2000: 15). This may initially seem superficial, but the purity of her 

appearance will become meaningful when we consider her identity and what she means 

to Coleman. Secondly, she is working as a cleaning woman and the motif of cleaning 

returns when Coleman and Zuckerman watch her milking the cows, which also connotes 

purity. Faunia performs her tasks in a “whitewashed room” and there is a detailed 

description of how she cleans everything: “setting to work with a variety of brushes and 

with sinkful after sinkful of clear water to scrub every surface of every tube, valve, gasket, 

plug, plate, liner, cap, disc, and piston until each was spotlessly clean and sanitized” (51). 

The fact that her spectators are watching fascinated and that nobody uttered a word makes 

this scene mysteriously significant. Her routine that keeps everything spotless brings the 

comfort of cleanliness. This cleaning can also be found in other novels of Roth, such as 

Patrimony (1991), where he has to clean his father’s excrement, scrub it off the floor, and 

also in Indignation (2008), where Marcus Messner has to clean the blood and the guts of 

the chickens in kosher butcher shop that his father runs. In both of these cases, the 

characters learn that even though the task is extremely revolting, sometimes this has to be 

done, it marks who they are, and there is no shame in it.  

Now, in HS, the way that Zuckerman recalls and interprets this “theatrical 

performance” stands out in the narration as a moment that reflects the old man’s longing 

for beauty. The narrator remarks that four months later Coleman and Faunia were both 

lying in their graves. The shadow of this tragedy looms over a time when a man whose 

life is coming to an end, “the enamored old man” finds himself shaken by the strength of 

desire, the force of life (Roth 2000: 51). “a scene of pathos and hypnosis and sexual 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

98 

 

subjugation […] in which a man taken over by a force so long suppressed in him that it 

had all but been extinguished revealed, before my eyes, the resurgence of its stupefying 

power” (51, ellipsis mine). The narrator compares this to the main characters in Death in 

Venice (1912) by Thomas Mann, in which Aschenbach watches Tadzio “his sexual 

longing brought to a boil by the anguishing fact of mortality” (Roth 2000: 51). Precisely 

in that story the reader learns that there is no innocence, but seduction, in the eyes of the 

young person who is desired. Sánchez Canales (2014) analyzes this issue of mortality in 

Mann’s novella and in Roth’s DA pointing out that Kepesh sees the ageing Aschenbach 

in himself: “when will you begin to rouge your cheeks, Herr von Aschenbach? What do 

you think you look like? Do you have any idea? All that devotion to the Higher Life” 

(Roth 2001: 89). Sánchez Canales sees that ultimately in Roth’s perspective the tragedy 

of death overcomes everyone: “However, there is a significant difference regarding the 

end: unlike Yeats's poem and Mann's novel, where, as the poet's/novelist's body ages the 

protagonist becomes a "dying animal" whereas his lover (i.e., muse) stays young, The 

Dying Animal is gloomier in the sense that both the old and the young are doomed to 

perish” (2014: 8). This theme will be further analyzed in Chapter III of this thesis, in the 

third section, dealing with death. 

It is not by coincidence that in HS, this is the moment that brings along an 

important revelation about the experience of life, as the rich abundance of all the 

impressions and sensations make the narrator aware of the will that both animals and 

human beings have “to live, not merely to endure but to live, to go on taking, giving, 

feeding, milking acknowledging wholeheartedly, as the enigma that it is, the pointless 

meaningfulness of living” (Roth 2000: 52). The transformation of the ordinary into the 

extraordinary in the eyes of the narrator brings about a sense of awe at the wonder of life: 

“The sensory fullness, the copiousness, the abundant –superabundant –detail of life, 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

99 

 

which is the rhapsody. And Coleman and Faunia, who are now dead, deep in the flow of 

the unexpected, day by day, minute by minute, themselves details in that 

superabundance” (52). It is important to note that this celebration of life is done even 

though there is an end to life. The beauty of life can be appreciated amidst its 

unexpectedness and its transience. That description of the effect of the superabundant 

detail of life can be found in ST too, in the description of life at the seaside during the 

long holidays of Sabbath’s childhood. 

 

 

I.3.7. The Danger of Imposing Purity: From the Puritans to the American Dream 

 

However, just like Faunia’s features connote purity, her face is also described as 

bearing the traits of “one of those hardworking goodwives who suffered through New 

England’s harsh beginnings, stern colonial women locked up within the reigning morality 

and obedient to it” (Roth 2000: 1). This reference that brings to mind Hawthorne’s The 

Scarlet Letter (1850), also holds an irony which, at the very beginning, points at the 

difference between appearances and reality, as this woman who seems to have been 

imprisoned by a strict moral system is actually free to have a secret adulterous affair.    

Faunia is compared to the Greek god Zeus who is, unlike the Hebrew God and the 

Christian man-god, is contaminated: “entangled in adventure, vividly expressive, 

capricious, sensual, exuberantly wedded to his own rich existence, anything but alone and 

anything but hidden. Instead the divine stain. A great reality-reflecting religion … As the 

hubristic fantasy has it, made in the image of God, all right, but not ours –theirs. God 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

100 

 

debauched. God corrupted. A god of life if there ever was one. God in the image of man.” 

(Roth 2000: 243).  

Some scholars have acknowledged that the stain signifies the reason why purity 

is unattainable and they comment on the message to take heed from the false purifying 

rituals, but there is no analysis that goes into depth following the thread of the traces of 

the stain throughout the novel of HS. According to David Brauner, Ada Savin mentioned 

that the “generic and metaphoric hybridity” of the human stain “stands as a bulwark 

against the dangers of imposing purity, in life as in art,” but Savin does not develop this 

point further (Savin 2002: 184). In my view, the human stain is a hybrid metaphor in that 

it is indeed composed of different elements: On the one hand, the stain signifies inherent 

impurity that can be embraced as natural and positive and on the other hand, the negative 

effect of human actions, which is pitiful. As a bulwark against the danger of imposing 

purity, the human stain defends the characters from blindness and a state of ignorance by 

making human nature more visible.  

This is relevant to the American Dream because, as Monika Hogan states, “the 

Zuckerman novels expose the ‘American Dream’ as being reliant on a fantasy notion of 

bodily purity and wholeness” (Hogan 2004: 3). However, in my view, this exposure of 

the fantasy of purity is not only found in AP and in HS, but it can be found as one of the 

major themes too in ST and DA, as well as an underlying idea in many other works by 

Roth.  Consequently, in this section the focus is not on the somatic aspect of the stain in 

the body, but on the metaphorical significance it has for the ideologies of purity. David 

Brauner, for instance, is more interested in “tracing the non-somatic, metaphorical 

meanings of purity” in novels such as AP and HS (Brauner 2007: 181). 

 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

101 

 

 

I.3.8. The Foolish Illusion of the Purity Binge 

 

¨The fantasy of purity is appalling. It’s insane¨ (Roth 2000: 242). I would like to 

return to the idea of impurity as that which is liminal, in a transitional state, that which is 

different because it is neither one thing nor the other. “The fantasy of pastoral not only 

hides from history but also tends to foment violence because purists tend to preserve their 

purity by producing difference as degraded, dangerous otherness, a stigmatizing that to 

scapegoating of sacrificial victims to fortify the boundary of self and other” (Posnock 

2006: 153-4).  

With completion there is no openness, no possibilities, no freedom to continue the 

story or to interpret it in different ways. Boddy asks himself why Roth shows the sense 

of completion as a “foolish illusion” in HS. That fantasy corresponds to the idea of the 

pastoral. The answer would be that the conclusion of the narrator is that there is not a 

satisfactory outcome to the actions and the plotting of characters such as Coleman. “In 

telling Coleman Silk’s story, however, Zuckerman tests the conventions of pastoral in 

much the same way as he tried out those of tragedy” (Boddy 2010: 45). The pastoral, 

according to Boddy, is embodied by Faunia, and Roth would test its conventions by 

showing reality to be the opposite of what it seems on the surface. Boddy suggests that 

this is a characteristic of an aesthetic form we can find in many of Roth’s works: Thus, if 

Roth said in his interview with Mervyn Rothstein that he tends “to problematize 

material... I like when it’s opposed by something else, by another point of view” Searles 

1992: 228), it must be “a fully developed aesthetic – one that rejects the Aristotelian 

unities in favour of ‘variousness, possibility, complexity and difficulty’. This latter 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

102 

 

formulation is not Roth’s but Lionel Trilling’s – proposed at the outset of The Liberal 

Imagination” (Boddy 2010: 48).  

The plot of HS is set at a time that Roth considered America was on a “piety binge, 

a purity binge” when, judging the president’s adulterous sexual relations, everyone was 

moralizing, showing what Hawthorne called “the persecuting spirit” (Roth 2000: 2). 

Hawthorne is essential to understand where Roth’s American novel comes from, as 

outlined in sections 1 and 2 of this chapter. 

From the comparison that can be drawn with Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, it is 

obvious that HS comments on the fantasy of purity that still exists in American society 

so many years later: Arthur Dimmesdale’s double life takes its toll as he discovers a 

second will within him: “No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to 

himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may 

be the true” (Hawthorne 1850: 215). He feels “incited to do some strange, wild, wicked 

thing or other, with the sense that it would be at once involuntary and intentional; in spite 

of himself, yet growing out of a profounder self than that which opposed the impulse” 

(216). Coleman also has a fight within him, just as Seymour, Sabbath and Kepesh do. 

“Roth finds compelling the aesthetic power and audacity of self-making and the spectacle 

of its unraveling. The latter occurs when the self, caught in the traps that inhere in too 

adamant an effort at self-invention, abandons its proprietary relation to itself” (Posnock 

2006: 279). However strongly a character fashions his will or plans his life, he cannot 

keep it constant, never changing, he may construe his life but it may be destroyed by the 

storms of life, as Coleman’s story shows.  

Gabrielle Seeley and Jeffrey Rubin-Dorsky have written an article that sheds light 

on The Human Stain by comparing it to The Scarlet Letter (see Seeley and Rubin-Dorsky 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

103 

 

in Shostak 2011: 93-114). Hawthorne’s novel “explores the fundamental belief of self-

creation and self-fulfillment as integral to the American promise of freedom, asking the 

profoundest of questions: Is there some element of identity an individual has no right to 

relinquish in order to attain individual freedom?” (Seeley & Rubin-Dorsky in Shostak 

2011: 93). These scholars ask the same questions of both texts in order to show the 

connection between them and they find a series of parallels which are helpful to 

understand Roth's HS. Thus, they see how the question "Why does Hester stay in Salem 

and endure the torment when she is free to go?" could be asked of The Human Stain's 

main character too, Coleman. Interestingly, in both stories there are characters who probe 

the conscience of the guilty characters and Hawthorne uses the word "stain" as well (93). 

Even though 150 years have passed, the way of thinking Hawthorne wrote about is still 

present in American society, which is why his and Roth’s characters “are often in a 

struggle for authority over their own lives” (94). Roth wrote about “the problematical 

nature of moral authority and of social restraint and regulation” (94). “The question of 

who or what shall have influence and jurisdiction over one's life,” he writes, “has been a 

concern in much of my work”, in Reading Myself and Others (Roth 1975: 84). The 

question is who decides what is pure and impure. Dimmesdale tells Hester “thou mayest 

work out an open triumph over the evil within thee” (Hawthorne 1850: 67) and Hester 

thinks she might “work out another purity than that which she had lost” (80).  

The ecstasy of sanctimony resides in the foundations of the fantasy of purity, it is 

what people repeat to each other in shock, judging someone’s actions. As Seeley and 

Rubin-Dorsky noticed, the chapter in HS titled What Maniac Conceived it? recalls 

Mistress Hibbins whispering to Hester, “what mortal imagination could conceive it?” as 

she reveals her knowledge of Hester and Dimmesdale clandestine forest meeting" (241), 

which brings to mind the theme of the limits on human knowledge and their surprise at 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

104 

 

scandalous actions (Seeley & Rubin-Dorsky in Shostak 2011: 95). Likewise, in AP, the 

narrator asks a very similar question when he hears about what happened to Seymour. In 

DA, Kepesh is also taken by surprise at the news of the illness of Consuela. The narrator 

in HS calls the tendency to seek other people's faults “America’s oldest communal 

passion, historically perhaps its most treacherous and subversive pleasure: the ecstasy of 

sanctimony” (Roth 2000: 2). As Seeley and Rubin-Dorsky note, “this recalls the Puritan 

elders surrounding Hester on the scaffold as The Scarlet Letter opens (Hawthorne 1850: 

2) as well as the townspeople's piercing glances and hurled asides when Hester attends 

Dimmesdale's Election sermon (246)” (Seeley and Rubin-Dorsky in Shostak 2011: 95). 

Roth is interested in opposition and it is important to ask why, as Seeley and 

Rubin-Dorsky do: “if Coleman will not reveal his secret, one must wonder (as with 

Hester), why not leave the scene with Faunia and let their connection be his salvation? 

Having positioned himself as an oppressed adversary against the community he despises 

for its stupidity, he nevertheless remains within that community, allowing himself to 

suffer its rejection. Why is that opposition so important to him, and why is it so important 

to Hester?” (2011: 96). To answer this question, it is helpful to compare Coleman’s 

predicament to other characters such as Epstein and Sabbath. In a way, they are all forced 

to leave the institution or the place where they were as a punishment for their behavior. 

Epstein has to sleep in another bedroom and his wife threatens with divorce. Sabbath 

loses his job and leaves the city because of the scandal of engaging in an inappropriate 

relationship with his student. Likewise, Coleman is forced to leave his job and although 

he still lives in the same town, he is isolated in his house. 

The wound becomes a scar that is the human stain. As Seeley and Rubin-Dorsky 

put it, “Hester is psychologically wounded, just as Coleman is, by the inflexibility of a 

strict -a hostile- community. This wound is a genuine “human stain” which causes 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

105 

 

Coleman and Hester to defy their communities. The stain rubs both ways, for the 

community commits a “sin” (intolerance) just as surely as does the protagonist (defiance) 

in each novel.” (2011: 97).  

Coleman, seeking freedom, believes he can experience fewer limitations in his life 

by creating a new identity for himself, because he would not accept the conditions of his 

previous identity. As Seeley and Rubin-Dorsky point out (99), Hester has a similar 

frustration because of her gender. Being a woman, she asks herself: “was existence worth 

accepting, even to the happiest among them? As concerned her own individual existence, 

she had long ago decided in the negative’ (Hawthorne 1850: 165). “Both seek nothing 

more than what Coleman believes is the ‘basic human right’ of ‘disregarding prescriptive 

society’s more restrictive demarcations and asserting independently a free personal 

choice’ (Roth 2000: 155). This is the sacred American ideal, encompassing as it does the 

holy trinity of independence, individuality, and unfettered freedom. Yet, as compelling 

as this vision of freedom seems, seeking absolute autonomy is costly. Coleman’s and 

Hester’s insistence upon asserting personal choice while masking their true selves will 

eventually thwart –and in Coleman’s case, destroy- them.” (Seeley & Rubin-Dorsky 

2011: 99). This is so because as Seeley says, “deception and cruelty are correlatives to 

secrecy in these novels. Coleman’s deceit permeates his entire life” (101).  

Deceit and secrecy are important in Roth’s fiction because they define what it is 

to be human and if they are acknowledged as your own and not rejected or judged as 

“sick”, then characters find out who they really are. Secrets hold the human stain within 

them. As Sabbath says, you are as human as your secrets are (Roth 1995: 88), and while 

their secrets become a source of strength for the characters’ lives, they also cause much 

pain. Hester regards herself as being connected to Dimmesdale by “the iron link of mutual 

crime, which neither he nor she could break” (Hawthorne 1850: 160). Their adulterous 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

106 

 

relationship, being a secret, can be compared to Sabbath and Drenka’s affair. As Sabbath 

puts it, secrets are not sick, they are as human and as stained as people are. 

David Brauner sees Seymour’s tragedy as a result from his delusion, his downfall 

coming from the belief that he is the fulfillment of a mythical role (Brauner 2007: 181). 

In the first quote that opens AP, the words “dream, dream, dream” point at the illusion 

that characterizes the Pastoral: The Swede, as an inhabitant of his own utopian dream-

like world, needs to be awakened to reality. The novel therefore adopts an anti-utopian 

mode. Will things prove to be worse than what they seem? Roth unveils what lurks behind 

the American Dream and it shows reality’s grimness. This story confronts the reader with 

the question: “Why are things the way they are? The question to which there is no 

answer…” (Roth 1997: 70). Questions of this type fill the novel, shaping its appeal to the 

reader without giving an answer or a conclusion. Many scholars like David Brauner have 

also noted how abundant these rhetorical questions are, and the importance of two final 

unanswerable inquiries.  

The second quote that stands out in AP, “the rare occurrence of the expected…” 

reveals the truth that the unexpected rules our lives. The titles of the sections that divide 

the novel are revealing and evoke the Old Testament account of the Fall: “Paradise 

Remembered”; “The Fall”, and “Paradise Lost”. Velichka Ivanova points this out in her 

2010 book-length study: “Les titres bibliques des chapitres évoquent le Pentateuque. Le 

monde avant la chute est uniforme. Le bien et le mal ne se distinguent pas encore et 

aucune différence se sépare l´homme de la femme. Or, lúnité constitue l’essence du rêve 

américain” (2010: 59). In another study of AP, Ivanova wrote: “Le mythe biblique du 

paradis perdu et le poème épique de Milton inspirent les titres des trois parties du roman: 

‘Paradise Remembered’, ‘The Fall’, ‘Paradise Lost’. Après le titre de la première partie, 

líncipit introduit au monde du texte” (2012: 12). Various scholars have studied the 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

107 

 

connections between AP and Milton’s Paradise Lost; however, there is no study of the 

references of the stain in connection with biblical sin.  

Joshua Lander, for example, has studied the “pastoral impulse” in Roth’s 

subversion of the pastoral myth in AP connecting the novel to Milton’s Paradise Lost 

(2019). Lander’s reading of the novel offers a new interpretation focusing on the 

importance of the bodies of female characters in AP, which he contends serve to 

“deconstruct the gendered patriarchal narrative that underlies America’s ‘pastoral 

impulse’” (Lander 2019: 45). This connection between the pastoral and the problematic 

representation of women is relevant in order to transition to the next section of this 

Chapter, which deals with sexuality and the representation of women in Roth’s fiction.  

Undoubtedly, the biblical account of the Fall is connected here to the American 

Dream. But the Swede’s story has a structure that not only reminds of a biblical story, it 

also has references to a religious allegory, or a Greek tragedy, showing the story of an 

individual as an example for a more universal experience (see Ivanova 2010: 59; 2012: 

12).  Sánchez Canales has analyzed the Classical Greek Archetypes (2014), but I would 

like to focus on what role the human stain has in this structure, working through both 

Greek and Jewish references. The narrator introduces the Swede as “a man whose 

discontents were barely known to himself, awakening in middle age to the horror of self-

reflection” (Roth 1997: 85). The reader will witness “the brutality of the destruction of 

this indestructible man” (83). The unexpected event of the bombing falls upon the 

Swede’s life, causing him much pain: “But who is set up for the impossible that is going 

to happen? Who is set up for tragedy and the incomprehensibility of suffering? Nobody. 

The tragedy of the man not set up for tragedy -that is everyman’s tragedy” (86).  



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

108 

 

That is why the narrator of AP introduces the idea of the impossibility of really 

knowing another man: “that’s the mystery of his mystery [...]” (Roth 1997: 30, ellipsis 

mine). The reader will soon discover how the Swede tries to cover up “his horrible riddle” 

by acting as if he were perfectly capable of doing great things, but at the same time, he is 

falling apart (131). The reason is that his daughter has planted a bomb and abandoned her 

home. He must discover what is beneath the surface of the world that surrounds him, and 

under his own skin, for he has no clue of what is underneath the reality that the naked eye 

can see (137). For that he needs a microscope, or an antidote to the illness of the foolish 

illusion he suffers from. 

 

 

I.3.8. The Stain as the Antidote in the Counterpastoral 

 

Paradoxically, the stain which appears as an illness can also act as an antidote. 

Following Brauner’s thinking, if Seymour suffers from an illness, the idea of a Pastoral 

he believes and lives by is a dangerous virus, and the human stain would be the saving 

antidote to that illusion. Accordingly, the description of the disgusting traces of the stain 

is the only substance that can counteract the harmful poisoning of the lie that humans are 

stain-free.  

One of the ways in which the stain acts as an antidote is when Seymour has to face 

the fact that his daughter has caused violence and been the victim of violence, as she was 

raped and has killed people. Before this realization, it is easier for the Swede to think 

about her daughter as a victim rather than as a murderer (Roth 1997: 267). However, he 

is plagued by a sense of impotence as he sees there is no justice, no fair retribution on 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

109 

 

Earth (268). Justice is connected to the image of Beauty, for both are characterized by 

perfection and purity. That is why Seymour recalls his daughter’s innocent, pure body of 

a child, still untouched, flawless, perfect, healthy, new, revealing no evil at all (271). But 

when he hears of her violent actions, the Swede really cannot understand her evil nature, 

and tries to reason it away, saying “she must have been crazy” (379). However, 

eventually, Merry showed the reality of evil to her father: “And the instrument of this 

unblinding is Merry [...]. He had made his fantasy and Merry had unmade it for him” 

(418, ellipsis mine). She who had an impediment that disabled her (a speech impediment) 

is now the one who makes her blind father see, figuratively speaking. The physical stain 

becomes metaphorical here. In this way, she brought the war, her conflict, to her own 

home, to shatter her father’s utopia. Her bomb destroys the false paradise, thereby 

showing the hidden stain that was lurking in everyone’s heart.  

The chaos and error that are so obvious to characters such as Sabbath have to be 

discovered by the Levovs in AP. Eventually, it is not possible to win a “crusade against 

disorder, against that abiding problem of human error and insufficiency” (Roth 1997: 

421). For, “what should be did not exist. Deviancy prevailed. You can’t stop it” (422). 

Roth chooses to end the novel with bitter irony, as Marcia laughs at “the enfeeblement of 

supposedly robust things” (423).  The last lines seem to indicate that what has been 

destroyed is the “unreprehensible life of the Levovs”.  

In the introduction to “Wandering and Return: Literature since 1973” in Jewish-

American Literature. A Norton Anthology, there is a list of the concerns that are 

particularly reflected in Jewish American Literature as a consequence of the peculiar 

situation of American Jews. These issues are essential in order to understand Roth’s 

characters. Without forgetting the questions about political questions, the common past, 

the Holocaust, and anti-Semitism, these are the most important problems: “What does it 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

110 

 

mean to be Jewish in the final quarter of the American twentieth century? [...] What does 

it mean to be Jewish when ties to ethnic heritage have loosened? [...] What makes a Jew 

Jewish if he or she does not practice the rituals of Judaism?” (Chametski et al. 2001: 979, 

ellipsis mine). I have selected these questions out of the list because I believe they are 

particularly addressed by Roth in these novels. When looking at the history of American 

Jews as it is narrated in this introduction, while in the 50s Jews had tried to become more 

American, in the 70s the opposite trend began. The new objective for them was to find 

their identity, because especially its religious dimension, which largely conformed their 

ethnic identity, was lost (2001: 981). And as Jews became more integrated because they 

studied and worked alongside to non-Jews, and also married non-Jews, the Jewish 

community was in crisis and changed rapidly (980). Roth’s characters struggle between 

this lost identity and the American Dream which eventually proves to be a trap. This is 

why Jay Halio speaks of “the tragic element of hubristic pride that, try as he might, the 

Swede cannot help but be guilty of” (1999: 137). Because of the Swede’s self-assurance 

and his trust in the American Dream, he said “I am who I want to be” (Roth 1997: 315). 

And he did what he set out to do. However, the Swede succeeded in rejecting his father’s 

will and Judaism, but in the end his life is destroyed anyway and his happiness vanishes 

in thin air. 

In Portnoy’s Complaint (1969) there is a scene where Alex also rejects his parents’ 

Judaism. Sánchez Canales analyzes it in his article about Roth’s presumed anti-Semitism 

(2021). He points out something that is relevant to the subject of the Swede’s idea of a 

new identity and his pride and self-assurance: Alex’s refusal to wear different clothes to 

the synagogue symbolize how he has broken with his parents’ faith, in that he wants to 

look like any other young American, refusing to look different but also ultimately turning 

his back to the God of his parents (Sánchez Canales 2021: 245). Turning their back to 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

111 

 

God and to Paradise, Roth’s characters nevertheless discover that Paradise is not found 

in the house nor in the lifestyle which are so perfect in his eyes. None of these things 

actually satisfied Dawn nor Merry, they did not really love it. Instead, they would rather 

love other things, which the Swede considers to be ridiculous and meaningless, such as 

faraway countries (Vietnam), abstract paintings, a new house and a lover. 

The anger at being a mere pawn in History in Lou Levov’s speech is accompanied 

by the irony that the rest of the narrative creates: “get Nixon and all will be well. If we 

can [...]” (Roth 1997: 299, ellipsis mine). But, in fact, Merry’s bombing proves that all is 

not well. This irony indicates the implication that America is filled with evil, and it cannot 

be fixed just be getting rid of a president. It cannot be restored.  

 

The daughter and the decade blasting to smithereens his particular form of utopian 

thinking, the plague America infiltrating the Swede’s castle and there infecting everyone. 

The daughter who transports him out of the longed-for American pastoral and into 

everything that is its antithesis and its enemy, into the fury, the violence, and the 

desperation of the counterpastoral -into the indigenous American berserk (Roth 1997: 

86). 

 

This passage describes powerfully how shocking it was for the Swede, whose life 

went perfectly well, and suddenly everything changed. That is why the main character 

repeatedly asks himself in anguish “Why?” and “how had he become History’s 

plaything?” (Roth 1997: 87). 

 

 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

112 

 

I.3.9. The Stain That Cannot Be Washed Away 

 

Roth is interested in uncovering the cleansing or purity rituals that are but “foolish 

illusions”: For instance, in AP, when Merry is baptized secretly, her baptism is supposed 

to wash out her original sin, but her actions prove she has become a murderer and this 

raises the question of the contradiction of a fight with sin in this world. In the Levov 

family the role of religion is shown as a limitation and it is used as a tool to interrogate 

and control, for example when Lou Levov interrogates Dawn about her beliefs in an 

aggressive manner (Roth 1997: 388-391). To the narrator, religious exclusivity is a 

burden which his characters need to get rid of in order to attain freedom. Religion is 

portrayed as inevitably connected to irrational behavior, resulting in grievances, 

resentment and suspicions of everyone else (402). This same thing happens in other 

novels by Roth, and in the study mentioned earlier by Sánchez Canales (2021) this is also 

clear, when he shows how Alex perceives it in Portnoy’s Complaint. Judaism would seem 

to consist of a set of rules and what is upsetting to the parents is mostly the lack of faith 

(as when the father breaks into tears when his son says he does not believe in God) but 

also the lack of observance of rules that are more about appearances, such as wearing the 

right clothes to the synagogue.  

Those “purifying rituals” are motivated by moralistic impulses, as they are meant 

to eradicate what contaminates Utopia, in search of a state of purity. But these ideals are 

questioned harshly throughout Roth’s fiction, and in conclusion, the human stain that 

cannot be washed by humans is explored and exposed relentlessly.  

 

 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

113 

 

I.3.10. The Stain Shows There Is No Sexual Healing 

 

Sexuality is dealt with in different ways in Roth’s fiction and this subject will be 

studied more in depth in the next Chapter, dedicated to the idea of transgression; but at 

this point, it is important to look how the stain transforms its value to show a false ideal 

of purity, or a false Paradise. The innocence implied in the description of Roth’s 

representation of sex as “candid” and “explicit” can be misleading. There is a number of 

reasons why Roth’s treatment of this subject has been considered so controversial. It has 

been widely discussed among Roth scholars, for instance, Alan Cooper (1995), Mark 

Shechner (2005), Debra Shostak (2004), and Ira Nadel (2013), among many others, have 

written about this subject in connection with the notions of Jewishness, masculinity, 

desire, eros, etc. On the one hand, sexuality appears in Roth’s books as a means of sheer 

pleasure, release and freedom, but on the other hand, it is a source of frustration as it falls 

short to keep its promises, and it can be dangerous too. This study would like to ask the 

following question, looking at the image of the human stain: Is there purity in sex? Firstly, 

it is clear that the stain allows Roth’s narrative to play with the idea of purity and impurity 

in sexuality.  

 In DA, when Kepesh licks Consuela’s menstrual blood, the adjective “clean” 

stands out in this passage, thereby introducing the suggestion that this act may be pure 

and not impure, as one would have thought initially. This episode contains such a 

shocking image of the stain, marked by taboo and impurity too because it breaks the law 

as it is a contaminated act according to the law as expressed in Leviticus 12:4, as 

mentioned earlier, or in Leviticus 18:19, for example: “Also you shall not approach a 

woman to uncover her nakedness during her menstrual impurity”. “If a man has sexual 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

114 

 

relations with her and her monthly flow touches him, he will be unclean for seven days; 

any bed he lies on will be unclean” (Lev. 15:24). 

In this biblical view, menstruation blood makes women unclean (Lev. 12:2); and 

that is the reason why she would also be guilty if she has relations with a man: “If a man 

lies with a woman during her monthly period and has sexual relations with her, he has 

exposed the source of her flow, and she has also uncovered it. Both of them must be cut 

off from their people.” (Lev. 20:18). As Aristi Trendel notes, “not only is the teacher-

student taboo disregarded, but also the Niddah’s laws, forbidding physical exchange and 

sexual intercourse during menstruation in rabbinic culture, are transgressed too” (Trendel 

2007: 5).  

This scene in DA is not the first time that the image of menstrual blood appears in 

Roth’s fiction. As early as in PC (1969), Portnoy is agitated because he remembers when 

he first saw his mother’s menstrual blood when he was very young. He saw it “shining 

darkly up at me […]. Just two red drops […], but they glow still” (Roth 1969: 42, ellipsis 

mine). The text connects this image immediately with the vision of “an endless dripping 

of blood” that “she is draining from the meat so as to make it kosher and fit for 

consumption” (42). Portnoy acknowledges he might be confusing things, but those drops 

of blood are still visible in his memory and he links it to his feelings of shame and at the 

same time, of his “deepest desires” (44). Roth’s character is humorously aware of his 

obsession with blood: “I sound like a son in the House of Atreus with all this talk of 

blood” (42-43). In this narrative, Roth is already joining the image of menstrual blood 

that signifies impurity with the image of making meat kosher in order to highlight the 

presence of impurity in the process of achieving purity. Later in his work, in Indignation 

(2008), he will return to this juxtaposition of images of blood and flesh in the violence of 

war and in the kosher butcher shop, which will be analyzed later. 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

115 

 

When the stain appears as menstrual blood in DA it is also a cause for alarm as in 

PC, but it has an important consequence as it is the evidence of the presence of Consuela 

in her lover’s life, thus becoming the symbol of her power over him. For example, there 

is the image of Consuela’s bloody tampon, again from menstrual blood, which appears in 

the trash basket and is discovered by Kepesh’s other lover, Carolyn. This bloody tampon 

is the evidence of his infidelity so it awakens her fury and he tells her a lie, using her to 

try to soothe his feeling of powerlessness and dissatisfaction. George warns his friend 

Kepesh that he will always be powerless with Consuela because something in his 

relationship with her makes him crazy, which is why he tells him: “If you don’t cut the 

connection for good, in the end that something will destroy you. You’re no longer merely 

answering a natural need with her” (Roth 2001: 98). So, according to this rational 

discourse, the unknown element that lies hidden in the relationship with Consuela will 

eventually be the end of Kepesh. She is mysterious and the nature of what makes him 

dissatisfied also seems to be veiled. George in this speech goes even further and classifies 

this problem as an illness: 

 

This is the pathology in its purest form. […] You violated the law of aesthetic distance. 

You sentimentalized the aesthetic experience with this girl -you personalized it, and you 

lost the sense of separation essential to your enjoyment. Do you know when that 

happened? The night she took the tampon out. The necessary aesthetic separation 

collapsed not while you watched her bleeding [...] but when you couldn’t restrain yourself 

and went down on your knees.” (Roth 2001: 99, ellipses mine) 

 

The act of “drinking her blood” means that Kepesh has worshipped “the mystery 

of the bleeding goddess”, thereby crossing the line, as this is forbidden according to 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

116 

 

Deuteronomy and Leviticus. Blood means life, and as God is the only one who can give 

life, blood should be removed and it must not be drunk:  

 

You lick it. You consume it. You digest it. She penetrates you. What next, David? A glass 

of her urine? How long before you would have begged for her feces? I’m not against it 

because it’s unhygienic. I’m not against it because it’s disgusting. I’m against it because 

it’s falling in love. The only obsession everyone wants: ‘love.’ People think that in falling 

in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. 

(Roth 2001: 99)  

 

George is wary of love because he sees fracture and loss instead of perfection: “I 

think you’re whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You’re whole, and then 

you’re cracked open. She was a foreign body introduced into your wholeness.” (Roth 

2001: 100). However, the stain shows that even fracture and impurity can be desirable.  

As Kepesh gets more intimate with Consuela, the madness of love is what compels 

him to express this union by sharing in the human stain. By licking her blood and sharing 

in her impurity, that act brings the two lovers even closer. Experiencing the human stain 

together can bring the characters together, just as it happened with Sabbath and Drenka 

in ST. But in DA, George does not let up, as he considers love, a mutual understanding, 

as something to be avoided because he fears his friend will suffer a great disappointment 

when the relationship ends: “attachment is ruinous and your enemy. Joseph Conrad: He 

who forms a tie is lost. That you should sit there looking like you do is absurd. You tasted 

it. Isn’t that enough? Of what do you ever got more than a taste? That’s all we’re given 

in life, that’s all we’re given of life. A taste. There is no more” (2001: 100). The bitterness 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

117 

 

and frustration in these words can be compared to Sabbath’s realization that “there’s 

nothing that keeps its promise” as the first section of the novel is titled. However, Kepesh 

cannot help being attached to Consuela, just like Sabbath could not help missing those he 

loved. Kepesh is not able to detach himself, it is impossible to him and that is why his 

friend George’s admonishing lecture has no effect, he cannot talk him out of it. Kepesh 

and his experience show that even though the depth of that desire can become his enemy 

and he will not taste its fruit as much as he wants because the relationship can break or 

either one of them will die, he will still pursue it.  

The brief moment of satisfaction occurs only as Kepesh plays with time in real 

and fantasy sexual encounters with Consuela; when, immersed in excitement and in his 

private lesson, during the brief seconds of his orgasm, he is “sick no longer with desire. 

Isn’t that Yeats? ‘Consume my heart away; sick with desire/ And fastened to a dying 

animal/It knows not what it is.’ Yeats. Yes. ‘Caught in that sensual music,’ and so on.” 

(Roth 2001: 10). However, only briefly does the sickness of desire let up. Because the 

experience of sex is always contaminated with other things, as Kepesh laments: “No, not 

even fucking can stay totally pure and protected. And this is where I fail [...]. Of course 

there is no purity of the kind Kenny dreams of, but there is also no purity of the kind I 

dream of” (106, ellipsis mine).  

This realization is very important, as it implies that there is never just sheer sex, 

as it is always mixed with many other things that make it impure in Kepesh’s eyes. He 

finds that even among animals there are “these crazy distortions of longing, doting, 

possessiveness, even of love. This need. This derangement. Will it never stop? I don’t 

even know after a while what I’m desperate for. Her tits? Her soul? Her youth? Her simple 

mind? Maybe it’s worse than that -maybe now that I’m nearing death, I also long secretly 

not to be free” (106).  



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

118 

 

Kepesh actually acknowledges to what extent he not only cannot be free, but he 

also discovers he does not want to be free, as he clings to the hope of the comfort in the 

attachment that love provides. Sex is not ‘pure’ in the way he would like it to be as he 

finds it to be ‘contaminated’ by love. There is an inversion of connotations of these terms 

of purity and so the main surprise of the novel is that desire, instead of strengthening, has 

the effect of weakening Kepesh by enslaving him to the object of his love, Consuela. So 

even the value of these notions of strength and weakness is inverted in this novel.  

 

 

I.3.11. The Stain that Goes Over the Limits 

 

In DA, Kepesh chooses to include a historical description of the girls who seek to 

“rebel against one’s condition” in his story (Roth 2001: 50). These women were seeking 

freedom in sex at a time when people were “law-abiding, members in excellent standing 

of what Hawthorne called ‘the limit-loving class’” (51). The discourse of these women is 

in favor of going to the limit and over the limit, even advocating for no limits altogether, 

which would be the best. In addition, after Kepesh praises the rebels who brought about 

the democratization of the “entitlement to pleasure” of women in America, right after that 

essay on sexual freedom, he adds another piece of information: “Sidelight. The English 

trading outpost at Merry Mount that so incensed the Plymouth Puritans.” (This place is 

where Quincy, Massachusetts is today) “Hawthorne based a story on that maypole [...] 

‘Jollity and gloom were contending for an empire’-that’s how Hawthorne understood it” 

(58-59, ellipsis mine). He explains that Merry Mount was presided by Thomas Morton, 

who was imprisoned by the Puritans. “He was a source of prurient fascination for the 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

119 

 

Puritans. Because if one’s piety isn’t absolute, it logically leads to a Morton” (59). This 

thought highlights the impossibility of having a paradise of virtue and purity.  

As Aimee Pozorski warns, the narration in this passage is full of irony, and 

Kepesh’s tone and perspective become confusing, but the theme picks up a thread of 

thought that has featured in many novels by Roth, especially in ST (Pozorski 2011: 110). 

The Puritans, who desired no less than perfection, worried about the younger generation’s 

purity: “Age-old American story: save the young from sex. Yet it’s always too late. Too 

late because they’ve already been born” (Roth 2001: 60). Roth makes the point that people 

will always gravitate towards sex, no matter how unlawful it is to the eyes of society. 

They cannot help it, and it is natural, Roth implies, they do so because they are human.  

 

 

I.3.12. Freedom from the Illusion of Purity: The Stain of Candor that Opposes 

Virtue 

 

It seems, as Pozorski says, that the Puritans were worried about the loss of order 

which helps to “stave off the unexpected”; while, ironically, Kepesh is ambivalent in his 

account of how he took advantage of the sexual revolution because “he also reveals a kind 

of nostalgia for order –for a system within freedom, or freedom within a system that 

would counteract the unexpected effects of history, dying and death” (Pozorski 2011: 

111, 113). This comparison between the two opposing mindsets serves to highlight the 

fact that there is a search for an order which offers real freedom within that order and at 

the same time protects individuals from “the unexpected”. However, Roth shows how it 

is impossible to escape from that reality of History and Death, it does not depend on the 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

120 

 

way which is chosen because both perspectives lack the power to confront these enemies 

to real freedom. Surprisingly, then, even the sexual revolution is shown as marked by the 

longing for purity. 

The transgressive character mentioned in DA, Thomas Morton, published a book 

about the Native American society that he discovered and got to know when he lived 

among them: The New English Canaan. Understandably, it was not met with Governor 

Bradford’s approval, according to Kepesh, “because it was also about the Puritans and 

how they ‘make a great show of religion but no humanity.’ Morton is straightforward. 

Morton doesn’t expurgate. You have to wait three hundred years before the voice of 

Thomas Morton turns up in America again, unexpurgated, as Henry Miller” (Roth 2001: 

60-61). This is erased out of History because it is thought to be unsuitable, objectionable. 

The story of Merry Mount is about the decision not to take the dirt out, to leave things 

unclean, impure, as they are, making the human stain visible. Interestingly, in Roth’s 

earlier novel, AP, Seymour’s daughter is named Merry, sharing the name of the settlement 

of Merry Mount. Throughout this chapter, the ironical implications of her name have been 

pointed out several times, and the character is connected with this place as they both 

contain the human stain. Therefore, it is this character, Merry, who becomes the source 

of impurity and who shows the human stain most clearly to those around her. It is possible 

that Roth did not choose this name because of that story, but at any rate it is a meaningful 

comparison to make as both function as the place or person who chooses freedom and 

reveals the stain. 

The text questions the Puritan judgement when reflecting on “the clash [...] 

between rule and misrule”: “The Puritans were the agents of rule and godly virtue and 

right reason, and on the other side was misrule. But why is it rule and misrule?” Morton 

should be recognized as the “founding father of personal freedom” for “in the Puritan 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

121 

 

theocracy you were at liberty to do good; in Morton’s Merry Mount you were at liberty -

that was it” (Roth 2001: 61, ellipsis mine). This is clearly the most valuable thing to Roth, 

who challenges conventional notions of rule and misrule. Additionally, he suggests that 

there is only true freedom if one can forget about puritan morality. 

Clearly this entails rejecting the Christian morals behind those rules, as Kepesh 

looks at people “without the ideology of holiness, people who didn’t give a damn whether 

they were elect or not” (Roth 2001: 61). This rebelliousness is shared by many characters 

throughout Roth’s work: Firstly, by Alexander Portnoy, someone who rebels against his 

Jewish faith (as seen earlier when analyzing Roth’s presumed anti-Semitism). Sánchez 

Canales describes Alex’s rebelliousness as his desire to break with that faith which he 

refers to comically as “that inheritance of terror” that he brings with him out of his 

“ridiculous past”, showing how he wants to be “left alone” and be free (2021: 245). And 

later, this quality of a refractory character is most notably shared by Sabbath and Drenka 

in ST, and by Coleman and Faunia in HS, for example, but this could be studied in 

virtually all of Roth’s characters.  

The narrative in DA explains that “Merry Mount’s been expunged from the 

official version because it’s the story not of a virtuous utopia but of a utopia of candor” 

(62). However, endorsing that life of freedom has a cost for Kepesh, as his son hates him 

as a result of him abandoning his marriage and forsaking his family life. In Kepesh’s 

view, marriage is as suffocating as priesthood because of the vow of chastity. He is 

unwilling to limit the possibilities he has to engage in sexual relationships and that is why 

he abandons the strictures of marriage. His decision can be compared with Sabbath and 

Drenka and their defense of their adulterous relationship in ST. Interestingly, in 

describing marriage as a trap in DA, the character of George becomes aggressive in his 

lecturing, and then, the narrator acknowledges the nature of this discourse and justifies 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

122 

 

himself: “One either imposes one’s ideas or one is imposed on. Like it or not, that’s the 

predicament. There are always opposing forces, and so, unless one is inordinately fond 

of subordination, one is always at war” (112).  

This idea of inevitable opposition is shared by Sabbath in ST, who is fond of 

having arguments with everybody around him. Kepesh is aware that he can seem 

persuasive because of how he puts forward his argument and that is why he creates his 

discourse to justify his actions. But although he thinks he can win this war of ideas, very 

much like the war of sex and desire, he might experience a defeat and subordination will 

take him by surprise, as will be analyzed in Chapter II, when dealing with the theme of 

transgression. 

However, the paradise of freedom and candor crumbles down when after this 

argument for personal freedom, the narrative shows the cost of an escape from marriage 

into a life of sexual freedom with strong images. The stain marks Kepesh’s son too, who 

feels a deep hatred towards his father, because he had to pay for the cost of his freedom. 

However, Kepesh tries to justify his actions: “I knew it was a difficult escape, and I knew 

I could take only myself over the wall. If I’d taken him, had that even been possible, it 

wouldn’t have made any sense because he was eight years old and I couldn’t have lived 

the way I wanted to. I had to betray him, and for that I am not forgiven and never will be” 

(Roth 2001: 76). This betrayal has grown into a grief that Roth illustrates as a wound, 

once again using bodily imagery to express an inner problem: “My deficiencies are at the 

root of his suffering. Put him anywhere near me and the wound within begins to 

hemorrhage” (77).  

This wound is the stain that grows as a result of the lack of paternal love, literally 

bleeding. Kepesh’s son weakens in the presence of his father, who has caused him that 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

123 

 

pain, and he knows why: “I was absent and entirely too full of meaning. I failed him” 

(78). But his son comes to him in distress when “something has threatened his idea of 

himself as a punctiliously upright person” (79). Thereby, the son reveals that within him 

lies the possibility to be impure like his father. Roth hereby shows how he is interested in 

the human being in its complexities, for instead of showing a crime of filth disconnected 

from the person, he reveals how the human stain is within the character and must be 

understood taking into consideration his circumstances and all the motives and 

consequences of his actions.  

As seen earlier, Roth has shown this intention of showing human beings in all 

their complexities speaking about his short story “Epstein” in the essay “Writing about 

the Jews” originally published in 1975 and also included in the Library of Congress 

collection of Roth’s Non-Fiction. Here, he writes about people who experience 

themselves as “something more” than what others accuse them to be, which is why to 

him, Literature is “all that is beyond simple moral categorizing” (2017: 51). But the 

human stain shows the revulsion that this accusation entails. This image of the stain 

appears when Kepesh’s son has to vomit because of his father’s invitation to spend time 

in his house: 

 

Yet his vomiting bespoke not just revulsion with me but, even more, revulsion with his 

revulsion. Why? Because of what he desperately wanted, because even with a father with 

whom he’s angry and disappointed, the moment together with him is so powerful and the 

yearning for him is so great. He was still a boy in a helpless predicament (Roth 2001: 80).  

 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

124 

 

 In this heartbreaking description, Kepesh’s son does the right thing out of fear to 

disappoint people, he will not leave them so that they will not have reason to call him 

selfish, to prevent them from thinking he is not admirable. And in Kepesh’s interpretation, 

he believes his son thinks “his life has a significance that mine does not” (Roth 2001: 85). 

Again, this is shown to be a fallacy, as the human stain is full of significance while 

obedience to social and religious mores is actually meaningless. In this scene, we find 

again the joke that the body plays on human beings in a physical way: “all he can do is 

vomit his heart out” (91). Again, this is in accordance with Roth’s representation of “the 

experience, the confusion and toughness of certain moral problems” when he writes about 

“people in trouble” as he told Martha McGregor in an interview conducted in 1960 and 

included in Conversations with Philip Roth, edited by George J. Searles (1992: 2).  

Vomiting as an image of the human stain not only appears in DA, but it also 

appears in Indignation to show Marcus Messner’s disgust with the hypocrisy of the Dean 

of his college. Fainting renders Marcus weak whilst violently vomiting in the Dean’s cup. 

This stark description of the human stain contrasts with the false pretense of purity that 

the Dean wants to enforce with the mandatory attendance to chapel. When the Dean 

subjects Marcus to an unfair interrogation about his private affairs, he gets literally sick 

with anger, Marcus becomes physically indisposed as well and, in the end, Marcus cannot 

help but vomit onto the rug, the chair, and one of the photographs that the Dean is so 

proud of. He did not “have the stomach to battle” and yet he did, in spite of himself (Roth 

2008: 111). Finally, vomit also appears in AP when the Swede confronts his daughter’s 

foul stench: “A spasm of gastric secretions and undigested food started up the intestinal 

piping and, in a bitter, acidic stream, surged sickeningly onto his tongue, and when he 

cried out, ‘Who are you!’ it was spewed with his words onto her face” (Roth 1997: 266). 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

125 

 

The significance of the morals of Kepesh’s son is shown to be ridiculous or 

ineffective, as even though his family is not destroyed initially, everything is a mess, and 

so virtue is revealed as being stained. Kepesh tries to have his son accept “the reality” of 

his need of adultery. He sneers without mercy at his son’s need for approval of his own 

adultery, which he tries to justify and standardize. From this scene, it is clear that the 

attempts to clean and to purify the stain are ineffectual, as they consist of just more dirt: 

“My son can fuck only a girl with the right moral credentials. Please, I tell him, it’s a 

perversity, no better or worse than any other. Recognize it for what it is and don’t feel so 

special” (Roth 2001: 88). His son sees things differently and so it is clear that hypocrisy 

exists on both sides: 

 

Seducing defenseless students, pursuing one’s sexual interests at the expense of everyone 

else -that’s so very necessary, is it? No, necessity is staying in a difficult marriage and 

raising a little child and meeting the responsibilities of an adult. [...] The pain you caused 

her, and for what? The burden you put on her -the burden you put on me, on a child, to 

be everything in the world to his mother, and for what? So you could be ‘free’? (Roth 

2001: 90, ellipsis mine)  

 

In this argument it is implied that if freedom from responsibilities means that 

Kepesh can put the burden on others, forsaking them in order to serve his own goals, this 

freedom seems to exist at the cost of someone else’s oppression. And so the image of the 

vomit functions as the human stain in order to show moral disgust in a physical way in 

order to disrupt false myths, as a counterpastoral force.  

• • • 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

126 

 

 In conclusion, a close reading of Roth’s novels shows that the images of earthly 

paradise are described with references to the biblical account in Genesis, and the device 

of the human stain is used in order to shatter the beliefs of certain characters in what Roth 

considers a foolish and dangerous illusion, the fantasy of purity. While the stain invades 

the pastoral in different ways in each novel, in all of them there is a common thread: Even 

in paradise it is impossible be immune to the stain.  

 The characters consistently find themselves trapped between two worlds: the 

idyllic and pure world and the new one. Unable to escape, Merry is trapped in the invisible 

hands of her stutter, but even more so in her illusion of purity, which ironically turns out 

to be really polluted. Roth’s characters undergo important changes as they become prey 

to the stain, possessed by it, even. As in Roth’s early story “Eli, the Fanatic” (1959), they 

seem to become mad as they embrace the stain and nobody can take away the darkness 

that is within them. 

 Understanding the mirage of purity is also connected to the subject of creating a 

new fictional self as the old one is shattered, which runs through all of these four novels. 

As Aristi Trendel argues, in one single image that represents many of the novel’s themes, 

Roth manages to present an even that is deeply disquieting for the reader. In this section 

I have argued that these images (for example, Kepesh licking Consuela’s blood in DA) 

are the device that Roth uses to bring about a change in his characters, or to reveal the 

fantasy of paradise.  

 Finally, this is connected to the American Dream, which relies on the fantasy 

notion of bodily purity, as Monika Hogan argues, and from the perspective of the human 

stain, it is shown as a constant theme in Roth’s fiction. Ada Savin has written about the 

“metaphoric hybridity of the stain” and by following the thread of the traces of the stain 



CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY 

 

 

127 

 

through the novels, I have tried to understand its meaning. The fantasy of purity that is 

found in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is not over, it still lives on in contemporary 

American culture, as Roth shows that it can still be found in our days, and in his fiction 

we find the idea of the pastoral as a virus and the human stain as an antidote to it. 

 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

128 

 

CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

What is it about Roth’s work that makes it so fearless? Even nowadays it still has 

a powerful effect on the reader, especially if one reads a novel such as ST, as Elisa Albert 

argued on her keynote speech for the Roth Remembered Conference in Spring of 2019. 

She was speaking about why this novel in particular goes against any idea of moralism in 

art: “The fearlessness, though! That I recalled in my bowels. The base, unacceptable, 

hideous, fucked up, utterly unafraid, beautiful openness of that book. Unapologetic to its 

core” (Albert 2020: 8). Where does this fearlessness stem from? Roth’s use of the human 

stain recovers the biblical image of transgression. And in his fiction, surprisingly, through 

this powerful sign, the profane invades the sacred as the human stain turns the concept of 

impurity on its head. 

In order to examine the power of the stain as a sign of transgression, this Chapter 

follows the stain as a device that shows what Roth calls the “refractory” quality of his 

characters. Hereby he means that he shows the human stain by representing a rebellious, 

incombustible behavior that is difficult to control. This adjective comes from the Latin 

verb refractare which means “to oppose” and it refers to a person’s behavior, or to an 

illness or a virus, which is difficult to treat or to cure (Oxford English Dictionary). Such 

a condition coincides with the vision I have presented of the human stain as a blemish 

that indicates an inner problem, as seen in Chapter I, section 1. Roth’s characters 

constantly struggle to deal with this condition that they find in themselves or in others. 

Consequently, their stubbornness is revealed in their desire to transgress and to resist 

authority, by means of wayward, unruly and turbulent actions. The epitome of such a 

character is Mickey Sabbath in ST, who finds delight in the stain, especially in its sexual 

manifestation, as he delights in crossing moral boundaries that other characters do not 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

129 

 

dare to trespass. Of course, this subject can also be found in HS and before that, in 

Portnoy’s Complaint, remarkably. This theme was also present in the work of Hawthorne, 

as this thesis has outlined in Chapter I, when looking at the role of sin and transgressive 

desire in The Scarlet Letter.  

However, it is important to note that Roth sees the refractory quality not as an 

illness that has to be cured, a sin from which people have to be saved, but as a “human 

position”, a choice, a way to live. That is how he summarizes the meaning of the 

refractory, transgressive nature that can be found in the character of Sabbath: He is “the 

instinctual turbulence of the man beneath the man: the unmanageable man, the 

unexonerated man -better, the refractory man: refractory meaning ‘resistant to treatment 

or cure,’ refractory meaning ‘capable of enduring high temperatures.’ Refractory not as a 

pathology but as a human position. The refractory man being the one who will not join” 

(Roth 2017: 398).  

Particularly, the stain manifests itself in sexuality in an ambiguous way, 

sometimes positively while other times negatively, because the text is playing with the 

meaning of purity and impurity, as I started to analyze in section 3 of Chapter I. 

Transgressive passion defies the rules and expectations people impose on their lives, and 

Roth’s characters struggle as they lose control and are shown their weaknesses precisely 

when they seek to satisfy their desire. The impossibility of completely understanding who 

they are, what they want and what they should do is narrated with irony and paradox in 

order to show how human judgment is always wrong, while there is only one thing that 

is clear, which is the presence of the human stain.  

This stain is not only present in male characters but also in female characters, so 

I think it is relevant to examine the claim made by some critics and readers about Roth’s 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

130 

 

misogyny and his portrayal of women. I argue that an interpretation of Roth’s work which 

focuses on the meaning of the human stain may help to analyze the role of women in 

these novels in a new way, offering insight into this controversial topic. And not only 

look at women, but also at men. The representation of sexuality in general is an important 

aspect of Roth’s work and it has been analyzed on numerous occasions by scholars such 

as Biale (1997), Brauner (2007), Greenberg (1997), Hayes (2014), Ivanova (2012); 

Posnock (2006), Pozorski (2012) and Shostak (1999, 2004), whose contributions will be 

taken into account as this thesis undertakes a reading of the use of the stain in this subject. 

Greenberg, particularly, focuses on the issue of transgression. 

 The theme of transgression as inherent to human nature has been present 

throughout Roth’s fiction, which seeks to prompt the reader into reconsidering the value 

of transgression, with the claim that “scum” is human and not to be hidden, as can be read 

in The Anatomy Lesson: “It’s an unforgiving world we live in, Ricky. Those who 

transgress are truly hated as scum. Well, that’s fine with me. But don’t tell me scum has 

no right to exist along with everybody who’s nice. Nobody should tell me that ever. 

Because scum is human too” (Roth 1983: 194). Roth is aware of accusations that his work 

is offensive from the beginning of his career. He mentions that even when he published 

“Epstein” in 1958 in The Paris Review, people found it offensive “in its intimate sexual 

revelations” (Roth 2017: 66; see also Parker Royal 2007).  

In his chapter in The Cambridge Companion to Philip Roth, titled “Roth Literary 

Influence, and Postmodernism”, Derek Parker Royal argues that the subject of 

transgression in Roth’s work, for example in The Professor of Desire, is steeped in 

references to important literary touchstones (Parker Royal 2007: 22). Roth’s choice of 

topic and language, therefore, is not controlled by the mores of the audience but it is 

chosen for literary reasons, and draws from the literary tradition of James Joyce, Henry 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

131 

 

Miller and D.H. Lawrence, as Roth argues (2017: 66). He mentioned this in an interview 

titled “On Portnoy’s Complaint”, where Roth explains that obscenity is not only a valid 

language in literature, but also the subject, the issue that Portnoy Complaint is about (66-

67). Roth always makes a conscious choice of the kind of language he chooses, as he 

understands the conception of a novel “is really nothing beside the delivery” and the 

delivery of certain stories requires a “correct presentation” which could mean “dirty 

words and dirty scenes” (Roth 2017: 65-67).  

In his essay titled “In Response to Those Who Have Asked Me: How Did You 

Come to Write That Book, Anyway?”, Roth explains how he had to find a voice who 

could speak in behalf of both the “Jewboy” and “the nice Jewish boy”, who are complete 

opposites. The “Jewboy” is the one who has a forbidden appetite to have sex with shiksas 

(a shiksa is Yiddish term for a Gentile -that is a non-Jewish- woman), and “the nice Jewish 

boy” is the one who has to repress his desire to pursue social respectability and 

acceptance. Only then could he express the dilemma of the character he wanted to write 

about rather than just have a text that was “symptomatic” (Roth 2017: 72). This resource 

of using a double voice or two natures in the same person, a kind of Jewish Dr. Jekyll and 

Mr. Hyde, helps to present the problem just like the human stain does. Roth called that 

fight the argument between “the Cain and Abel” of his background, making the 

mythological “locally recognizable” (74-76).  

In “Imagining Jews”, Roth addresses the accusations directed at himself and at his 

novel Portnoy’s Complaint (Roth 2017: 78-103). Its publication in 1969 made him 

famous for “moral remission and its confusions” and on TV Jacqueline Susann said she 

would like to meet Roth but did not want to shake his hand (79). People confused his 

novel for a confession, and it was about sexual desire and masturbation, which was 

especially unseemly, alluring and offensive because the man confessing was a Jew, and 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

132 

 

Roth explains that “going wild in public is the last thing in the world that a good Jew is 

expected to do. […] He is not expected to make a spectacle of himself, either by shooting 

off his mouth or by shooting off his semen, and certainly not by shooting off his mouth 

about shooting off his semen” (84, ellipsis mine). Roth went on to do everything that was 

not allowed and he hits the nail on the head by pointing out that a good Jew is not 

supposed to behave badly and that the biggest taboo is the physical evidence of a liberated 

sexual desire.  

Consequently, it is through the use of the device of the human stain in these novels 

that it is possible to explore the reality of transgression in depth, in three areas: Firstly, in 

the depiction of sexuality; secondly, in the eyes of the other, when facing society’s 

judgement; and thirdly, in terms of the historical and political reality of the US as 

represented in the novels. 

 

 

II.1. THE STAIN IN SEXUALITY  

 

If in Chapter I the stain is presented as the mark on the body of the characters and 

on the whole of the text, marking Roth’s style, in this section it will be examined 

preeminently as a mark that appears pertaining to sexuality. Philip Roth is well known, 

or rather, infamous, for his representation of sexual desire. It is an ongoing subject, not 

only in his fiction, but also in his life. Recent biographies have dealt with his contentious 

divorces and he has been called a misogynist on many occasions, especially after his ex-

wife Claire Bloom published her memoir Leaving a Doll’s House (1996).   



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

133 

 

Debra Shostak wrote about Roth’s representation of sexuality in her 1999 essay 

on the meanings of the gendered body and subjectivity, addressing the issue of how 

Roth’s narrative challenges deeply held oppositions about sexuality and that “by 

representing the very fleshliness of gendering, Roth makes a valuable contribution to 

thinking about the notions of subjectivity” (Shostak 1999: 317). While Shostak analyzes 

these notions as represented in Roth’s 1972 novella The Breast, her conclusions can be 

used to interpret the use of the stain in images of sexuality.  

In addition, David Brauner has studied how Roth portrays his characters’ internal 

struggles between imprisoning inhibitions and liberating impulses (Brauner 2000: 75). I 

agree with his interpretation, and I think that the stain is the perfect image to show this 

struggle, as will be shown in this Chapter. In Brauner’s analysis, he points out that in 

Portnoy’s Complaint there is an identification of the character’s relishing in the food that 

is forbidden for Jews and persistent sexual appetite (77). Portnoy links his disobedience 

to the Judaic dietary laws that rule which animals must not be eaten with his breaking of 

taboos regarding sex. Ironically, the kosher laws which, as Alex has learnt, are meant to 

prevent Jews from “contaminating” their “humanity” (ironically the stain will show 

humans as already contaminated) have led him to rebel against all restrictions, and so 

Alex “sucks one night on a lobster’s claw and within the hour his cock is out and aimed 

at a shikse on a Public Service bus” (Roth 1969: 79-82). Indeed, this connection goes 

back to the Law of the Old Testament, and to go further back than the laws that ruled the 

food that God’s people were allowed to eat, in the story of the Garden of Eden we also 

find an identification of the forbidden fruit with sinful desire and disobedience.  

The stain that signifies lawless or transgressive sex goes back to the imagery of 

the nakedness of Adam and Eve in Genesis and to the bodily fluids that are the proof of 

forbidden relations, mostly in the form of adultery. The spraying of semen has also been 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

134 

 

interpreted as a sin as it appears in the biblical story of Onan (which is where the term 

“onanism” comes from), as analyzed by Sánchez Canales in his study on these type of 

images in Portnoy’s Complaint (2021). This issue is shown as early as in “Epstein”, and 

it called for cries of outrage from the community of Jews who did not welcome scandalous 

stories about adulterous Jews. Roth responded to this criticism and continued writing 

about transgressive and scandalous realities during the following decades, always defying 

his critics and defending his work. Roth’s subjects, his characters, as mentioned here in 

the section titled “The Graphic Stain”, are almost always particularly aware of and 

plagued by their sexual condition, and this points at Roth’s subject. 

 

 

II.1.1. The Language of Obscenity and Salvation from Obsessive Desire 

 

With regard to this particular condition, the question is how it is treated in Roth’s 

fiction. In Portnoy’s Complaint (1969), he explored the comic side of a character who 

has endless desires and sees that all the unconscious can do is to want, and want, more 

and more. This desire is expressed in an obscene way in the main character’s monologue 

because, as Roth explained, “this is a man speaking out of an overwhelming obsession: 

he is obscene because he wants to be saved” (Roth 2017: 68). This theme of endless desire 

appears in ST (1995) too, but the question is whether there is a desire to be saved too in 

Sabbath. What we see in him and in Portnoy, desire taken to its extreme, could be 

connected to Ihab Hassan’s description of the modern hero in Radical Innocence, drawing 

from Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents: “when guilt is swollen to an intolerable 

degree, aggression breaks loose” (Hassan 1961: 17). Freud’s ideas about Life and Death 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

135 

 

suggest, according to Hassan, one of the main characteristics of the modern hero, that it 

is a man in conflict with himself, “the self is not only opposed to the world but also 

divided in its own house” (18). Roth’s representation of that internal opposition changed 

over the years and that is why the human stain acquires different meanings in each book. 

With Portnoy’s Complaint, Roth’s outlook underwent a switch from Henry 

James’ strict sense of moral duty as explored in Letting Go (1962) and When She Was 

Good (1967), to Kafka’s guilt as a comic idea. As Parker Royal reads these literary 

references through the postmodern lens of intertextuality and metafiction rather than 

through the lens of traditional literary influence, it is helpful to the reader to encounter 

the texts of James and Kafka in order to appreciate the role of moral duty and guilt in 

Roth’s work (2007: 23). As Parker Royal points out, this influence does not highlight the 

privilege of a model of literary inheritance, but instead of that, plays with humor around 

the texts it references: “Here the textual self does not so much build upon previous 

influences as it does imitate, or even parody, them through performance” (2007: 26). In 

ST, there is a further switch, from guilt as a comic idea to an added tragedy and deeper 

irony to the irreverence and shamelessness of Sabbath’s impurity. 

 Just as Roth’s artistic process mirrored Portnoy’s issues, the process of writing 

ST offers insight into Sabbath’s plight. This novel was written with what Roth says was 

“the freest experience” of his life (Roth Pierpont 2013: 196). Just as Roth portrayed the 

investigation of Alexander Portnoy’s passion, “and of the combat that it precipitates with 

his conscience”, Roth undertakes an exploration of Sabbath’s polarities and refractory 

character (Roth 2017: 68). Both Portnoy and Sabbath experience struggles that have to 

do with who they are as men, the satisfaction of their desire and the consequences this 

has on their lives. While both refuse to be bound by taboos, as Roth puts it, Portnoy suffers 

as he finds no satisfaction in his search for freedom, while Sabbath enjoys living “beyond 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

136 

 

the limits of discretion” (398). Roth explains that “Portnoy’s pains arise out of his refusal 

to be bound any longer by taboos which, rightly or wrongly, he experiences as 

unmanning. The joke on Portnoy is that for him breaking the taboo turns out to be as 

unmanning in the end as honoring it” (68).  

 

 

II.1.2. Letting the Repellent Stain In 

 

Philip Roth has demonstrated throughout his work that he does not want difference 

to be swallowed up or censored. He believes in the power of those who differ and rebel 

against the norm, so he is unafraid of being conscious of the disagreeable parts of reality. 

I believe it is this desire to be frank about it that compels him to write about it by means 

of the human stain. When facing criticism, he has made it clear that his purpose is not to 

make a balanced portrait, but rather to reveal everything about his characters, including 

their most scandalous qualities. “Imagining the Jews” and “Jewish Stereotypes” are two 

paradigmatic studies where Roth has addressed this issue in detail (Roth 2017; 1975). 

As Roth’s friend Norman Manea states about what sets Roth apart from other 

writers: “his obstinate rejection of banality, of the commonplace, of awareness dulled by 

the quotidian, where complacency, tribal loyalty, pious or prudent complicity, and 

collective blindness give birth to monsters.  ‘I had to squeeze the nice Jewish boy out of 

me drop by drop’, he once wrote” (Manea 2018). Roth does not shy away from writing 

scandalous fiction because he has no fear of moral judgement, in fact, he is intent on 

defying it. Interestingly, the presence of the dirty aspect goes back to the first stories, 

published in 1959. When an angry reader wrote to Roth to ask him about the issue of 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

137 

 

adultery in “Epstein”, about the need for the moral filth in the story, Roth replied in this 

way, as he tells in his essay “Writing About Jews”:  

 

“Why so much shmutz?” Is he asking, why is there dirt in the world? Why is there 

disappointment? Why is there hardship, ugliness, evil, death? It would be nice to think 

these were the questions the gentleman had in mind, when he asks “Why so much 

shmutz?” But all he is really asking is, “Why so much shmutz in that story?” This, 

apparently, is what the story adds up to for him. An old man discovers the fires of lust are 

still burning in him? Shmutz! Disgusting! (Roth 2017: 53).  

 

 While the outraged reader blinded by moral rules focuses only on what he 

perceives as sinful, Roth offers a different perspective of the reality of the human stain. 

As Roth suggests in his reply, on the one hand, what is striking about the story is not just 

the act of adultery, but the exploration of the path that leads the main character to this 

situation. Epstein’s reaction of horror when he discovers the blemish is more meaningful 

because it is linked to his family’s reaction, to how they judge him, to their lack of 

understanding of his life in general. Especially his nephew fails to see his own stain. This 

is the focus of the story, not the act of adultery, but how Epstein came to feel so trapped, 

and how he feels the need to escape. The description of how he and his family deal with 

it allows the reader to think about moral judgement.  

Commenting on this story, Roth says that the fact that his character’s reaction 

seems improbable, pathetic and comic does not mean it is insane or inhuman. On the other 

hand, the depiction of an old man’s lust, which may seem disgusting to some readers, is 

actually something that the narrative delights in, describing it playfully and showing the 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

138 

 

appeal of the transgression. “Epstein” therefore exhibits a mix of comedy and moving 

sympathy for the main character, whilst the element that imbues the story with life is the 

brutal blow of reality: at the heart of the story is the ruthless turn of events brought about 

by cardiac arrest.  

In a way, Roth sees the human stain as what we inherit from our progenitors, 

which is how the Bible explains “original sin”, as all humans have inherited it from our 

first parents, Adam and Eve. In Patrimony (1991), Roth wrote about his father’s illness 

and there is a scene in which he has to clean his father’s excrements in the bathroom. This 

can serve to illustrate the physicality of our bodies, as we are unable to control them 

because of old age and illness. But this is what he realizes will remain of us. It is the 

human stain that is passed on to the next generation. In Portnoy’s Complaint there is also 

an image of excrement but the narrative includes the question of an added meaning to that 

physical reality, as David Brauner points out, and this is part of the comic reading of 

Freud and psychoanalysis, because excrement means something, as it has a morally 

unclean connotation and Alex feels ashamed of it (Brauner 2000: 80).  

This interest in portraying the moral struggle of characters by the means of 

descriptions of the human stain can be found in Roth’s later fiction too, such as in 

Indignation: That is why a keyword in this book is disgusting, which is what the stain is 

to Marcus, who wants everything to be clean, right, and nice. But this purity is something 

hard to find at his job in his father’s kosher butcher shop, where he has to eviscerate 

chickens. The stain, then, is our common heritage and it is shown through images of fluids 

of the body, which, although they are disgusting to behold, ironically become more 

obvious when the characters are looking for purity. 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

139 

 

The Talmud and the Jewish laws and tradition have been considered an important 

element in the study of transgression in Roth, as can be seen in the work of Debra Shostak 

(2004) or Alan Cooper, who for example sees “Epstein” as an ironic account of a man 

whose affair is especially scandalous because of his Jewish heritage, and he sees this as 

the reason why the consequences of his actions escape his control (Cooper 1996: 27). 

However, it ought to be taken into account that Roth’s rebellion is actually against a much 

broader morality than the Jewish law. 

As can be noted in the letter quoted above, the reason why many Jews were 

outraged, was, as Roth put it, because he revealed their “secret”: “that the perils of human 

nature afflict the members of our minority” (qtd. in Pierpont 2013: 10). From here, we 

can understand clearly that the human stain is also on people who are Jewish, and this 

also implies that the moral complexities that his characters face do not belong exclusively 

to the Jews, as it affects everyone. It is important to note that anyhow, moral crisis must 

not be silenced in literature. Therefore, in these novels the human stain will be used to 

speak out on the reality of human nature as Roth sees it. 

 

 

II.1.3. The Cleaning of Physical Impurities: the Mikvah  

 

In Roth, there is not grief, but rather a scandalous sense of delight in impurity in 

the narrative, particularly when it comes to sexuality. The human stain plays a key role 

in the representation of impurity in sexuality, but firstly, there are also images of the 

human stain of bodily fluids in an element signifying purity: water. So, swimming and 

water signify purity, and as Ira Nadel points out, in the Jewish laws, in the Talmud, it 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

140 

 

means “the cleansing of the body and the spirit” (Nadel 2018: 38). That is why the same 

can be said from a Christian point of view, as Jesus used water as a symbol for rebirth, 

which is why in turn it points to baptism from a Christian perspective. In Matthew’s 

Gospel, the account of how John the Baptist baptizes Jesus can be found in Chapter III 

verses 13-17, following the Jewish rite of purification: “Then Jesus came from Galilee to 

the Jordan to be baptized by John. But John tried to deter him, saying, I need to be 

baptized by you, and do you come to me?’ Jesus replied, ‘Let it be so now; it is proper 

for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.’ Then John consented. As soon as Jesus was 

baptized, he went up out of the water”. The verb “to baptize” in the original Greek has 

various meanings, that interestingly range from “to clean” or “to wash” to its opposite, 

“to stain”. Likewise, in Roth’s text, the stain is not only the opposite of purity, but it can 

also become the means to clean, surprisingly.  

If in “Epstein” the stain had to be cleaned, and could not be washed with just 

water, in ST, water and bodily fluids such as semen connote purity. It is a possible answer 

to the impurity of the human stain, becoming the other side of the coin or rather, the same 

thing, as it is in water just as in the stain that human beings find they are in their element. 

Like babies floating in the amniotic fluid, when Roth’s characters find that protective 

cushion, it allows them to float freely. Swimming and being in the water are linked to 

sexuality in ST, when Sabbath meets Drenka by the river, as it appeared in the first part 

of “Goodbye, Columbus” too, when Neil and Brenda start their relationship in the pool; 

and in AP, the intoxication of Merry with her father happens at the beach, by the sea. In 

HS, Coleman Silk finds freedom and purity in his relationship with Faunia, in a rural area: 

The human stain allows for a play with language of the sacred and the profane. For that 

reason, Faunia can be described as “anointed” by Coleman’s semen (Roth 2000: 226).  In 

DA, it is blood and not water which acquires importance in the sexual relationship 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

141 

 

between Consuela and Kepesh. In this way, the human stain in its images of bodily fluids 

and water presents a positive image of sexual relationships.  

 Another example of how sexual desire is represented in other works by Roth, such 

as in Indignation, is when Marcus meets Olivia. He starts what is considered a dirty and 

immoral relationship by the Dean, but to Marcus, being with Olivia is deeply liberating 

and enriching: Not only is she the one who initiates their sexual relationship, thereby 

changing his behavior, thoughts and prospects, but Olivia also represents a reversal of 

values: She is the one to point out to Marcus that the dirty work at his father’s shop 

actually makes him “clean”, giving him integrity. Marcus challenges this view by telling 

her how he had to clean out the garbage cans in the street and how ashamed he was. But 

Olivia is interested in the “rancid” details of impurity of his life.  

This rendering of physicality has been much discussed in Roth studies, but often 

have been taken for a mere desire to shock with unlikely depictions of human experiences. 

Hermione Lee, for instance, describes Roth’s novels as being “full of tasting, licking and 

chewing, vomiting, regurgitating, weeping and excreting, and, conversely, of forbidden 

foods, constipated fathers, teachers with migraines, and women who prefer not to suck 

cocks or drink sperm. Roth is, preeminently, the novelist of orifices and blockages, of 

frustrated gratification.” (Lee 1982: 14 qtd. in Cooper 1996: 20). This is part of the 

experience and the representation of the “thrilling profane”, a phrase used by Roth in his 

80th anniversary speech (Roth 2014: 57). Characters such as Sabbath seem repellent to 

many people, because of his joy in defilement, but this is also Roth’s intention. 

Not only does Sabbath appear immersed in the experience of lust and desire, also 

Drenka in that same novel, Rita Cohen in AP, Coleman and Faunia in HS, and Kepesh 

and Consuela in DA. As Roth Pierpont argues about Sabbath, Roth wants to “push us 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

142 

 

through these repellent qualities to a wider embrace of the human animal” (2013:198). 

When asked about the “repellent” quality of ST, Philip Roth replies “I wanted to let the 

repellent in. [...] Because we try so hard not to see it. [...] We just throw an ugly name on 

it and look away.” (Roth qtd. in Pierpont198, ellipsis mine). This is why authors such as 

Henry Miller are an important influence on Roth in the aspect of the repellent and the 

“impertinent minutiae of male desire” (198). As Parker Royal argues in his study on the 

literary references in Roth’s work, which was mentioned earlier in this chapter, names 

such as Miller’s are not only present in the novels because Roth’s character David Kepesh 

is a professor of Literature, but “most of these names are the same ones that come up in 

almost any discussion of those that Roth admires” as the author and his character share 

the same influences (Parker Royal 2007: 22). Including the body, the sexual, and the 

repellent aspects of human nature is a decision that Roth took consciously, which means 

that reading these novels through the lens of the human stain will be useful in order to 

better understand their overall meaning. The question is how this representation of the 

repellent can be reconciled with the sensual aspects of the narrative. The novel that shows 

this contrast or synthesis most strikingly is ST, and it will provide the key images to guide 

us in the process of interpreting the stain. 

The human stain allows Roth to play with the philosophical aesthetic-ethical 

category, to challenge the notion of the common moral values in order to discover in 

fiction what lies beyond simple categories (See Valerie Roberge’s essay on these 

philosophical questions in Roth’s character Zuckerman: Roberge, 2017). As Roth 

Pierpont notes, only with ST did Roth take up the challenge to let the repellent in fully 

and in a coherent way: “bringing a rigorous intellect and aching honesty to the subject of 

the human body -compulsive, smelly, beautiful, ugly, riddled with cancer and love, 

corruptible only in death” (2013:199). Debra Shostak comments on this in her 1999 essay 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

143 

 

on the role of the abject and otherness among other things in The Breast, and she also 

addresses this in her book Countertexts (Shostak 1999; 2004). Roth identifies the opposite 

tendency, the will to get rid of the repellent in order to achieve purity, with the discourse 

of those who wanted to get rid of the Jews, the rich, or whoever people hate.  

That idea is held by those who think that “if we can just slay the repellent, we will 

be pure” (Roth Pierpont 2013: 199). Such reasoning refers to the mirage of purity 

analyzed earlier. The reason why ST in particular reveals the most insatiable and 

voracious character is because Roth gives a new twist to the theme of the problematic 

nature of moral authority and social rules that he had treated much earlier in novels such 

as When She Was Good (1967). In most of his work, he explores the danger that arises 

from the demand of moral authority as characters impose rules on their lives and at the 

same time feel skeptical about their ability or will to keep them.  

If it is Kepesh who crossed the limits of his personal convictions, thereby going 

into a “moral and psychological unknown”, Sabbath is the character who goes even 

further than all his predecessors. That is why ST unleashes the repellent unlike any other 

of Roth’s novels, it had to be a “wicked book”. In a way, Roth had to look for an adequate 

glass to serve his drink in. It was a strong drink that required a fitting container, so the 

transgressive reality of the human stain could not be represented in an agreeable form or 

in aseptic terms.  

I will outline the following realities that the images of the human stain convey: 

Firstly, it shows how lust is inappropriateness in essence. Sexuality appears as a moral 

transgression first and foremost. However, because of the pleasure and comfort derived 

from it, characters find joy and hope in life because of it. Secondly, the stain shows how 

sexuality is used to keep virtue and moral duties at bay. Thirdly, it is used to keep death 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

144 

 

itself at bay, and this aspect will further be considered in depth in the third chapter of this 

dissertation. 

 

 

II.1.4. The Fall and The Thrilling Profane 

 

The first aspect that the stain reveals is a moral transgression, as we have 

considered in Chapter I with Epstein’s infidelity. Roth explores this theme in a new light 

much later, in AP with the story of the Swede, taking up a character who is innocent but 

who finds himself doing something he should not have done. To the Swede, there is only 

one way of explaining his responsibility in the radical and brutal change that took place 

in his daughter, and that is that the cause must lie in himself: “the cause for the disaster 

has for him to be a transgression”, either a real or an imagined one, and so he sets out to 

find this transgression (Roth 1997: 91). The theme of the Fall is connected to the concept 

of “hubris” used by the Greeks, and it has been analyzed in Roth’s work, specifically in 

HS, by Bakewell (2004), Rankine (2005) and Sánchez-Canales (2009). In contrast, 

Lander (2019) and Goldberg (2020) study transgression in AP focusing on the 

representation of women as demonic figures and the connections with Milton’s Paradise 

Lost. On the one hand, excessive pride and vanity are the human flaws that lead to the fall 

and cause the self-deceit characteristic of the tragedy which Roth slowly unveils in his 

stories. On the other hand, the representation of the stain in the body is crucial in order to 

debunk the myth of the pastoral.  

The Swede’s transgression as Zuckerman imagines, lies in the kiss. In Lander’s 

interpretation, the figure of Rita Cohen emerges as the devil who tempts the Swede just 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

145 

 

as Merry tempted him (Lander 2019: 51). In the scene where Rita challenges the Swede, 

she exposes herself to him, tempting him to have sex with her. Here Roth includes an 

explicit image of her labia at the same time that she mimics Merry’s speech impeded 

voice. Lander points at how Rita metaphorically take the role of Merry, tempting the 

Swede to enact incest, just as Satan entered the serpent into the mouth, Rita parodies 

Merry’s stutter (51). In this way, the Swede returns to the memory of the kiss, when he 

himself mimicked his daughter’s stutter and when he felt that transgressive incestuous 

desire. Rita is described as “imp of upheaval” (Roth 1997: 146), which Lander notes is 

how Satan is described in Milton’s work, as an “imp of fraud” (51). 

 In my view, the role of Rita as someone devilish who deceives and confounds the 

Swede is rendered more powerful by the use of the human stain. Firstly, it is found in the 

vivid description of Rita’s “membranous tissue veined and mottled and waxy with the 

moist tulip sheen of flayed flesh” (Roth 1997: 145). Secondly, as Lander notes, “Rita’s 

body is presented as a site of uncultivated chaos” (52). The stain of chaos is rendered in 

a way that appeals to the senses of the Swede: “Step right up and take a whiff” Rita tells 

him: “The swamp. It sucks you in. Smell it, Swede” (Roth 1997: 146). By comparing 

Rita’s vagina with the “swamp” with its dangerous ability to suck people in, the text 

suggests that it smells in a way that in uncontainable. Lander compares this with Leo 

Marx’s “counterforce”, the two opposed narratives that shaped the Elizabethan 

perceptions of America (qtd. in Lander 52). He notes that the excess of Rita’s sexuality 

represents America as a “savage site” while the Swede had a pastoral dream of America 

as an “unspoiled garden”, which was represented by his image of the pure, innocent body 

of his daughter when she was a child. The contradictory feelings caused by this clash 

between desire and disgust cause the Swede to become destabilized and his fantasy is 

completely disrupted by the effect of Rita’s actions and words (Lander 53). While I agree 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

146 

 

with Lander that Merry is in fact, Roth’s Miltonic serpent, I see that there is a need to 

address the presence of the stain of transgression. While there is indeed a cataclysm that 

is caused by Merry’s bomb and Dawn also transgresses with her adultery, what is missing 

from these interpretations is an analysis of the power of the human stain to transgress. 

In AP, the word “transgression” is repeated for emphasis throughout the text, in 

reference to the biblical Fall, the story of original sin in Genesis. In the novel, it is 

suggested that the Swede’s particular moral and fatal transgression has to do with love 

and sexuality. Sánchez-Canales has written about this transgression in his essay titled 

“‘There Is a Bomb Blast in the Most Elegant Greek Revival House:’ Classical Motifs in 

Philip Roth’s American Pastoral.” Previously, in chapter I, I made reference to the image 

of purity as analyzed by Sánchez Canales in this novel’s representation of the Pastoral. 

His essay is included in a book entirely about this novel, edited by Velichka Ivanova 

(2011). In his reading of the Swede’s fall as his fate because of the predetermined events 

that overcome him, Sánchez Canales points at how the Moira, the gods of fate, are the 

ones who cause the doom the of main character (Sánchez Canales 2011: 207-208). 

However, this implication that the Swede was not responsible after all of his 

transgression leaves the question of why there is such a tortured search for his own part 

in the transgression, and the fact that he believes he has taken part in it. The text points at 

the Swede’s blame: just as Merry asked herself if nobody had a conscience, her father 

delves deeper and deeper into his own conscience, in search of his mistake, his faults. 

When Rita confronts him in the scene at the hotel, the Swede escapes “from something 

that he could no longer name” (Roth 1997: 147). 

I believe that this mysterious thing that tortures him is his own human stain. 

Sánchez Canales acknowledges that there is one crime that the Swede is indeed guilty of: 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

147 

 

passing for what he is not, which is the hamartia that causes his fall (208). Sánchez 

Canales interprets the stain as the Swede’s past, and renouncing to it is what constitutes 

“passing”. I agree that the stain is at the heart of his transgression; but I believe it has a 

wider meaning, including more than just the Swede’s past. One the one hand, it is true 

that the stain can be his Jewishness, which he tries to efface, as Sánchez Canales points 

out, but I think it also encompasses the moment when the Swede kisses his daughter, and 

in my view this action comes from a rebellious, transgressive, dark and evil nature that is 

deep inside him. Each time the Swede looks back to the kiss, he revisits the reality of his 

hidden stain: “And in the everyday world, nothing to be done but respectably carry on the 

huge pretense of living as himself, with all the shame of masquerading as the ideal man” 

(Roth 1997: 174). It is true that it is the narrator who inquires after this transgression using 

the Swede as a character, building the fiction of his life, and so he imagines the scene of 

the kiss, so the reader who is aware of this knows it is a product of his fantasy, but at the 

same time it is very real to the Swede. 

In order to do this, the narrator transports the reader magically into a vision of the 

Swede as “another assailable man” spending a beautiful summer day at the seaside with 

his eleven-year-old daughter who adores him. The beauty of this scene will be destroyed 

by the human stain that creeps into the scene sneakily. In the midst of an atmosphere of 

light and innocent pleasure, a young Merry asks her father to kiss her the way he kisses 

her mother: “half innocently, half audaciously, precociously playing the grown-up girl” 

(Roth 1997: 89). The transgressive kiss has been interpreted by R.L. Goldberg as essential 

in this novel because with the echoes of Milton’s Paradise Lost, it “imagines father-

daughter incest as the locus of destruction, rupture and devastation” (Goldberg 2020: 35). 

This is the image where Goldberg sees how Roth “uncovers, beneath the suburban surface 

of the Levov’s life, the rot at the center of the all-too-sanguine American ethos” (35). The 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

148 

 

rot is the human stain which remains hidden under the surface and it consists of a 

transgressive desire. The image of their kiss will plague the Swede, who remembers it 

with “unflagging remorse, even for that kiss when she was eleven and he was thirty-six 

and the two of them, in their wet bathing suit, were driving home together from the Deal 

beach” (Roth 1997: 174). The wetness of their bathing suit and the fact that they are 

driving together back from the beach are details that suggest the moment of transgressive 

passion appropriately. 

It is important to consider the ironic implications that the name “Merry” bears 

here. This aptronym (which is actually, a malaptronym) points at the girl’s deceiving 

nature. Her initial cheerfulness and her innocent joy eventually turn into the darkness of 

her suffering. Her uneasiness and rage at injustice, her stuttering and finally, her crimes, 

transform her into the opposite of a happy creature. She is a miserable girl. To her request 

for that incestuous kiss, her father responds by making fun of her stuttering, which is the 

most painful thing he could do to her, thereby losing the control he always had. And then, 

“just when he had come to understand that the summer romance required some 

readjusting all around, he lost his vaunted sense of proportion [...]” and he kissed her 

passionately (91, ellipsis mine). This action, done without thinking, was utterly 

transgressive because never “had he given way to anything so alien to the emotional rules 

by which he was governed [...]” (Roth 1997: 91, ellipsis mine). The Swede remembers 

this moment as his lapse in responsibility, “the origins of their suffering” (92). His efforts 

to fix this moment, his distance from her, meant to reassure her that he would not do 

anything like that again, altered their special relationship and only made her feel worse. 

He wanted to help her heal the stuttering but with one misstep he may have crushed her. 

Throughout the second part of the novel, the questions return: Is that ambiguous kiss and 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

149 

 

the Swede’s mockery of Merry the original “wound”? Are there any more wounds that 

make Merry get to the point of planting that bomb? 

Bearing this burden of guilt, the Swede becomes more and more vulnerable, his 

transgression being his weakness. On this subject, Roth points out that both Mickey 

Sabbath in ST, and the Swede in AP are marked by vulnerability (Roth Pierpont 2013: 

213). And some characters, like the Swede’s brother or Rita, are his enemies, making him 

sink further into chaos. Rita, a devilish figure, subjects the Swede to a total humiliation, 

laughing at his powerlessness, mocking him and trying to lure him into temptation: “A 

child in terror of being disgraced. Isn’t there anything else in there except your famous 

purity?” (Roth 1997: 143). In order to show him reality, she uses not only verbal violence, 

but also her sexuality, trying to get him to lose control and yield to her. In this scene, she 

compels him to hear her words, then look, smell and taste her. Even though she tries to 

appeal to his “human nature”, he resists and does not give in to his impulses. Her 

depravity is the reality he cannot and will not face, and she takes it to the extreme, 

imitating Merry. At that point, he flees from her “not from the childlike cruelty and 

meanness, not even from the vicious provocation, but from something that he could no 

longer name” (Roth 1997: 147). The scene with Rita refers back to the shameful memory 

of the kiss that the Swede thought marked the origin of Merry’s problematic relationship 

with him, making him think of his own assailability, the moment when he lost control, 

and his fall. 

The fall appears in scenes like the one with Merry’s kiss or with Rita’s tempting, 

but it also appears in the shape of dialogue, by presenting opposing views in a debate for 

or against morality. The conversation between the characters in the last chapters of AP 

deals, among other things, with moral autonomy as they discuss the fact that a 

pornographic film, “Deep Throat”, had gained a lot of mainstream viewers. The Swede’s 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

150 

 

father is scandalized by this interest in what he considers to be filth, “degrading things” 

and he believes it is better to “lock the kids up” so they do not see the film (Roth 1997: 

358). He laments the country’s morality, as he considers the movie an “affront to decency 

and to decent people” (358). The Swede’s family tried to keep that standard of morality 

and decency, but they choose to ignore the fact that their daughter has become a killer. 

The narrative, though, shows how the Swede is aware of this reality and it 

torments him. Marcia, who wants to be transgressive, points out that the biblical story of 

the Fall teaches that “without transgression there is no knowledge”, while Levov says that 

what they taught him is that you obey God or you pay for it, suffer from it (Roth 1997: 

360). Marcia makes fun of his belief by asking whether that means that if you obey God, 

there will not be “terrible things”, no more suffering. But Levov knows that even though 

they tried to live as best as they could, disgrace befell their family, so his theory about 

suffering does not stand. This crucial direct reference to the biblical narrative of 

transgression has been noticed by the scholars who have analyzed this novel. For instance, 

Sánchez Canales highlights how Marcia focuses on the fact that the Fall brings about 

knowledge, but she “forgets” to mention that it also has a break as a consequence (2011: 

211). This is very important because that break is the reason for the Swede’s suffering. 

The dialogue also shows Levov’s foolishness in believing that his indignation 

could wash away corruption, and that the past was better than the present. To Levov, this 

corruption consists of “drugs, pornography and violence”, which is shocking because he 

seems to forget that his own granddaughter is a killer, but that is because the family 

believes in “Merry’s absolute innocence” (Roth 1997: 364-365). The Swede is even more 

scandalized by the fact that the man who is having an affair with his wife speaks of 

“morality” and “transgression” shamelessly, “as though it were not he [...] who had 

transgressed to the utmost by violating the unity of a family already half destroyed” (Roth 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

151 

 

1997: 366, ellipsis mine). The Swede, on the other hand, has also had an affair with 

somebody who was supposed to help but then he finds out she is the one who hid his 

daughter, and so kept him from finding her sooner. This is how Roth makes the irony of 

hypocrisy apparent in multiple ways. 

Underneath the conversation lies the real meaning of the discussion, only visible 

to the Swede: the violence and betrayal that he knows are in his family: “the mockery of 

human integrity, every ethical obligation destroyed” (Roth 1997: 380). The Swede feels 

like he is cracking up and sinking under the weight of everything that he cannot 

understand. He is alone in his search for Merry because Dawn has decided to rid herself 

of the child who is the embodiment of the human stain: “Rid of the stain of your child, 

the stain on her credentials, rid of the stain of the destruction of the store, she can begin 

to resume the uncontaminated life” (385). But no one can rid themselves of the stain, and 

so Dawn engages in an adulterous relationship with her neighbor, as the Swede will find 

out. 

 

 

II.1.5. The Stain as the Link between Subjectivity and Materiality 

 

As Debra Shostak writes, while in earlier novels such as The Anatomy Lesson 

(1983), “transgression is played out literally on the field of the body”, ST and DA, are 

“both paeans and elegies for the dying male body, stressing that the experience of 

subjectivity is inextricable from materiality” (Shostak 2004: 15; consult also Shostak in 

Aarons & Sánchez Canales 2014). Further examples can be found in HS, which is also 

about an aging man and how his identity is linked to his body, Coleman Silk, and in the 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

152 

 

early short story “Epstein”, which also shares this feature. But most prominently, Philip 

Roth created a character who is particularly used to study the selfhood as embodied: 

Professor David Kepesh. The savage urge of sex, the purity of the sexual drive is what 

really interests Kepesh, and in DA he will learn new lessons about its power. He speaks 

confidently about “the delightful imbecility of lust. All this talk! [...] These are the veils 

of the dance. Don’t confuse it with seduction. What you’re disguising is the thing that got 

you there, the pure lust. The veils veil the blind drive” (Roth 2001: 15, ellipsis mine). But 

the blind sexual drive is mysterious; it cannot be understood or explained: “Talking this 

talk, you have a misguided sense, as does she, that you know what you’re dealing with. 

[...] You know you want it and you know you’re going to do it and nothing is going to 

stop you” (15, ellipsis mine). This blindness and invisibility are ironically made visible 

by the human stain. And the stain becomes the link between the story of the characters, 

their soul and mind, and their body, and this happens particularly in the battlefront of sex. 

It is argued that for most of his career, Roth has focused on the embodiment of 

the masculine subjectivity, especially in the novels that have David Kepesh as the main 

character (Shostak 2004: 21). Similarly, Maggie McKinley has written about the fact that 

Roth’s work does in fact feature a high dose of “testosterone” (2019). The “ugly” scenes 

in his fiction are indeed “couched in a male character’s fixation on his own masculine 

power and sexuality” (McKinley 2019: 93). Nevertheless, like Maggie McKinley I am 

compelled to look closer to these disturbing scenes in order to better understand Roth’s 

work. However, in this study I intend to show how the anatomy of desire presented by 

Roth in these four novels by means of the human stain concerns the identity of all the 

characters, male and female. Therefore, the image of the stain allows an exploration of 

the embodiment of female subjectivity too.  



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

153 

 

For instance, ST offers a striking portrayal of the sheer power of sexuality, but the 

story of Sabbath and Drenka is not just about a sexual relationship, it is about a love affair. 

Pozorski offers a close reading of the language used to characterize Drenka, to show how 

she represents the force against the Puritan strictures (2011: 156). Roth Pierpont compares 

ST to Nabokov’s Lolita (1955) in that ST “is a retrospective account of a transgressive 

passion” and she considers that having an interesting personality characterized by 

freedom, “Drenka Balich is undoubtedly a heroine, a worthy descendant of the great 

adulteresses of European literature” (Roth Pierpont 2013: 194). Both Leo Tolstoy’s Anna 

Karenina (1877) and Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1856) are important literary depictions 

of adultery and revolve around the will of the individual and the longing to satisfy one’s 

desire (For a detailed bibliography of Roth’s works, see Sánchez Canales & Aarons 

2014). Roth’s heroine Drenka Balich also tries to break free from the expectations of 

society and the ties of her marriage, like her literary predecessors. 

 

 

II.1.6. The Representation of Men and Women in Roth’s Fiction and the Stain of 

Misogyny  

 

Even though the scope of this thesis does not include readings related to gender 

studies, it is necessary to address the issue of the representation of women in Roth’s work. 

In fact, it is unavoidable, firstly because the subject of the relationships between men and 

women is crucial in Roth’s work and for the purpose of this study, the human stain appears 

in the context of sexuality on many occasions. Moreover, the representation of women is 

closely connected to the subject of scandal in Roth’s work. And secondly, as many 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

154 

 

scholars have found, it is important to interpret the texts correctly in order not to read 

them mistakenly especially in these times. After the publication of Portnoy’s Complaint, 

ST and the Zuckerman books, Roth received attention and criticism due to his portrayal 

of sex and women and the male perspective. However, I find that even though his female 

characters are at times depicted in humiliating ways or situations, men also suffer from 

these shameful scenes and after all, every character, male or female, is described as 

bearing the human stain equally.  

In his novel Deception (1990), a book that plays with life and fiction and deals 

with an adulterous affair, Roth includes a mock trial between himself and his mistress, 

responding to the charge of sexism and the claim that his female characters are “vicious 

stereotypes” (Roth 1990: 110). The character, named Philip Roth, claims: “[Y]ou may do 

your own sex a disservice when you postulate intelligent young women as lacking the 

courage to be desirable -as having no aggression, no imagination, no daring, no 

adventurousness, and no perversity” (Roth 1990: 111). Roth’s desirous and aggressive 

women are also characterized by the human stain of perversity, in my reading of his work. 

For that reason, I propose rereading the characters of Drenka (ST), Faunia (HS), Consuela 

(DA), among many others as possessing these qualities and as women who are marked 

by the literary resource of the human stain. It is necessary to focus, as Maren Scheurer 

has argued, on “a more complex vision of womanhood often occluded by images of 

female virtue and demureness” (Scheurer 2017: 14). To sum up, it is important to consider 

not only what Roth says about women, but also how he says it, in order to assess his 

contribution to feminism but also to understand more fully the meaning of the human 

stain. 

From early on in his career, Roth has in fact made it a point to delve deeper in two 

aspects: on the one hand, into the feeling of men that are not only tainted by desire, but 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

155 

 

also vulnerable to it. And, on the other hand, he has also represented female vulnerability: 

“Beginning with Letting Go, I began to write about female vulnerability, and to see this 

vulnerability not only as it determined the lives of the women -who felt it frequently at 

their core- but the men to whom they looked for love and support” (Roth 2017: 120). The 

interest in how vulnerability in its different forms shapes relationships lies in how it is 

imagined through the resource of the human stain. This will be analyzed by looking at the 

relationship between Sabbath and Drenka, and secondly, to the relationship between 

Kepesh and Consuela.  

According to David Gooblar, as he states in the introduction to the special issue 

of Philip Roth Studies dedicated to the subject of Roth and Women, feminist critics of 

Roth’s work consider that Roth’s female characters are represented as inferior to his male 

characters, “mere types, never rising to the complexity or depth of the fully human” 

(Gooblar 2012: 8). However, as Maren Scheurer notes, by studying the narrative 

techniques that Roth uses to deconstruct the sexism of some of his characters it becomes 

clear that the representation of women depends on a male perspective that is shown as 

flawed by the same narrative: “A close reading shows that one-dimensional or 

stereotypical portrayals of women, which appear frequently in Roth’s work, can be traced 

back to a male character’s limited or flawed perspective” (Scheurer 2017: 14). It is exactly 

for this reason that, as Debra Shostak states in her essay on Roth and Gender in The 

Cambridge Companion to Philip Roth, “Roth’s work can appear as much a prescient 

critique of misogynist attitudes as a purveyor of them” (2007: 112). 

Roth’s work has been read from a feminist perspective in various ways. Julie 

Husband notes that Roth’s early novels are both powerful and ambivalent “critiques of 

patriarchy” (Husband 2005: 25-26). Sam B. Girgus claimed that Roth’s novel When She 

Was Good (1967) “suggests that for Roth becoming a man and achieving true sexual and 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

156 

 

personal liberation require a culture of freedom for women as well” (1989: 153). Rachael 

McLennan has written an essay about this novel too, offering a new reading and 

rehabilitating the female protagonist Lucy Nelson (McLennan 2020). 

In her essay on the psychoanalytic aesthetic and gender politics in Roth’s work, 

Maren Scheurer has argued in favor of Roth’s feminism, that is, “his critique of rigid 

gender roles and sexual politics” by looking at how his fiction engages with Freud’s 

writing and ideas (Scheurer 2017: 14). Similarly, McKinley has written about the center 

of Roth’s work, which is that “people are not perfect”; “we are set up to get these men 

wrong”; and that is why a closer examination is necessary to read Roth’s critique of “his 

own flawed protagonist even as he draws him with affection (McKinley 2019: 94-94). To 

sum up, McKinley finds Roth’s portrayal of Portnoy’s failures and Peter Tarnopol’s 

unmanning experiences as a call for empathy (95). This is why she insists on the need of 

answering to Roth’s call and she urges the reader to reread his work in order to “reassess 

characters and circumstances, and question assumptions” (96). 

As to the accusation of misogyny, the question now is how it is possible to 

reconcile feminism and an appreciation of Roth’s portrayal of Sabbath, for example. 

Aimee Pozorski has tackled this issue when writing about the importance of Drenka in 

ST as the force that propels Sabbath and allows for a political reading of the novel too 

(2011: 30-33). In the part of her book about DA, Pozorski also sees Consuela as someone 

who is extremely powerful, as she is the only one who can unexpectedly teach the 

protagonist an important lesson (108). By reading these characters in the context of the 

novel as a whole, it becomes clearer that women are in fact very important in Roth’s work. 

Elisa Albert addresses this issue by pointing out that the answer lies in the nature 

of fiction and its relationship with reality and morality, as it is understood by Roth too. 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

157 

 

That is why an author like her can read the work of a radical feminist like Mary Daly 

while at the same time appreciate the character of Sabbath: “What’s wrong with me that 

his rhapsodies about his extensive international experience with whores don’t raise my 

feminist dander one little bit? How am I not the least bit judgmental of his explicit sexual 

relationship with his college student? Did he murder his first wife? Why don’t I care?” 

(Albert 2020: 9). In each of the scenes that these questions make reference to there are 

images of the human stain that signify the disorder Roth needs to convey in ST. Albert 

goes on to explain the reason for her lack of indignation as a feminist: 

 

Because Roth is a masterful, wily, incisive, and perfectly deranged story-teller, of course. 

Because I’m having so much fun. Because Sabbath is fully human and fully nonexistent. 

Because it’s fiction, which is the only place we are allowed to be truly free. In reading 

(and writing) fiction we get to suspend for a blessed moment the need to be right. To be 

righteous, to uphold what is right. To ‘behave’ ourselves, to speak appropriately, to avoid 

offense, to toe the line. Fiction is, always was, and ever will be the only place we never 

have to lie (Albert 2020: 9).  

 

Albert actually goes on to make the case that Sabbath “can only be on the side of 

radical feminists”, and offers ample evidence for this from the novel, which will be looked 

at later on in this section. First, it is necessary to see where Albert has found this idea 

about fiction and moralism: It is in Roth’s own explanations, defense and definition of 

his fiction, which can be found in his interviews and essays as well as in his own fiction. 

 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

158 

 

Firstly, Roth wants his characters to be realistic rather than likeable. Roth has 

responded to criticism about scenes and characters and the accusation of being 

misogynistic in different ways. Firstly, in his own fiction (see Deception, for example, as 

mentioned above). Secondly, in his interviews, which have been published in Reading 

Myself and Others (1975), for example. When Hermione Lee asked him about the 

feminist objections against his work, Roth replied: “Don’t elevate that by calling it a 

‘feminist’ attack. That’s just stupid reading” (Roth 1976: 130). 

 Thirdly, he also responded to this criticism in a seminar on his work at Bard 

University, in 1999. When faced with the complaint that his female characters are not as 

round or complex as the male characters, or not grounded in sympathy, Roth points at 

some of his characters such as Amy Bellette in The Ghost Writer (1979). He has often 

hinted at the fact that his characters are not necessarily meant to be “likable”, but he urges 

readers to overcome their fear or disgust and look at the characters, for “they are meant 

to be real” (qtd. in Roth Pierpont 2013: 238). Roth also addressed this issue over time in 

several interviews and articles, where the reader can find his desire to capture reality with 

precision in his fiction. In “Writing About Jews”, an essay that dates back to speeches 

from 1962 and 1963, he argues that fiction is not meant to help us affirm common beliefs, 

but that is frees the reader to experience different realities and expand our moral 

consciousness as a result (Roth 2017: 51-52). 

Later, in an interview from 1969, “On Portnoy’s Complaint”, Roth talked about 

obscenity and sexual taboos as the subject of his supposedly obscene book (Roth 2017: 

68). The scandal of Alex Portnoy called for many responses by Roth, where he explains 

how Portnoy’s erotic relationships are marked by his consciousness of his Jewishness, in 

interviews and essays such as “How Did You Come To Write That Book?” and 

“Imagining Jews” (both written in 1974). In that same year, in an interview conducted by 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

159 

 

Joyce Carol Oates, “After Eight Books”, Roth speaks about his portrayal of female 

characters and about the concept of writing as pleasure (Roth 2017: 121). From all of 

these instances it can be gathered that the concept of fiction is key in order to tackle the 

interpretations of “obscene” passages. 

Although Portnoy has famously been deemed one of Roth’s obscenest characters, 

and in this novel, it would seem that the female characters are objectified, Brett Ashley 

Kaplan has tackled the issue of Roth’s representations of women in her essay about PC 

from a feminist standpoint (2019). She presents how Roth “exposes the trouble with 

Jewish masculinity as much as he denigrates Portnoy’s various consorts” (Kaplan 2019: 

69). While Kaplan appreciates Roth’s problematic portrait of The Monkey in PC, she 

believes Roth’s fiction cannot be described as feminist because then it would inform its 

very purpose and structure as a central theme (79). There is a wide range of opinions 

when it comes to Roth’s representation of women. 

If we were to draw a line between the two extremes of these views in Roth 

criticism, at one end we would find readings such as Elisa Albert’s interpretation of 

Sabbath as a feminist character. On the other extreme, one would find Kaplan and 

Shostak’s views, while in the middle, Ivanova believes his fiction exposes rather than 

endorses misogyny. Tending more toward the extreme of ambivalence, we would find 

McKinley’s interpretation of Roth’s complex representation of women. Apart from the 

Special Issue in Philip Roth Studies about Roth and Women (2012), Debra Shostak has 

written a chapter on “Roth and Gender” in The Cambridge Companion to Philip Roth 

(2007), and Mike Witcombe has offered a survey of many of these views after Roth’s 

death (2018). 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

160 

 

Furthermore, when it comes to the representation of women, the reception of 

Roth’s texts has to be taken into account, because readers have elicited interesting 

comments from the author and this exchange of opinions helps to understand the issue 

better. The writer Norman Manea on a tribute to Roth in 2018 provides an interesting 

account: There was a meeting between literature students and Roth, in which the 

accusation of a poor representation of women comes to the surface. On this occasion, 

several female students accused the author of creating simplistic and vulgar caricatures 

of women, with what they perceived as “the same old male chauvinism! All the female 

characters were cardboard cut-outs, lacking in life and complexity!” (Manea 2018). As a 

response to this, Roth read a quote about human nature by the writer Rabelais and also 

quotes from the Sinyavsky-Daniel Trial, in which the two Soviet dissidents were 

convicted:  

 

The prosecutor notes that although the dissident has disguised his intentions, it was 

obvious to any attentive reader, and still more to an official censor, that the mental 

hospital in his work of fiction was a crude metaphor for the Soviet people and the 

communist regime. […] “I’ve got the writers’ constitution here, I’m a member of the 

Union, and there’s no article that demands that the Soviet writer has to describe only 

perfect people, immaculate citizens.” (Manea 2018, n.p.). 

 

With this story, Roth’s intention was to highlight his right to describe imperfect 

people, the opposite of immaculate, that is, with the human stain, and this is his reply to 

those who accuse his fiction of being simplistic or sexist. From the first point in this 

section, which is Roth’s intention to write realistic rather than likeable characters, the 

second point emerges now: Roth is interested in complex, stained human beings, which 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

161 

 

might be offensive, as a natural result. And because of this, the writing sometimes 

includes simplistic views of women, descriptions of abusive behavior or demeaning 

discourse. As Albert puts it, “Roth’s interested, always, in the complexities of human 

behavior and emotion, in what drives people to behave like shitheads, to bust up their 

lives, to die alone, to deny themselves anything so nice and wholesome as healing and 

closure […]” (2020: 11). To sum up, Roth’s lack of interest in immaculate characters is 

due to his interest in stained characters but the fact that his fiction reflects reality with 

ugliness and unfairness as it appears in the world does not mean he has invented that 

reality and is responsible for it. 

After Roth’s death, and in the context of #MeToo, the perceived misogyny in 

Roth’s work has become a contentious subject. In an essay written after Roth passed 

away, writer Zadie Smith wrote that “he had blind spots, prejudices, selves he could 

imagine only partially, or selves he mistook or mislaid. But, unlike many writers, he did 

not aspire to perfect vision. He knew that to be an impossibility (See Smith 2018).” This 

vision of imperfection in the representation of sexuality and relations between men and 

women has been noticed by many authors. In an interview with Vulture following Philip 

Roth’s death, author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, famous for her advocacy of feminism, 

was asked a question: “Would Philip Roth fall into that decidedly un-feminist category?” 

Her reply reveals the tension and difficulty of reading Roth’s work in the #MeToo era. 

The #MeToo movement, which spread virally in 2017 in social media, speaks against 

sexual harassment, and also concerns how works of fiction are read and valued. 

 

 There was a humanity in Philip Roth’s work that is often overlooked when we talk about 

his misogyny. I read his women and roll my eyes but there is a truth there, because there 

are many men like his men. Misogyny is a reality in the world. Maybe there are people 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

162 

 

who want Philip Roth’s misogynists to die at the end of the novel so that they’ll know 

misogyny is bad. But that would be a little easy, wouldn’t it? The world is complex. 

People are not perfect. (Ngozi Adichie 2018). 

 

Ngozi’s comment highlights a crucial ambivalence about Roth’s fictional 

representation of relationships between men and women. How can it feature humanity 

and misogyny at the same time? The irony is that Roth is praised for his realism, but he 

is accused for his portrayal of women and men’s treatment of women. Yet, in highlighting 

the humanity in his work, Ngozi is effectively calling for inclusiveness in readings of his 

novels; that the reader should pay equal critical attention to the women as well as the 

men. Roth’s work certainly does not strive to help readers feel comfortable, in general, 

and this is intentional. 

To many feminist readers, in his novels there are uncomfortable scenes in which 

they interpret the male gaze as being privileged while the characters who are women are 

represented mainly as the objects of desire. It is true that his work seems to be more 

focused on the depiction of the male sexual perspective, and some have criticized Roth 

because they interpret his work as being only about himself. For example, Brenda is 

considered a “flat character” and Roth therefore would have a “lack of curiosity” by Dara 

Horn, her strongest accusation being that of narcissism: “Philip Roth’s works are only 

curious about Philip Roth” (Horn). Unfortunately, even though as a feminist it is hard to 

grapple with some scenes in his work, his work proves to be more nuanced than what 

might initially appear on the surface. In consequence, taking into consideration that 

Roth’s work is complex, I believe some female characters should be reassessed. 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

163 

 

It is important to understand the role of women in his work rather than leave it 

aside, on the assumption that that is what Roth is doing. Elaine Showalter, a feminist 

critic, was also asked recently about this issue by Christopher O’Shea: “Did you find all 

of the maleness, all the focus on male sexuality, limiting, or maybe suffocating — or is 

that a caricature of what Roth is all about?” Her answer, just like Ngozi’s, highlights the 

fact that there are passages that are offensive but also passages that are flattering to 

women: 

 

 There are certainly passages in some of the novels — not so much about sexuality but 

about the women who are the objects of sexuality — which I find offensive and find hard 

to teach. I think that Roth is certainly a writer of male experience primarily, but I don’t 

think that that should stop people from reading the books. I am a feminist critic by 

conviction. That has been my whole career, and I have loved Roth since the beginning. 

He is just a great artist, and he is also a very compassionate writer. So despite the fact 

that there are these passages that I skip over when I’m reading, I don’t think that puts 

Roth beyond the pale in any sense at all. And there are passages of great tenderness and 

understanding for women throughout the whole range of his novels. James Joyce wasn’t 

perfect either. (Showalter n.p.)  

 

Her answer suggests that although there are scenes which are hard to digest for a 

feminist reader, this should not cast a shadow over the rest of his work (see “Teaching 

Literature in Dark Times” in Showalter 2003: 131-140). However, I believe it is important 

not to skip these passages, but to develop a reading of these scenes within the context of 

the whole novel in order to explore their meaning. Roth has claimed many times that his 

intention is not for readers to feel comfortable, but to offer insight into the complex and 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

164 

 

dark nature of human beings, which is the imperfection that Ngozi refers to. To read Roth 

for confirmation of his misogyny may tragically deter us from appreciating the humanity 

that Ngozi finds at the heart of Roth’s novels.  

In contrast, Elisa Albert offers a reading of Sabbath as a feminist, using some 

characteristics from the theory of Mary Daly in Gyn-Ecology (1978). Albert argues that 

Sabbath is “non-linear”, “anti-authoritarian”, “non-rational”, “disrespectful of cultural 

norms”, “tied immutably to his feelings, his grief, his rage”, “refuses to let go of his 

grievances” and finally, he is “blasphemous” (Albert 2020: 10). For all these reasons, it 

can be said he fights against the patriarchy, according to Albert, and so his rebellion is far 

from being against women, he never uses his desire or sex to hurt women. Most 

interestingly, as Albert points out, “Sex is how Sabbath asserts himself against death”, 

for his enemy is death, which is what Chapter III will deal with more extensively, when 

looking at the issue of Eros and Thanatos (10). Albert’s reassessment of Sabbath throws 

a new light on this topic. 

The problem is that much of the criticism of Roth’s representation of women 

stems from a reading that fails to see the depth and complexity of Roth’s female 

characters, and this can be seen particularly in ST, one of his best novels. Harold Bloom 

claims this to be Roth’s best novel in his Introduction to his book Philip Roth (2003). 

However, the truth is that ST is also one of the most scandalous and offensive books 

written by Roth. The agency and complexity of the women that feature in this novel are 

essential aspects to the plot and the themes that run through it. I will also connect the 

representation of these women with the other novels that are the object of this study. 

Moreover, the fact that there are different women struggling with the same issues 

as the male characters shows Roth’s keen interest in writing about women with just as 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

165 

 

much precision and exuberance as about men. As the writer Edna O’Brien acknowledges 

in an interview after Roth’s death, in his work women are many things: “They constitute 

the weepers, the love terrorists, the fault-finders, the avengers and the hotsie-totsies. They 

are all fluent and fiery. This room is both cradle and battlefield. They represent ecstasy 

and nemesis” (O’Brien 2018, n.p.). I agree with O’Brien that Roth’s female characters 

are full of meaning and force. Additionally, it is important to analyze the narrator’s role 

and consciousness to understand his gaze on women and the tension between tragedy, 

humor and irony in the text. In this section, I intend to show the complexity and depth of 

his female characters as well as how it is possible to appreciate his fiction from a feminist 

standpoint. 

When interviewed with the New Yorker, author Lisa Halliday comments that the 

issue of accusing Roth’s writing of misogyny comes from the perception of sexual 

predation, a confusion of lust with misogyny (Halliday, n.p.). In her view, a voracious 

sexual appetite is not misogyny, it is an intense desire. People who were close to Philip 

Roth knew he was in awe with many women and his narrators are in awe of many female 

characters. As to the criticism of presenting characters who are not perfect, many readers 

understand how literature is about presenting people as they are. 

In fact, the human stain is on the bodies of men and of women, marking the 

relationships between men and women, and showing the “refractory” quality of the 

characters: a rebellious, incombustible behavior that is difficult to control which was 

analyzed in Chapter I of this dissertation. Throughout Roth’s fiction there are many 

female characters who show that rebellious nature in spite of their circumstances. Early 

on, in Goodbye Columbus (1959), Brenda Patimkin is characterized not only by her sexual 

appeal, but also by her strong will and she is limited by her social status and her family, 

so she has to struggle with that just as Neil does, and it is the clash between what she 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

166 

 

wants and what Neil wants that causes the conflict in their relationship. Ironically, even 

though she gets a diaphragm because Neil wants it, she still uses the situation in order to 

break up with him. 

In Letting Go (1962), both Libby and Martha fight because they do not want to 

leave their fate to fate, each in their own way, and with their personality and actions they 

affect Gabe and Paul’s lives in a significant way, becoming the center of the novel. 

Likewise, the plot in When She Was Good (1967) revolves around Lucy’s passionate 

actions, because although she suffers because of men’s actions, she fights back. Just as 

Consuela’s literally biting back when Kepesh tries to control her, as seen previously. 

When interpreting passages that describe sexuality, feminists argue the male gaze is 

privileged while women are represented mainly as the objects of men’s desire. According 

to this interpretation, Roth’s work is primarily focused on the depiction of a male sexual 

perspective. However, it seems to me that female characters and their roles in these scenes 

should be reassessed. 

 

 

II.1.6. The Stain and the Anatomy of Desire 

 

When analyzing ST, Roth scholars have written about Sabbath’s philosophy, but 

not so much about the female characters. Debra Shostak is one of the few scholars who 

has written about the passages in which women appear as sexual objects. She points to 

the fact that Roth was thinking about “the requirements of desire” and “the anatomy of 

desire” when he wrote this novel, and she argues that the reason that Sabbath’s desire is 

so extreme is because he feels the need “to project erotic and thanatic desires, to risk 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

167 

 

selfhood or its negation” because he is forced to test the limits at the same time that he 

tries to repress his desires (Shostak 2004: 23). In fact, Roth’s interest in writing about 

male desire and their actions and motivations spans over his whole career. In one of his 

last interviews, in January 2018, Philip Roth was asked about his reaction to the stories 

of sexual harassment that started coming out with the #MeToo movement. Commenting 

on this, the author puts across the idea that violent and unruly sexual behavior is not 

surprising to him, as it is something he has written about for a long time. 

 

Men enveloped by sexual temptation […] Men responsive to the insistent call of sexual 

pleasure, beset by shameful desires and the undauntedness of obsessive lusts, beguiled 

even by the lure of the taboo. I have imagined a small coterie of unsettled men possessed 

by just such inflammatory forces they must negotiate and contend with. I’ve tried to be 

uncompromising in depicting these men each as he is, each as he behaves, aroused, 

stimulated, hungry in the grip of carnal fervor and facing the array of psychological and 

ethical quandaries the exigencies of desire present (Roth 2018, n.p., ellipsis mine). 

 

Roth’s work refuses to be captive to taboos, and it explores the struggle of men, 

but also of women. That is why in Chapter III I will examine how in ST, Drenka 

represents the power of eros and life struggling against death; just like in DA Consuela 

plays an important and similar role. Just as male characters such as Sabbath are possessed 

by those “inflammatory forces”, I intend to highlight how female characters such as Dawn 

in AP or Roseanna in ST represent the difficulty of finding peace and accepting 

opposition. Additionally, just as the Swede tries to find purity, in ST it is also Sabbath’s 

young student and lover who represents the impossibility and the irony of purity. Roth is 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

168 

 

interested in urges which can be present in male but also in female characters, and that is 

why he speaks about relevant psychological and social realities: 

 

I haven’t shunned the hard facts in these fictions of why and how and when tumescent 

men do what they do, even when these have not been in harmony with the portrayal that 

a masculine public-relations campaign — if there were such a thing — might prefer. I’ve 

stepped not just inside the male head but into the reality of those urges whose obstinate 

pressure by its persistence can menace one’s rationality, urges sometimes so intense they 

may even be experienced as a form of lunacy. Consequently, none of the more extreme 

conduct I have been reading about in the newspapers lately has astonished me (Roth qtd 

in McGrath 2018, n.p.). 

 

The images of the human stain make the representation of carnality more 

obviously about the flesh, and characters such as Kepesh are often caught up in a tangle 

of dilemmas about the sheer force of sexual desire, which they find everywhere and 

affecting everyone.  There is an insanity which can definitely be frightening in many 

passages of Roth’s novels, such as Sabbath’s visits to Drenka’s grave in ST, and Roth’s 

characters take many risks. Sabbath is no saint, he is human, as he insists on showing 

throughout the text, and Roth writes about his actions, but without a moral superiority, 

without a judgement. Some characters do judge, but this is what the text does: it questions 

the reader’s moral standards, which is something that will be further analyzed in the next 

section. In DA, the pressure of those reprehensible urges is explored openly: “Sex is all 

the enchantment required. Do men find women so enchanting once the sex is taken out? 

Does anyone find anyone of any sex that enchanting unless they have sexual business 

with them? Who else are you that enchanted by? Nobody.” (Roth 2001: 16). Kepesh is 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

169 

 

only interested by “the savage urge” that lies beneath what is not sexual seduction, but a 

social performance: 

 

The comedy of creating a connection that is not the connection -that cannot begin to 

compete with the connection- created artificially by lust. This is the instant 

conventionalizing, the giving us something in common on the spot, the trying to transform 

lust into something socially appropriate. Yet it’s the radical inappropriateness that makes 

lust lust.” (Roth 2001: 16-17) 

 

 Ross Posnock argues that “Male lust, in Roth’s work, is the most immediate 

vehicle for shattering the constraints of balance; but male sexuality operates, ultimately, 

as much metaphorically as literally, a metaphor for how any of us find ways to keep at 

bay, however temporarily, the obligations to be appropriate, moderate, agreeable, 

virtuous” (2006: 18). In ST there is a thorough portrayal of a character who strives to be 

the contrary of virtuous, and in DA, Kepesh also tries in his way to seek freedom from 

those obligations. But after experiencing the freedom and life through sex, the characters 

must always face the grim reality of death in Roth’s works, an issue that has been 

addressed by several scholars and it will be addressed in the last chapter of this thesis. 

According to Jay Halio, “Eros successfully defies death in Sabbath’s Theater, but it 

remains still the overwhelming threat in The Dying Animal” (Halio in Halio 2005: 205). 

If male lust is portrayed as the natural expression of the rebellion against 

obligations, female lust operates similarly, and the human stain is a device that serves this 

purpose, especially in ST, a novel which would be inconceivable without the character of 

Drenka. Debra Shostak has noted that the process of co-narration, added to the connection 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

170 

 

and the physical and linguistic transference between Sabbath and Drenka “suggests that 

they have realized intersubjectivity, each retaining a self as they interpenetrate one 

another” (2004: 57). Drenka tells the story as much as Sabbath does. 

In trying to describe their unique story, Roth Pierpont compares the novel to 

Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita in that it “is a retrospective account of a transgressive passion” 

(Roth Pierpont 2013: 194). The relationship between Roth’s writing and Nabokov’s has 

been studied by Luke Maxted (2018), who points out that this American writer is rarely 

cited as an influence or intertextual companion of Roth, but he sees a clear structural 

equivalent between passages of both authors. He points out how Roth alludes to 

Nabokov’s fiction in the final pages of My Life as a Man (1974) (Maxted 2018: 35). This 

connection is worth mentioning as I think there are traces of Nabokov’s influence in 

Roth’s style and plot in PC, ST, AP and DA. 

But in fact, ST is not just about Sabbath’s passion for Drenka, it is also about his 

passion for Nikki, for Roseanna, for a student, a lover, his friend’s daughter, whores and 

many other women. It constitutes a countless number of passions, but their voices are not 

absent from the narrative. In contrast, Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert has a dominant voice 

in Lolita (1955). He is someone who is haunted by the loss of his first love like Sabbath, 

and that is why he desires nymphets and Lolita, and he tells his story but does not show 

Lolita’s thoughts and the reader does not hear her voice very often. However, in Roth’s 

novel, women are more dominant in the narrative, and each one of them has a distinct 

voice, especially Drenka. Not only does she have a voice, she is also a writer. She wrote 

everything about how Sabbath depraved her in a journal. 

Accordingly, Roth Pierpont sees that “Drenka Balich is undoubtedly a heroine, a 

worthy descendant of the great adulteresses of European literature” (Roth Pierpont 2013: 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

171 

 

194). Drenka has a body that captivates Sabbath and not only is she alluring to him, he is 

also seized by a tender feeling for her, and the closeness of death and the passing of time 

only intensify his desire. To him, her body is fruitful, it overflows, it is full of life. She 

wants Sabbath to desire and love her and does not hesitate to ask for what she wants, so 

her strong will and her voice spread over the text. When she asks Sabbath to be only with 

her, because she knows she has cancer and can die, she tells him she wanted him to 

promise he would be faithful to her without knowing about her illness, as she wanted him 

to do it on his own. This causes Sabbath’s knees to buckle and they see “their whole 

carnal edifice caving in”, her loss being too much for Sabbath to accept, for “there’s 

nothing on earth that keeps its promise” (Roth 1995: 32). In her body, Drenka gives shape 

to the spiritual tragedy in the novel from the very beginning. 

This is significant because, as Shostak argues, “for Drenka, the erotic signifies not 

just sexual pleasure but transcendence of her own mortal flesh” and as she creates herself, 

she escapes objectification (Shostak 2004: 56). This is why she is eager to learn about 

lust and boldly seduces Sabbath and many other men. This is at the core of Roth’s fiction, 

and it is precisely what his works show, if the analysis brushes aside all prejudices and 

reduces its elements to the simplest idea possible: Eros and Thanatos: The former is an 

attempt to escape from the latter. Drenka’s body is compared to a Venus’s, but that is not 

the only thing the narrative focuses on, as the reader also hears her voice, with her 

language, and what is more, her stories. These stories, which continue to fascinate 

Sabbath, are about her life in Croatia and why she came to America, about her aspirations 

and desires, and also about her husband and her work. 

In order to understand Sabbath, the relationship he has with Drenka is the place 

to start. He depends on her for his “vital need”; she is his only companion, “the only 

solace he had” as they share “a whole other life to make home endurable”, to sum up: She 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

172 

 

is his life (Roth 1995: 19-30). Drenka is just as transgressive as Sabbath, and it is clear 

she is his perfect mate when she says “I love being dirty for you, doing everything for 

you” (25). She is described as “libertine” and “remorseless”, qualities that are positive to 

Sabbath, who believes she “could do everything” (29). Ross Posnock describes Drenka 

as Sabbath’s “sidekick, partner, student, mother, lover, and, above all, ‘total blood 

brother’ and so their “identities are interchangeable, flowing and porous: Drenka 

possesses a male carnality and love of pursuit” (Posnock 2006: 167). Posnock uses the 

term “male” carnality, but really, this shows how women can also possess this quality 

against social expectations. Sabbath’s public and intimate life is a disgrace, and yet, he 

does not care for social mores, but Drenka surpasses him with her freedom and 

recklessness, and that is why he only feels really new with Drenka. 

Another example of how sexual desire is represented as an opportunity for 

liberation from moral rules can be found in Roth’s novel Indignation (2008). This aspect 

becomes evident, for example, when Marcus meets Olivia. He starts what is considered a 

dirty and immoral relationship by the Dean of their School, but to Marcus, being with 

Olivia is deeply liberating and enriching: Not only is she the one who initiates their sexual 

relationship, thereby changing his behavior, thoughts and prospects, but Olivia also 

represents a reversal of values: She is the one to point out to Marcus that the dirty work 

at his father’s shop actually makes him “clean”, giving him integrity. A similar reversal 

can be found through the use of the human stain images in ST, when the bodily fluids are 

like water that cleans the main characters. In addition, in Indignation, Marcus challenges 

Olivia’s view by telling her how he had to had to clean out the garbage cans in the street 

and how ashamed he was by having to carry out this task. But Olivia is interested in the 

“rancid” details of impurity of his life, just as Sabbath is intrigued by Drenka’s detailed 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

173 

 

description of her sexual encounters. To sum up, Roth uses the human stain to highlight 

the liberating aspect of a sexual relationship regarding morality and impurity. 

If in ST, desire goes hand in hand with freedom, in DA it seems to go in the 

opposite direction as a renunciation to freedom seems a requirement for love. DA is the 

third book with the character David Kepesh, in what Roth considers “a series of dreams, 

or nightmares, about sex”, and in the case of this short novel, the historical context is “the 

sexual side of the sixties” (Roth Pierpont 2013: 261). Surprisingly, a book that influenced 

Roth while writing DA is The Fall (1956), by Albert Camus. This novel invokes the Fall 

of man, portraying the attempt to escape one’s own hypocrisy, and it shows the 

disenchantment with the lack of justice in the world. The certainty of every man’s guilt 

and the impossibility of innocence are also presented in this novel, as these are issues that 

preoccupied Roth. He chooses to explore these subjects especially in the four novels 

covered in this thesis. Camus’ character has to endure suffering and he becomes a “judge-

penitent”. Kepesh will also face suffering and a crisis that brings about a questioning of 

values and justice in his relationship with Consuela. These themes had been explored 

earlier in Roth’s work because, as seen above, AP refers to the theme of the Fall and it 

even structures the novel into its three parts. Roth Pierpont notes another similarity 

between Camus’ novel and Roth’s DA: one of the moral issues is “a congenital inability 

to see in love anything but the physical” (Roth Pierpont 2013: 263). This is Kepesh’s 

experience of love: a very strong sense that sexual desire has nothing to do with a long-

term attachment or a commitment such as marriage. 

Mike Witcombe is among the critics who has studied Roth’s Kepesh Trilogy in 

depth, drawing from the work of critics such as Velichka Ivanova and Debra Shostak, 

who have interpreted DA as “critique of certain kinds of toxic masculinity” (Witcombe 

2017: 45). In Countertexts, Counterlives Shostak looks at how this trilogy examines “the 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

174 

 

consequences for sexuality and self-concept when the gendered perspective of a 

consciousness shifts position (Shostak 2004: 7). 

However, Roth’s book does not present Kepesh’s philosophy without questioning 

it, just as he does not give an answer to the questions about sex, love and family. On the 

contrary, he aims “to position the book so that you can’t answer those questions” (263). 

Roth Pierpont explains how “however thoroughly Kepesh justifies his philosophy, The 

Dying Animal is predicated on the fact that it has come crashing down. For Kepesh has 

fallen in love” (263). This reading sees Kepesh’s helplessness as he is waiting for 

Consuela to get in touch with him in the midst of his monologue on sexual freedom. He 

seeks no admiration, but offers reasons for his quest for freedom alongside to evidence of 

how he needs Consuela, body and soul, to comfort him, ironically. 

 

 

II.1.7. Irony in the Paradox of Freedom and Enslavement 

 

As Valerie Roberge has argued, in Roth’s work irony is used as a resource that 

helps the character to understand the difference between fiction and reality, while it also 

allows the narrative form to avoid moral categories (Roberge 2017: 38). At the same time, 

irony enables the character to finally see something, become aware of it and reach an 

inner ethic (Roberge 88). Drawing on these ideas, it is possible to study the connection 

between irony and the human stain in Roth’s treatment of the experience of freedom and 

oppression in sexual desire. The paradox of the “wild thing” that Kepesh and Consuela 

have in hands soon takes an unexpected turn of events as Kepesh spirals downwards, 

losing control: In the end, it is not him who is in charge, despite his age and status.  



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

175 

 

 

Because in sex there is no point of absolute stasis. There is no sexual equality and there 

can be no sexual equality, certainly not one where the allotments are equal, the male 

quotient and the female quotient in perfect balance. There’s no way to negotiate 

metrically this wild thing. It’s not fifty-fifty like a business transaction. It’s the chaos of 

eros we’re talking about, the radical destabilization that is its excitement. You’re back in 

the woods with sex. You’re back in the bog. What it is is trading dominance, perpetual 

imbalance. You’re going to rule out dominance? You’re going to rule out yielding? The 

dominating is the flint, it strikes the spark, it sets it going. Then what? Listen. You’ll see. 

You’ll see what dominating leads to. You’ll see what yielding leads to. (Roth 2001: 20) 

 

This last part leads to the starting point of an analysis. When the narrator warns 

the reader to take heed, this signals a serious warning in an ominous tone, just as in ST 

when the narrator says that “something horrible was happening to Sabbath” (Roth 1995: 

78). In that instance, Sabbath masturbates on his dead lover’s grave, in a gripping image. 

Similarly, in DA at this point there is a disturbing image of the human stain. “The biting 

back of life” (Roth 2001: 30) is the scene which is so significant because it marks a 

change. Kepesh performs an “act of domination” on Consuela, having sex as “brutish” as 

it ought to be according to him. Aristi Trendel analyzes this scene in the context of a 

reading of this novel with a focus on the master-pupil relations, and she points out that it 

is not surprising “that the student retaliates and threatens to bite the master by snapping 

her teeth. Violence breeds violence, destruction entails destruction, and power relations 

change the course of the master-pupil rapport” (Trendel 2007: 3). 

But Consuela looked “ferocious” because “something is finally happening to her. 

It is no longer so comfortable for her. [...] Uncontrollably she is in motion within” (Roth 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

176 

 

2001: 31, ellipsis mine). She shows she could hurt him if she wanted: “At last the 

forthright, incisive, elemental response from the contained classical beauty. Till then it 

was all controlled by narcissism, by exhibitionism, and despite the energetic display, 

despite the audacity, it was strangely inert. [...] that activating bite that freed her from her 

own surveillance and inaugurated her into the sinister dream” (31, ellipsis mine). The bite 

means freedom and the rebellion against obligations and oppression, meaning there is a 

loss of control for Consuela too, just as there was one for Drenka and Sabbath in ST. 

Kepesh has awakened the beast in her, so now she is wild as well. It is a sinister dream 

and according to his account her loss of control is the cause of his own letting go, as she 

takes the reins from then on, and he let her do so: “I am the author of her mastery over 

me” (32). The paradoxes of power and desires are revealed as Kepesh recognizes the 

irony of what dooms him. “Domination and servitude, possession and deprivation become 

Kepesh’s lot as he surrenders to the superiority of sex” (Trendel 2007: 3). 

Roth has written about “the great and maddening power of desire” and in this 

novel he writes more specifically about the game of power and submission: Young girls 

get involved with old men “for the age” and “in Consuela’s case, because the vast 

difference in age gives her permission to submit” according to Kepesh. That “license to 

surrender” allows that “she gets both the pleasures of submission and the pleasures of 

mastery.” Consuela found the power she wants to have, and this dominance “is being 

traded continuously. Not so much being traded as being braided. And therein lies the 

source not only of my obsession with her but of her counterobsession with me” (Roth 

2001: 32-33). So, both lovers are weaving the web in which they are both trapped, and 

the question is whether this submission is represented in a way that is demeaning to 

women. 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

177 

 

In order to better understand how women are represented in this novel, it is 

interesting to look at Velichka Ivanova’s analysis of how Roth actually exposes the 

misrepresentation of women in DA. If by adopting a male narrative viewpoint, Roth 

explores how men struggle with their insecurities as they perceive women as a threat, 

Ivanova also explores how the text “allows Roth to depict women perceived by the male 

creative consciousness through his explicit spokesperson -the narrator in the text” and as 

she points out, he is not a model the reader has to sympathise with, as the story shows 

how that type of sexual politics is “destructive for both genders” (Ivanova 2012: 38). 

Interestingly, ST does not have a narrator who reduces women to their bodies, quite the 

opposite, as the text reveals how Drenka and other women possess character, identity and 

value at many levels. Interestingly, Sabbath treats Drenka as his equal, while in DA, 

Kepesh tries to master Consuela and fails at it, because although she first appears as man’s 

enemy she reveals herself as his equal (39). Portraying the dynamics of power, Roth 

shows how woman can also bite back and destabilize man, which is something a 

misogynistic text would not show (43). Similarly, ST shows the power that women hold 

over Sabbath’s imagination as well as his reality. When Sabbath is overcome by a 

crippling jealousy after Drenka’s death, the text offers her first-hand account of her sexual 

exploits, narrated with a voice full of energy, in which her pleasure sets the contrast with 

the torment that Sabbath endures after her death. 

In DA there is a striking description of the sexual relationship as utter chaos, 

destabilization that cannot be negotiated, where no peace nor equality can be reached, as 

it is defined by dominance and yielding. It is ruled by basic primitive impulses, being 

anything but easy, peaceful, or fair. This specific relationship is peculiar, because Kepesh 

thinks he was never able to excite Consuela, for she never told him she desired him 

sexually, and that is why he says he suffered in many ways: “I never had a moment’s 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

178 

 

peace [...]. I was all weakness and worry [...]. I could never figure out whether the answer 

was to see more of her or to see less of her or to see her not at all, to give her up” (Roth 

2001: 22-23, ellipsis mine). 

Kepesh is full of insecurities, feeling that he is not enough and though he knows 

such an expression of passion does not fit Consuela’s personality, yet he tortures himself: 

“Yet that was why the fear of losing her to someone else never left me, why she was 

continually on my mind, why with her or apart from her I never felt sure of her. The 

obsessional side of it was awful” (23). He finds no pleasure: “all I did was think -think, 

worry, and, yes, suffer” (23). His efforts to concentrate on the pleasure, what he lives for, 

the reason why he values his independence, are utterly fruitless. Also, the moment that 

Kepesh and Consuela start their relationship and she tells him she could not be his wife, 

his “terrible jealousy was born. The jealousy. The uncertainty. The fear of losing her, 

even while on top of her.” He instantaneously and for the first time lost his confidence 

(26-27).  

 

 

II.1.8. Wounded Sexuality 

 

In ST there are many meaningful ironic situations which are created by the clash 

between the sexual desires of the characters and their awareness of the nearness of death 

or their fear of loss. The fact that sexuality is depicted by Roth as being “wounded” (going 

back to Kundera’s description) means it is very human and the metaphor is physical 

(pointing to DA too), this wound is the effect of the human stain on sexuality. Because of 

the stain, sex never lives up to its expectations, it is limited and it will diminish. A clear 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

179 

 

image appears in DA with Consuela’s breast, as we have seen in the analysis of that novel. 

That union of the confessional and the ironical modes in Roth’s fiction that Kundera 

points at is highly remarkable. Roth’s representation of human sexuality makes the 

narrating character vulnerable in his sincerity but also elusive in his irony. 

On the one hand, there is a feeling of vulnerability in Part I of ST, titled “There’s 

nothing that keeps its promise,” which introduces Sabbath’s feeling of disappointment as 

he loses all that is dear to him –especially Drenka, in whom he has found sexual solace. 

He has enjoyed an “attachment that had persisted with an amazing licentiousness –and 

that, no less amazingly, had stayed their secret” (Roth 1995: 3). The circumstances of this 

affair are described as remarkably “amazing”, as the illicit relationship that exists between 

Drenka and Sabbath is extraordinary. It seems like he prices it as the most valuable thing 

in his life. He is approaching the end of his sexual potency and consequently the end of 

his life, and yet, his lover is asking him to be faithful to her, and he is unable to do this. 

This problem places the character in a weak position, and his desires and expectations 

will be crushed by reality. 

Besides, the situation of vulnerability gets more complicated when the reader soon 

learns about the damage that Sabbath’s actions may have caused to his wife Roseanna, 

who seems to have suffered of alcoholic breakdowns following a sexual scandal 

concerning her husband (Roth 1995: 4). It is not possible to know for sure, because neither 

cause nor consequence are ever completely clear, and the narrator carefully points out 

that Roseanna had been “drinking herself to death for her two unchallengeable reasons: 

because of all that had not happened and because of all that had” (4). This is what she 

says, and it may be compared to Sabbath’s own sense of how unavoidable it is that he 

should turn out the way he is whatever betrayal he would have experienced. Everything 

is the reason; there is no easy explanation for anything. Later the reader learns more about 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

180 

 

what happened to Roseanna (her father’s abuse and his suicide). Knowing all this, and 

probably because of all these things, Sabbath finds comfort in his adulterous relationship 

with Drenka. From the initial description it can be inferred that both Sabbath and Drenka 

are escaping their own marriages because they find no delight in them at all, especially 

no sexual satisfaction. 

Sabbath and Drenka have a hideaway where they go to have sex, the Grotto, a 

secret beautiful natural paradise which replaces their home, where “they retreated to 

renovate their lives” (Roth 1995: 5). Fittingly, Drenka is praised as a goddess of fertility, 

endowed with a Venus-like voluptuous body as the figurines that represented who was 

worshipped as “the great mother of the gods” (5). They seem to be in a pastoral, a paradise 

of their own, but it is soon blown into pieces as Drenka not only makes an unforeseen 

request that Sabbath dislikes, but also announces the illness that will lead to her death, 

and they are observed by the ghost of Sabbath’s mother. Sabbath’s pleasure is taken away 

from the very beginning of the story. Now, in AP, the main character also experiences the 

bliss of a paradise only in order to see how it is lost and proves to be illusory in the end. 

This parallel that can be established between the Swede’s Arcadia-like home and 

Sabbath’s retreat leads to the following conclusion: that there is a dramatic irony that 

leads the plot of these novels with the purpose of showing how purity is unattainable and 

that impurity is eventually found everywhere. 

The irony in the perception of the lover in ST can be described in aesthetic terms. 

In an essay titled “On Synthetism” written in 1922, Yevgeny Zamyatin described the 

spiral of the history of Art as being marked by three different stamps and he calls the last 

one synthesis: 

 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

181 

 

Today’s Adam is already poisoned by the knowledge of the other, once glimpsed Eve, 

and together with sweetness his kisses leave on the lips of this Eve a bitter touch of irony. 

Under the glowing flesh, Adam, who has gone through negation, who has grown wiser, 

knows the skeleton. But this makes his kisses more ecstatic, his love still headier, the 

colors more vivid, the eye still keener, grasping the most fleeting essence of lines and 

forms. (Zamyatin 1922: 82) 

 

Applying this description to Roth’s portrayal of Sabbath, the third school of art 

would match his vision, as there is an awareness of Death, for the skeleton which 

underlies the skin of the lover is constantly being hinted at, figuratively speaking, while 

Sabbath can still grasp the pleasure of life, fleeting as it is. And thus, sexuality is tainted 

with irony. And still, as Zamyatin suggests, this makes the senses still keener, for it is not 

a rejection of life but the very opposite. The wisdom is acquired by the poisoning of 

knowledge. The tone is of sharp irony, bitter, dark, heavy or scandalous at times, but this 

must be so because the narrator or the characters are made aware of death and of the 

unattainable, but nonetheless, perceive the essence of life with intensity. ST overflows 

with ironic contrasts, it never stops. Philip Roth, as well as Saul Bellow and Bernard 

Malamud, include the use of tragic irony in their work, just as other Jewish writers such 

as Sholom Aleichem and Isaac Bashevis Singer did. At the scene in the graveyard, for 

example, or Sabbath’s visit to the memories of his dead relatives, one grave idea about 

death or loss is immediately counterpointed with a humorous remark upon it. Thus, the 

novel becomes a double-edged sword.  

The type of irony found at the ending scene, for example, in which Sabbath is 

expecting to be killed but is just left alone by Matthew, is called contextual irony. There 

is also linguistic or verbal irony, as well as irony of fate in the development of the plot. 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

182 

 

There may also be “irony bombs” which are dropped early on in the novel and explode 

later as the plot makes progress. For example, in DA, the bulk of the irony resides in the 

fact that it is precisely Consuela’s breast where the cancer must grow because it has been 

described as extremely beautiful. 

But he is still clueless as to what goes on inside her: “I’m unable to make out what 

she makes of me, what she makes of anything, and my confusion causes me to say things 

that sound false or exaggerated to my ear, so I hang up full of silent resentment toward 

her” (Roth 2001: 38). And this is how Kepesh falls in love, falling into a whirlwind of 

complete instability and confusion, where everything is upsetting: “everything I’m doing 

leaves me upset” (39). It’s the madness of love, which is unbearably feverish. “I don’t 

feel the authority with her that’s necessary for my stability, and yet she comes to me 

because of that authority” (39).  This is an ironic paradox, as Kepesh has lost control over 

his life. 

Kepesh cannot stop thinking about Consuela, “The experience of her is too strong. 

I sit up in bed and in the middle of the night I cry out, ‘Consuela Castillo, leave me 

alone!’” (Roth 2001: 39). He realizes he is completely infatuated; it is like a curse that 

will not let him alone. Her presence is always felt, she trickles into his whole life. Like a 

ghost haunting him. He tries to make himself get rid of her, for it has become a war:  

 

It’s become an endless campaign with her. Where’s the fulfilment and the sense of 

possession? If you have her, why can’t you have her? You’re not getting what you want 

even when you’re getting what you want. There is no peace in it and there can’t be, 

because of our ages and the unavoidable poignancy. Because of our ages, I have the 

pleasure but I never lose the longing (Roth 2001: 39).  



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

183 

 

 

This state of desire will drive Kepesh crazy, as it is unhealthy but it is unavoidable. 

According to Kepesh, he gave Consuela her influence and control over him by 

pronouncing her a magical work of art (Roth 2001: 37). Because of this confusion of art 

with life, “the pornography of jealousy” becomes Kepesh’s punishment. “Ordinary 

pornography is the aestheticizing of jealousy. It takes the torment out. What? Why 

‘aestheticizing’? Why not ‘anesthetizing’?” (Roth 2001: 41). Kepesh’s pornography 

keeps the torment in, for he identifies himself with the person “losing it, with the person 

who has lost” (42). He is dreading that loss of his lover, lives in anguish of it. And as he 

imagines a younger man with her, “It’s the him who was once me but is no longer” (42). 

Imagination, the thoughts of jealousy, spins out of control. Strangely, Consuela seems 

untouched by passion, which happened because of the relationship “didn’t appear to be 

turning her (as it was me) inside out” (44). This complete lack of balance leaves Kepesh 

in a vulnerable and fragile situation compared to Consuela, and he is unable to escape 

from his condition because of his body and its desire, which is portrayed with humor. 

In addition, in ST too, humor is used by means of paradox and contrasts which 

are often related to the idea of morality and immorality. We find irony in the clash 

between what one expects and what one actually finds in reality. Roth’s mode of 

persistent comedy is a note of coherence as it can be found throughout his work, and 

Debra Shostak summarizes as “a rich comedy of pain, of excess, of satire and self-satire, 

a comedy at times broadened and leavened by the rhythms of borscht belt humor and at 

other times raised toward refinements of both social and existential irony by an unlikely 

pair of influences, Henry James and Franz Kafka. It is a type of comedy which Roth 

characterized in simple terms in 1974 when he told Joyce Carol Oates: “Sheer Playfulness 

and Deadly Seriousness are my closest friends” (Shostak 2004: 2, 3). 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

184 

 

In this way with playfulness and seriousness, Roth reveals the size of the problems 

that come along with the desire of Kepesh and how it is experienced carnally and 

psychologically. The main problem is that Kepesh can never be sure of how to interpret 

things. “No matter how much you know, no matter how much you think, no much how 

much you plot and you connive and you plan, you’re not superior to sex. It’s a very risky 

game. [...] It’s sex that disorders our normally ordered lives. [...] Every last vanity will 

come back to mock you. Read Byron’s Don Juan” (Roth 2001: 33, ellipsis mine). The 

stain makes that disorder visible and comes back to mock the characters. 

Roth took the idea from Kafka that the body is the person’s destiny and it helps to 

see how arbitrary existence can be, and this is represented in images of the body as in The 

Breast (Shostak 1999). The body is not just an object, as consciousness, the seat of 

subjectivity, is in the body (1999: 321). This is what David Kepesh learns in The Breast 

(1972) and later in DA too, and really many of Roth’s characters come to this conclusion. 

When Kepesh grows obsessed with sexual stimulation, he is afraid that his body, that is, 

he himself, could be reduced to a nipple. Then he fears he would lose his identity and his 

existence would be “craving flesh”, nothing more. As Shostak argues, “Roth 

demonstrates through Kepesh the conundrum that sexuality both defines the human and 

distances us from it. At the extreme, physical desire displaces consciousness, with the 

corollary that, eventually, no subject remains at the source of desire” (1999: 327). This 

can be seen in DA, in the sexual relationship between Kepesh and Consuela, as it is both 

focusing on the body as the person and also the body as an erotic and aesthetic object. 

Shostak concludes that “Roth insists on taking seriously our relationship to our own 

bodies. For without acknowledging the body -be it breast, woman or man- we cannot 

begin to make sense of what the self might be” (330). 

 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

185 

 

 

II.1.9. Resisting or Giving in: Power and Vulnerability 

 

Far from being an apology for the excess of PC in its portrayal of sexual desire, 

the later novels of AP and DA explain how after growing up at a time of sexual strictures, 

as a response to the crumbling of the rules that had governed the actions of a young man 

like Kepesh, and the forces that had persuaded him to marry young and start a family, he 

seeks freedom when he is faced with the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s. However, as 

Matthew Shipe notes, DA remains ambivalent because the narrative insists on the costs 

that sexual freedom entails, as seen with Kepesh’s son. In addition, the protagonists of 

the Sexual Revolution for Kepesh are the “Gutter Girls”, and Shipe connects these 

revolutionary female characters with Rita Cohen in AP, the devilish figure who appears 

as a challenging young woman who uses her sexuality to make the Swede aware of his 

transgression (Shipe 2017: 150). The forces of virtue and candor, identified by Kepesh as 

narratives of “order” and “no-rule” compete indeed in these novels (Roth 2011: 61-61). 

 If sex brings two-thirds of man’s problems, as Kepesh jokes, it is by means of the 

human stain that his experience of disorder, risks and confusion is represented, as a result 

of his attachment to Consuela. Apparently, the human stain implies a loss of power for 

the characters, as they become its victims. For example, just as the main character of 

“Epstein” as seen in Chapter I of this thesis, Kepesh feels more helpless than ever before, 

as if he had lost his will. Kepesh reveals his weakness in dealing with his passion for 

Consuela, which does not make him faithful to her, paradoxically, because he is not to be 

sated only with one lover, no, he must take another one too, to help him feel in control. 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

186 

 

So, seemingly, desire feeds on more desire, but it has been suggested that Roth’s male 

characters are actually looking for strength in the objects of their desire.  

It would be necessary to define strength and weakness first, and in my view, what 

Roth accomplishes is to show how desire is really full of strength and at the same time, 

weakness. Energetic in its pursuit of the lover and also fainting in its powerlessness. For 

instance, I have to disagree when a scholar like Alan Cooper argues that he does not 

believe that in ST, Sabbath is a misogynist because “if he constantly hurts weak women, 

it is in a continual search for strong ones” (1996: 287). Because I find that as the text of 

ST questions the boundaries of strength and weakness, it is not easy to reduce women to 

those labels, because the text presents Sabbath and Roseanna’s hatred for each other and 

their grievances and provocations as a mutual issue. In a further twist of irony, Roseanna 

seeks inner peace and to feel comfortable with life, while Sabbath seeks the opposite, to 

fight in life, to be uneasy, out of place (Roth 1995: 87). In this way, Roseanna helps the 

reader see the dimensions and intricacies of Sabbath’s struggle more clearly in the way 

he faces suffering as opposed to how she experiences it. She tries to accept her pain while 

Sabbath rages at it. To her, secrets are inhuman, while to him they are human. Roseanna 

also voices accusations against Sabbath that lead them on to the argument that prompts 

him to leave her. 

Another character in ST who might be judged as a weak person is Nikki, who 

might have been plagued by phobias and insecurities, but she was powerful as a talented 

actress, and moreover, she embodied “everything in the soul that is contradictory and 

unfathomable, even the monstrousness that paralyzed her with fear” (Roth 1995: 106). 

Steven Sampson analyzes Nikki from a religious point of view, for there are references 

to the Old Testament (Genesis) as well as to the New Testament (Matthew), in order to 

highlight her ethereal and angelical nature through a comparison with Jesus as a carpenter 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

187 

 

(Sampson 2011: 127-133). Nikki, who is connected with beauty and purity, is compared 

with nature and holding her conveys her fragility to Sabbath. It is Nikki’s reaction to her 

mother’s death that features in Sabbath’s story in order to show the utter grief and horror 

of death, and however, once again, it might be different if she had told the story, as he 

imagines her to shout: “It wasn’t like that! I wasn’t like that! You misunderstand!” (109). 

Debra Shostak points out how Sabbath’s “self-invention requires others to serve as 

objects for the self’s ends. [...] Nikki’s disappearance and Roseanna’s alcoholism both 

suggest the damage that Sabbath’s objectification of them causes to their grasp of their 

own subjectivity” (2004: 25, ellipsis mine). Nikki, Sabbath’s girlfriend, disappeared 

without a trace, and yet, her absence never leaves him, and because of his recollections, 

her presence in the text becomes significant. She is like a ghost from the past who appears 

to make the main themes of the novel come to life in a personal way, by showing the pain 

that comes from realizing that the dead cannot be recovered.  

The scenes in which Nikki struggles with death are extremely unpleasant because 

through her character, Roth shows what real suffering looks like, without anaesthetizing 

feelings or censoring thoughts, to show the struggle with death. In order to represent how 

death is perceived as unnatural, Roth shows the thoughts and actions of the character of 

Nikki through Sabbath’s eyes, to double the effect, as it is not only her pain that is 

reported, but also his experience that is echoed in hers. To her, it is impossible to part 

with the dead body of her mother. “It’s unbearable. It’s dreadful,’ Nikki said. ‘I’m going 

to stay with her. I’ll sleep here. I don’t want her to be alone.’” (Roth 1995: 111). She is 

in a state of denial that seems childish and unnatural to Sabbath, so he keeps them both 

company and is disgusted by details such as Nikki blowing her nose with the tissue that 

they had laid over the dead mother’s face: “and that seemed to me altogether crazy” (113). 

It is impossible to be delicate about death, but ironically, Sabbath treats Nikki “delicately” 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

188 

 

and “gently”, like a different character than the rude man we know, being so 

compassionate and careful not to hurt feelings or indulge in his own desires. Even though 

Sabbath tried to direct Nikki when she acted, and she followed his directions, “she was 

still also Nikki” because she was “a real person” (21). Failing to depersonalize her, she 

ultimately proves she is wholly human because she bears the human stain too. 

Similarly, another character in ST, Michelle, who appears to be conventional and 

happily married, secretly owns a set of erotic self-portraits, and so Sabbath learns she 

leads a secret double life, very much like Levov learns about his wife’s infidelity in AP. 

However, Michelle is scandalized by Sabbath’s unruly behavior and degradation. She 

sees the extent of his excess and is afraid of it but she cannot see her own degradation. 

Ironically, her daughter Debby, who is only present through her personal objects, her 

undergarments, her bathtub becomes a sexual consolation for Sabbath, who claims he 

feels nonsensical like Emma Bovary. This reference to Flaubert’s Emma Bovary 

highlights the theme of rebellion against society’s moral rules and expectations, as seen 

before. However, she still possesses the flame of desire, as Sabbath observes in her 

laughter.  

Consequently, when Sabbath is accused of degrading himself by defiling his 

friend’s wife and his daughter, he claims that his actions indicate hope rather than despair. 

This trait is typically found in Jewish American fiction, as can be seen looking at Bernard 

Malamud’s stories, for example. Norman ridicules Sabbath’s idea of sex as rebellion, but 

to Sabbath, “Debby’s bed had become a home away from home” and even though she is 

absent, he seeks the imaginary presence of her body for comfort (Roth 1995: 349). But 

women do not only offer Sabbath comfort in the midst of a breakdown, they also provide 

temptation and provoke conflict in his life, to the same effect as with Kepesh in DA.  



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

189 

 

The aftermath of the relationship for Kepesh means that everything with Consuela 

ended up in loss, like a shipwreck: “agitation” is what sums up his state: “The agitation 

of having Consuela -as opposed to the agitation of not having Consuela […] Tormented 

all the while I was with her, a hundred times more tormented for having lost her” (Roth 

2001: 92, ellipsis mine). Desire becomes a torture: “The longing never disappeared even 

while I had her. The primary emotion, as I’ve said, was longing. It’s still longing. There’s 

no relief from the longing and my sense of myself as a supplicant.” (94-95). Kepesh 

believes Consuela is his “own White Whale” who can wreck him (125). By referring to 

Melville’s Moby Dick, though it seems like an ironic exaggeration, Kepesh likens his 

lover to that enormous opponent, a whale full of figurative meaning. Judith Lee Yaross 

explains that it is actually irony what is behind the lack of a clear conclusion to DA: 

“Caught between thought and action, going and staying, life and death, love and lust, self 

and other, the dying body and eternal art, the last volume of the Kepesh trilogy exchanges 

closure for irony” (2010: 88). 

 

 

II.1.10. The Outrageousness of a Stained Sexuality 

 

In ST, Sabbath and Drenka are the perfect match because they think alike: 

Indecency, degeneration, licentiousness, disorder, sanctioning the force that wants more 

and more, all this to Sabbath means solace and satisfaction, because it is a liberating drive 

that brings life in abundance to him. The text shows how freedom can be expressed not 

only in sexuality, but also with words, for Drenka is also free in the way she thinks and 

speaks, and so her language reveals her unconventionality, which is important to Sabbath, 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

190 

 

who seeks the pleasure of words “freed from their daily duty to justify and to conceal” 

(Roth 1995: 447). After all, Roth describes the experience of writing this novel as “the 

freest experience” of his life (Roth Pierpont 2013: 196). However, it is not only due to 

Sabbath’s own freedom, but also due to Drenka.  

As Frank Kermode puts it, what sets Roth’s fiction apart is not that it is erotic, 

“what distinguishes Roth’s is its outrageousness [...]; if nobody feels outraged the whole 

strategy has failed” (Kermode 1995: u.p., ellipsis mine). Kermode acknowledges how 

important it is to see that Roth “is hilariously serious about life and death” and that “life 

can’t win against the last enemy. It can at best put on a scandalously good show. So there 

is really only one way for him to tell the story—defiantly, facing the outrage of death with 

outraged phallic energy” (u.p.). I think it is important to add that Drenka too, engages in 

a shocking portrayal of life in the face of death, and of freedom and joy in the face of 

boredom. In the same book review, Kermode wrote that in ST, Roth’s “Rabelaisian range 

and fluency, his deep resources of obscenity, his sense that suffering and dying can be 

seen as unacceptable though inevitable aberrations from some huge possible happiness, 

Roth is equipped for his great subject—one that was treated in their own rather different 

ways by the authors of Genesis and Paradise Lost” (u.p.).  

Roth challenges the reader’s notions as, in light of the representation of sexuality, 

the question of the nature of Good and Evil is explored. Characters explore and ask 

themselves what is straight and what is crooked, as well as that which is life and which is 

death. There is a scene in ST when Sabbath shows a desire to straighten all that is crooked 

in him, surprisingly. As he surveys the grave he purchases for himself, preparing all that 

is necessary for his own burial and also visiting his family’s tombs, Sabbath approaches 

a pile of wet dirt, which is a striking image of the human stain. 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

191 

 

 

Sabbath, with a tinge of ghoulish pleasure, forced his fingers through the gritty goop until 

they all disappeared. If I count to ten and then extract them, they’ll be the old fingers, the 

old, provocative fingers with which I pulled their tail. Wrong again. Have to go down in 

the dirt with more than these fingers if I hope ever to make straight in me all that is 

crooked. Have to count to ten ten billion times, and he wondered how high Morty had 

counted by now. And Grandma? And Grandpa? What is the Yiddish word for zillion? 

(Roth 1995: 363) 

 

 As always, when Sabbath finds pleasure in something, it is a dirty delight. In this 

case, he is thinking about the physical reality of his own body being buried, about being 

dead. As he makes his fingers dirty, covering them in dirt, he wonders whether he would 

regain his youthful, healthy nature and looks. We have seen Sabbath’s decline in his 

arthritic fingers, which render him unable to be a puppeteer anymore. But he learns that 

there is no way he could straighten out all that has gone crooked in him. Not only fingers 

which are physically disfigured by an illness, but also his nature, his life. This scene when 

Sabbath tries to fix his hands by covering them in dirt can be compared to how Macbeth 

and Lady Macbeth long to clean their hands after the murder they committed, for their 

guilty conscience tortures them. This text, just as in ST, shows how they cannot find rest 

nor a solution to their problem either. 

In Shakespeare’s play, first we find the image of the stain in Macbeth’s words: 

“What hands are here! Ha! They pluck out mine eyes. Will all great Neptune’s ocean 

wash this blood clean from my hand?  No, this my hand will rather/ The multitudinous 

seas incarnadine, Making the green one red.” (II, ii, 59-64). And: “To know my deed 

‘twere best not know myself.” (74-75). Later, Lady Macbeth shows her suffering in her 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

192 

 

sleepwalking, as she rubs her hands constantly, trying to clean herself from the 

bloodstains she imagines, with no avail: “Yet here’s a spot. […] Out, damned spot! Out, 

I say! One; two: why, then, ‘tis time to do’t. Hell is murky! […] will these hands ne’er be 

clean?” (V, i, 34, 38-39, 47-48, ellipsis mine). “Here’s the smell of the blood, still: all the 

perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh! Oh! Oh!” The Doctor remarks: 

“What a sigh is there” The heart is sorely charged.” It is interesting that the waiting gentle-

woman comments “I would not have such a heart in my bosom for the dignity of the 

whole body” (V, i, 55-61). The doctor concludes he cannot help her, for the help she 

requires is divine. Sabbath will not find someone to clean his hands or straighten his 

crooked fingers, either. 

 

 

II.1.11. The Language of Transgression 

 

The presence or absence of the stain in the speech or description of the characters 

is what indicates transgression in sexuality in these novels. The ambiguous nature of 

purity and impurity becomes visible especially through women and their relation with 

Sabbath. For instance, Christa, a young girl with whom Sabbath and Drenka have an 

affair, is provocative and this is what Sabbath is drawn to, as she appears as 

“unbesmirched by selflessness, a budding beast of prey” who has lost all innocence and 

whose actions and motivations take Sabbath by surprise (Roth 1995: 54). The reference 

to the lack of a stain in Christa shows that what Sabbath considers a stain is what others 

consider morally good and appropriate. She is the chosen one (her name is amusingly 

appropriate) because of her stain, really. Sabbath chooses her because he sees that she 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

193 

 

clearly has the human stain. Christa’s name, like Merry’s, is an aptronym which is 

especially relevant because it places the human stain in Christianity itself. While Christ 

bore the weight of sin upon himself, being God himself he was not marked by the human 

stain, which is why his sacrifice could atone for human kind’s sins. Therefore, Christa, 

too, participates in Sabbath’s inversion of values which consists of loathing the pretense 

of purity the way others hate impurity.  

Sampson analyzes the biblical references in the description of Christa, comparing 

her with Christ as she comes from poverty, and Sabbath finds her by the side of the road 

in a kind of miracle that resembles the time when Jesus appears on the road to Emmaus 

(Sampson 2011: 127). Christa is like the Messiah to Sabbath, who pursues her like “a 

monk”, a Jesuit, someone who worships her because he is devoted to “fucking”, “the 

Evangelist of Fornication” (Roth 1995: 60). This language that parodies a Christian 

spiritual pursuit clearly shows the opposite of a faith in purity. In the novel, Sabbath 

accuses university feminists of deceiving and deforming students, and he does this by 

ironically using the language of the repellent to describe them as people who believe in 

the mirage of purity. 

This is a key Rothian issue which is addressed by Sánchez Canales regarding the 

role of Delphine Roux in HS (2009). This character, a feminist professor, will be looked 

at in more depth in the next section of this Chapter. She is full of rage and bitterness and 

uses her influence on students to lie to them and to encourage them to make accusations 

against Coleman. The importance of the use of words and how to interpret them also 

appears when Coleman reminisces about how his father had a great love for the correct 

use of words, which is ironic in connection with the manipulated use of the word 

“spooks”, as the accusers are not interpreting the word in its correct usage, but out of 

context. 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

194 

 

Just as students should learn to read and to interpret by themselves, readers are 

not expected to look at Roth’s characters for male or female role models. Sabbath, who 

is accused of corrupting young students, is not a role model, because as Ivanova argues, 

Roth “does not offer a model of manhood or womanhood. Rather, Roth explores the 

instability and fissures of gender norms and exposes the misrepresentation women 

undergo when seen through a masculine lens” (Ivanova 2012: 43). Far from being limited 

by fixed gender stereotypes, these women show a complex web of meanings and many 

dimensions to their identity.  

This is connected to what Sabbath says to Roseanna in the novel, that he does not 

“identify” with her ideas because he thinks it is important to see opposition and 

contradiction in the world, not to ignore the reality of what takes your peace away. Roth 

responded to some of Bard’s students’ complaints about his female characters, explaining 

that the problem is that the characters do not embody the values the students respect, they 

do not mention characters who do not fit in the pattern and they do not consider the 

problems with the male characters’ values either (Roth Pierpont 2013: 239). When the 

students said it was difficult to “identify” with characters who are different from them, 

Roth insisted it is possible, “through literature itself, in which we can identify with anyone 

and become larger than ourselves” (240). 

The depiction of the human stain in sexuality brings the struggle between duty and 

rage to the limit. Every single paragraph in ST captures this tension. As Cooper remarked 

about the passages in ST, it is evident that they are “beautifully composed, so able to fuse 

idea with apt emotion” (1996: 286). Roth Pierpont also celebrates the beauty of Sabbath’s 

language: “he is clothed in Roth’s most gorgeous and expansive language. It gives him 

stature, humor, color, and charm far beyond his naked self and turns him into a Whitman 

of negativity, a figure of engulfing if improper vitality” (2013: 200). According to 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

195 

 

Brauner, Roth regards the “debasement of language” as “an opportunity for creating new 

kinds of literary discourse in which debased (that is, popular, clichéd, banal) language is 

not a threat to, but constitutive of, meaning” (2007: 66). Donald G. Watson wrote that 

Roth’s fictions “renew and regenerate, bury and revive” (Watson 1988: 108, qtd. in 

Brauner 2007: 66). 

The purpose of the use of transgression has baffled scholars, and Greenberg, for 

example, notes that Roth creates a literature “formed from baseness, messiness and 

‘immaturity,’ a subversive approach to society that seeks to invert conventional theories 

and shock expectations about the appropriate material, motives, and goals of art” 

(Greenberg 1997: 490-491). That is certainly the effect of the transgressive quality of 

Roth’s literature, and it is better understood when observing how it is exactly that his 

characters are depicted as transgressive. In addition, Ross Posnock sees how both ST and 

HS portray protagonists who embody Emerson’s “abandonment”- “his belief that ‘the one 

thing we seek with insatiable desire is to forget ourselves, to be surprised out of our 

propriety’ (2006: 414), because it is clear that Sabbath has let go of the need to please and 

to obey moral standards.  

That is why Posnock argues that “Sabbath abandoned propriety and any shred of 

dignity a long time ago, while Coleman Silk’s late-emerging abandonment of control 

reverses the conviction that has hitherto ruled him –the self is a disciplinary project that 

maximizes freedom by tabooing impulse. Roth discerns a fatal purism in the very 

assumption, Cartesian inspired, that the self is a project […].” (2006: 55, ellipsis mine). 

Furthermore, Sabbath is ruled by his impulses and feels freedom as a consequence, and 

has no faith in discipline because he does not believe that his life can be improved. He 

believes there is more value in remaining as base as he is, in being true to his stain. And 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

196 

 

that is exactly what makes Roth’s fiction and its portrayal of Sabbath so shocking, in 

following through with the stain to the utmost.  

Roth understands provocation, according to Posnock, “as inseparable from life 

but also makes provocation a subject in itself, a force that disrupts assurance and control. 

By midcareer he began calling this force ‘counterlife’ or ‘counterliving,’ as a way of 

understanding the capacity –indeed propensity- of individuals and history for defying the 

plausible and predictable.” (2006: 14). Debra Shostak also understood this force as central 

in Roth’s work as a whole, and she explains that it is particularly in ST that Roth wrote 

about America, feeling that he had rediscovered it: “While both being a Jew and being an 

American are of little interest to Mickey Sabbath in his initial self-conception, as the 

narrative gathers together the sorrows that drive him, his placement in the particularities 

of history begins to explain who he is” (2004: 235). Ralph Waldo Emerson’s idea to 

reverse the logic of Enlightenment is connected to “the anarchy and spontaneity latent 

and untapped in Kant’s demand to shed reliance on authority and to think for oneself” 

(Posnock 2006: 11). Sabbath certainly is a character who shapes his own perspective of 

life and refuses to live by other people’s standards and laws.  

If the “exhilarating, defiant immaturity” is an outcome of Emersonian self-

reliance, Roth’s “undoing and remaking of reason and maturity can be regarded as a 

model for what Emerson means by abstaining from dogmatism so as to recognize ‘all the 

opposite negations.’” (11).  In addition, I believe that Sabbath’s character is characterized 

by the ideas from Emerson’s famous essay, such as his nonconformist nature, being true 

only to his own nature, having no sacred laws beside his own constitution. Emerson 

encourages man to embrace contradiction, and not to fear being misunderstood or judged 

by society. He refuses to hide his tastes and aversions in spite of all opposition. Roth’s 

main character, Sabbath, is constantly aware of the ambivalent nature of human actions 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

197 

 

and motivations. This is so because, as Posnock states, “the self, as if an extension of 

nature, is split by volatility and ambivalence; and Emerson invites us to stay attuned to 

this by inhabiting contradiction and perversity” (11). Sabbath’s spirit of contradiction can 

be read as inherently American, because in the dialectic of American culture, besides the 

question of innocence, there is a “spirit of contradiction”, according to Hassan (1961: 9). 

Those qualities describe Sabbath accurately, and it is with the images of the 

human stain that this nature is revealed in the text, as we will see. It is because the stain 

shows the idea that unity or purity in nature is false or impossible, as Derrida or 

Kierkegaard have written, that it becomes a symbol with an important philosophical 

meaning. The stain makes such an imbalance visible by presenting characters who are 

inhabiting contradiction and perversity.  

 

 

II.1.12. The Irony of the Human Stain  

 

After acknowledging how Roth uses comedy in Portnoy’s Complaint (1969) to 

comment on the reading and treatment of desire by psychoanalysts, as studied by Brauner 

(2000), it is important to see how irony is also used in the representation of sexuality as a 

stain. Just as David Brauner situates Roth’s comedy in a theoretical and historical context 

(2000). Both situational and linguistic irony arise from the human stain. For this reason, 

it is helpful to consider when the characters’ actions cause the opposite effect than 

intended or when their words mean the opposite. Even more interesting are the scenes in 

which the characters cannot endure to look at the stain or when they see it but fail to 

comprehend its meaning. 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

198 

 

Elaine Safer has a book-length study about the use of irony and humor in Roth’s 

late novels (2006). “Sabbath’s actions yoke together tragedy and grotesque farce” (65) 

She sees a good example in Sabbath’s scene with Rosa, at the end of the first section of 

ST. There, Rosa ends up becoming Sabbath’s comforter, treating him as if he were a 

helpless child because he is weeping. In my view, this is an important passage because it 

reveals Sabbath’s surprise at his wife’s ironic rejection of circumcision as “Jewish 

barbarism” while she defends a woman who has cut off her husband’s penis. The irony 

resides in the fact that what to some people is heinous, to others is a sacred ritual in the 

case of circumcision, or a praiseworthy act of heroism, in the case of the revenge of that 

woman. The description of the blood and the reference to Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth 

make this image of the human stain the reflection of the problem that is found in Roseanna 

too. After a conversation about Roseanna’s desire to commit such an evil action against 

Sabbath himself, he sees this as a warning of her madness, and he decides to flee (Roth 

1995: 181). Finally, although Sabbath lies to Rosa, while he is playing a role in his 

performance, he feels his self pouring out as if his “he were porous”, finding that he had 

come to the surface and could not hide himself (Roth 1995: 184).  

 Irony and transgression are connected in the use of the human stain: What makes 

an action sinful or holy? And pure or impure? Cooper suggests a Nietzschean reading of 

ST and its paradoxes: “Sabbath follows his impulses, trusting them, more than formal 

covenants, to lead him to some spiritual height. His predilection may suggest that Jewish 

paradox of Sabbatianism [...], the teaching that holiness may emerge from immersion in 

sin; but Sabbath pursues sexual liaisons not to break the grip of eroticism, but rather to 

challenge its sinfulness.” (Cooper 1996: 282, ellipsis mine). That is why, for example, 

when Sabbath is accused by Norman of fighting against being a human being, he retorts: 

“To the contrary […], To being a human being I’ve always said, ‘Let it come.’” (Roth 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

199 

 

1995: 152). And his following actions confirm his principles: as he picks up a tube of 

vaginal cream that belonged to his friend’s daughter, he continues masturbating. 

Throughout the description of this scene, the word “innocent” is repeated multiple times 

with a great ironic effect (150-152).  

In AP, on the other hand, a seemingly innocent kiss becomes a bleeding wound in 

the conscience of the Swede. Similarly, as what Sánchez Canales analyzed in DA (2014), 

the reference to Death in Venice could also apply to HS, in my view, when considering 

the representation of the false myth of the innocence of youth. In HS, Faunia is to 

Coleman what Tadzio is to Aschenbach in Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice (1912). 

Faunia and Tadzio represent the essence of youth and desirable beauty to their older 

lovers. In Roth’s novel, Faunia is the most important thing for Coleman, who is aware 

that he is aging and nearing death, because he regards her as his last opportunity to find 

satisfaction in a relationship. But it is not just any relationship, as she makes “convention 

unendurable. Upright principles unendurable”. Therefore, she embodies the 

rebelliousness of the human stain. Zuckerman ironically states that when he dances with 

Coleman he feels “the contaminant of sex, the redeeming corruption that de-idealizes the 

species and keeps us everlastingly mindful of the matter we are” (Roth 2000: 37). As a 

further image of the stain, at this point Zuckerman wets himself because he is incontinent 

after a prostate surgery, and he has a small stain on his pants (36). Sex is the human stain 

that contaminates but also redeems, paradoxically. Faunia “is the unforeseen” who 

potentially contaminates Coleman, and his relationship with her is what allows Coleman 

to be free from “the stupid glory of being right. From the ridiculous quest for significance. 

From the never-ending campaign for legitimacy” (Roth 2000: 170-171). Coleman sees 

his affair with Faunia as Sabbath did with Drenka, as his only way to freedom, for he 

seeks “the freedom to leave a lifetime behind” (Roth 2000: 171), which can also be termed 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

200 

 

as “Aschenbachian madness” in reference to Death in Venice again. Ironically, Coleman 

is aware that he feels compelled to live like a tragic character who, while achieving this 

freedom, is at death’s door. 

Robert Greenberg has written about the topic of transgression in Roth’s work, and 

his study aims to show that Roth uses transgression in order to enter areas from which his 

characters may feel excluded psychologically and socially due to their Jewish origin 

(Greenberg 1997: 488). Greenberg has also noted the characteristic irony that Roth uses 

when writing about the transgressive behavior of his characters, and he calls this narrative 

mode “antic correction” (492). In his opinion, when Roth laughs at his protagonists, he 

does it only to come to terms with their “out-of-control behavior”, as if it were an 

expiation, because his characters are really behaving like fools (492). However, in my 

view, especially in the case of Sabbath, when we consider the moments of irony, it does 

not seem as if the narrator was making fun of the protagonist but rather showing how 

there is comedy even in his tragedy, but not with the intention to subject him to sheer 

ridicule, because the character is still human, and his human condition is valued, even 

though it is stained, precisely because it is stained. 

Eventually, that is why when Roth responded to some of the Bard’s students’ 

complaints about his female characters, he explained that he thought the problem was that 

the characters do not embody the values that the students respect. Additionally, he pointed 

out the inconsistencies in these criticisms because they do not mention characters who do 

not fit in the pattern and they do not consider the problems with the male characters’ 

values either (Roth Pierpont 2013: 239). After all, Roth created individual characters, and 

it does not seem significant to classify them into types.  



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

201 

 

Another issue that was raised in that conversation was the perception that it is 

difficult to “identify” with characters who are different from the reader. In response to 

this, Roth said it is possible, “through literature itself, in which we can identify with 

anyone and become larger than ourselves” (240). It is precisely through Roth’s fiction 

that one can experience life in the skin of many different particular characters, with their 

nuance, contradictions, chaos and the presence of the human stain.  

Roth has also suggested that what bothered readers about female characters such 

as Lucy in When She Was Good (1967) has more to do with the qualities of hatred and 

fury than with sexuality (Roth 1975: 142). The shame attached to the emotion of rage and 

the depth of the wound that causes it is what is so uncomfortable to face. Roth refuses to 

be responsible for human behavior shown by his characters, for it is not him who created 

people, and he “laments that his male characters do not have the right feelings toward 

women, or the universal array of feelings about them” (142). In times when a focus on 

male sexuality is perceived as potentially threatening or limiting women’s subjectivity, 

we need a reading of Roth’s fiction that focuses on women’s voices, offering a 

comprehensive portrayal of different women and how they affect a man’s life. Rather 

than making a judgement based on moral superiority, such a reading would encourage a 

questioning of the definition of purity, peace, joy, love and respect. 

By allowing insight into many different women’s lives, Roth shows how they 

experience loss and how they passionately drink life to the lees. Most interestingly, the 

theme of the impossibility of finding a pattern in life and of having a pure life gains force 

because of the role of the female characters. That is why, in conclusion, women have a 

significant place in Roth’s work. However, there are questions that remain unsettling: In 

ST, Sabbath accuses university feminists of deceiving and deforming the students, 

ironically using the language of the repellent to describe them as people who believe in 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

202 

 

the mirage of purity: “these filthy, lowlife, rectitudinous cunts who tell your children these 

terrible lies about men, about the sinister villainy of what is simply the ordinary grubbing 

about in reality of ordinary people like your dad and me” (Roth 1995: 236). This 

deception introduces the topic of the role of society and its pressures, which will be 

addressed in the next chapter. The stain proves to be an image that is powerful to 

transgress, not only in the personal sphere of sexuality but also in the public eye of 

society. 

• • • 

 In conclusion, when asking the question of how the human stain is the literary 

device used by Roth to transgress, first it is important to know where this language comes 

from in connection with his Jewish literary tradition (Greenberg 1997). In trying to 

understand Roth’s purpose in using his particular language of obscenity when portraying 

sexuality, after taking into consideration the reasons he gives, such as a character’s will 

to be saved (PC) or the freedom it afforded him when writing a novel without any 

strictures (ST), it seems that when the author said that he wanted to reveal everything he 

knew about human nature, he had no choice but to let in the repellent. In the “disgusting”, 

the human stain works to transgress as it allows the narrative to show how different 

characters react to what they believe is pure or impure in the area of sex. Roth wanted his 

readers to confront the repellent instead of looking away, so he used the device of the 

stain in order to show that “the perils of human nature” afflict everyone, even Jews.  

 Roth’s “thrilling profane” literary device allows him to take the image of water 

used in ritual cleansing and compare it with bodily fluids such as semen, where his 

characters can float freely. The stain is at the heart of his characters’ transgression, 

marking the moment of their temptation and fall, and it is also used to signal lust as an 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

203 

 

expression of rebellion against the obligations of virtue. This rebellion does not only 

appear in men but also in women and it is marked in both by the stain.  

Out of an interest in Roth’s exploration of the feminine subjectivity, knowing that 

he has been criticized for focusing on a male perspective, and after considering relevant 

criticism written by feminists, I have studied a number of scenes in the novels in order to 

reassess some of his female characters and the problematic elements in these scenes. The 

characters I focused on were: Drenka, Nikki, Roseanna and Michelle from ST; Merry and 

Dawn from AP; Faunia from HS and Consuela from DA. Put in a nutshell, following 

Posnock’s argument that male lust functions as an expression of rebellion, I argue that 

female lust operates similarly. But the human stain does more than that, as it enables 

female characters to express their desire to be free, to challenge preconceived notions and 

it shows their independence and vulnerability in a shocking way.  

Although Roth’s fictional representation of women and sexuality has been 

deemed as obscene and has provoked strong reactions, especially in the #MeToo context, 

the author repeatedly stated that his intention in writing was not to please, but to delve 

deeper into an imagined situation in reality, to raise the moral stakes. However, while 

Roth’s work cannot be termed misogynistic, he did represent male sexuality unsparingly 

in a way that includes elements of misogyny. But reading the novels as a whole, the 

conclusion is that Roth portrays characters of women who are the opposite of objectified 

as they are portrayed as human beings and whose limitations and desires are represented 

with the human stain too. 

 Roth was realistic about the extent to which literature could influence people, 

bearing in mind that his task as a writer was to reflect what he learnt about people, an idea 

he liked to remind himself of as he wrote down what Gustave Flaubert wrote in his letters: 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

204 

 

“The task at hand is not to change humanity but to know it” (“Il faut, si l’on veut vivre, 

renoncer à avoir une idée nette de quoi que ce soit.  L’humanité est ainsi, il ne s’agit pas 

de la changer, mais de la connaître” (Flaubert in Conard 1915: 60). That is why in the 

next section of this Chapter, the human stain will be interpreted as the element which is 

the antidote to the character’s blindness to their own faults. The role of moral judgements 

will be examined in the light of the characters’ reaction to the human stain in others. The 

question of the laws and standards and transgression as a rebellion will be analyzed by 

looking at how the images of the stain are used in the novels.  

 

 

II.2. THE STAIN IN THE EYES OF SOCIETY 

 

Roth has challenged social and cultural norms all his life, primarily through his 

fiction, although it seems that ironically, even though he courted misunderstanding in his 

novels, he did not want to be misunderstood in his life, as has been pointed out in recent 

reviews of Roth’s biographies by Blake Bailey (2021) and Ira Nadel (2021). After 

studying how the human stain illuminates the representation of sexuality, the question is 

how the same device also serves Roth to show how characters err as they make moral 

judgements about one another. Moreover, the human stain enables the readers to become 

aware of their own judgements and to question them. The subject of wrong judgement is 

important throughout Roth’s oeuvre and it also extends to his personal life, with his efforts 

to denounce what he claimed were lies about him (and he tried to publish notes to deny 

what his ex-wife Claire Bloom memoir said about him, as mentioned in the previous 

section). Another example that illustrates this interest in writing about judgement is 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

205 

 

Roth’s novel HS, which is based on a real story. As he clarified in an open letter to 

Wikipedia, was about how Professor Melvin Tumin, who taught at Princeton, was falsely 

accused of racism (while the first section originally appeared on The New Yorker in 2012, 

later the whole text was published as “Errata” (Roth 2017: 349-363). 

The subject of justice and society in Roth’s fiction has been studied mostly in 

relation with Judaism, on the one hand; and on the other hand, with the political context 

that the novels are set in. The reason is that Roth’s early stories clashed heavily with the 

fears and expectations of the Jewish American community at the time they came out, in 

the late fifties. It appeared to American Jews that after Hitler’s terror they needed good 

publicity rather than Roth’s stories, which exposed unpleasant Jewish traits. But as Saul 

Bellow argued in his 1963 introduction to Great Jewish Short Stories, a collection in 

which he included Roth’s story “Epstein” (thus including his work in the canon, alongside 

to authors such as Isaac Babel, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Sholom Aleichem and Bernard 

Malamud): “in literature we cannot accept a political standard” (Bellow 1963: 14).  

In spite of Bellow’s defense of Roth, the belief that his work was not good for the 

Jews was echoed by other critics such as Alfred Kazin, who believed “Conversion of the 

Jews” was a “simplification” (qtd. in Furman 1981: 1). Apart from the criticism Roth 

received from rabbis decades ago, Gershom Sholem’s words about PC have still been 

mentioned in Roth’s 2018 obituary in the New York Times, considering Roth’s novel as 

“more harmful to Jews than The Protocols of Zion” (McGrath, n.p.). The accusation that 

Roth’s work is antisemitic has been considered by Roth scholars over the decades, 

allowing for a close reading of his work in order to analyze how it portrays Jews and what 

is considered good or bad for the Jews (see Burch and Burch 2020; Sánchez Canales 

2021).  



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

206 

 

Alan Cooper finds that to many readers, Roth’s irony “has seemed over-subtle or 

misapplied, allowing first-person narrators, in defending against the outrageous, to gloss 

the vicious.” (Cooper 1996: 6). Cooper asks if Roth has “shocked a sometimes grudging 

readership into recognizing their limitations and real possibilities” or whether he has 

“merely irritated people seeking solace in the human condition.” (6). And as to the 

readers’ critical response to the human stain, when Roth’s work is judged as obscene, 

dirty, it is an ironic but logical response, for, as Ruth Wisse has put it, if Roth is a “critic 

of bourgeois complacency, what sweeter response than his constituency’s cry of ‘foul,’ 

exposing that very obsession with propriety that he has been ridiculing?” (Wisse 1971: 

56 qtd in Cooper 1996: 7).  

In the Old Testament, the individual and society must be conscious of any 

injustice or immorality, that is, aware of their stain, and they also have to remember it, 

together with God’s deliverance. The biblical command to remember is very important in 

the Jewish literary tradition, and this has to do with the way in which writers make the 

past present in their work, as can be seen in Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory 

by Yerushalmi Yosef Hayim (1996), which is something that Roth does too through his 

references to the Holocaust and will be further explored in Chapter III.  

However, the problem is that in the sphere of human morality there is room for 

error as people are eager to judge others for their stain without realizing there is one in 

them too. This conundrum brings to mind Jesus’ words in the Gospel, quoted in Chapter 

I in order to refer to Epstein’s defense against the criticism he received for his actions: 

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to 

the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out 

of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take 

the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

207 

 

your brother’s eye” (Matt. 7:3-5). The human stain can be compared both to the speck 

and to the plank, as it represents the reality that is perceived as something repellent in the 

other and also what is invisible to those who are sure of their righteousness. 

In his essay “Writing About Jews”, Roth expressed an interest in a purpose of 

fiction as allowing us to judge “at a different level of our being, for not only are we 

judging with the aid of new feelings but without the necessity of having to act upon 

judgement” (Roth 2017: 52). The writer believed that this new layer of consciousness was 

valuable to individuals and to society as a whole, and he termed it “an expansion of moral 

consciousness, an exploration of moral fantasy” (52).  

In this section, I intend to show how the human stain is a resource that allows the 

narrative to weave that tangled web that allows for such an exploration. When 

understanding the role of the human stain in the representation of the pressure of society’s 

moral judgement on the individual, the tone of the novels is just as important as the 

themes. Firstly, Roth’s is a style of indignation, because his characters cannot stop or help 

themselves, and it is a style of energy and abundance. The implications of this style and 

its bearing on the ideas it highlights have been studied by scholars such as Debra Shostak 

(2004) and Ross Posnock (2006). In the light of their studies, it becomes clear that Roth’s 

text is not just “an angry rant”, as his long paragraphs are structured with an objective in 

mind, an effect to be achieved. In Roth, many voices are talking at each other, but there 

is also a careful construction in order to create the effect of building up a specific reality 

in detail.  

Secondly, Roth scholars agree that one of his greatest strengths was to find 

something to push against, not just the Jewish tradition, but also other social and moral 

rules and pressures. This section proposes how the specific images of the human stain 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

208 

 

play an important role in that resistance, by means of the representation of that 

indignation. Roth writes following the steps of Franz Kafka, fascinated by the sense of 

entrapment and by the piercing irony, along with the alienation present in his fiction, as 

can be noted in Roth’s 1973 essay “I Always Wanted You to Admire my Fasting’, or 

Looking at Kafka” (Roth 2017: 11; 1975: 247-270). Just as Kafka wrote about the 

impossibility of escaping judgement, Roth wrote about the insidious presence of that 

judgement and the tension when his characters try to escape it.  

The strength of this impulse and the opposition to moral rules allow for a focused 

view with a layered and complex plot which has probably led Harold Bloom to consider 

Roth’s work as a historical high point in light of its literary precedents: “In one sense 

Philip Roth is the culmination of the unsolved riddle of Jewish literature in the twentieth 

and twenty-first centuries. The complex influences of Kafka and Freud and the malaise 

of American Jewish life produced in Philip a new kind of synthesis” (Bloom 2018, n.p.). 

As Shostak put it, Roth’s transgressive force goes further than making a political 

statement, as he is more interested in rebelling against the constraints of his own 

imagination, therefore developing a dialogical method that offers “a constant source of 

self-critique” (2004: 4). Portnoy’s Complaint (1969) can be seen as a breakthrough in the 

exploration of a moral fantasy, which is why many considered his work morally brave. 

And after that novel, Roth’s texts continued to be brave and provocative as they tackled 

taboos not only about the role that the body plays in different aspects of human 

experience, but also as they questioned moral standards. Furthermore, as Shostak argues, 

in later novels such as AP, there is a new narrative that shifts the value of ideas expressed 

in Portnoy’s Complaint, reversing the meaning of freedom, knowledge and transgression 

(2004: 5). In this way, the reader is offered multiple opportunities to rethink moral 

judgements. 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

209 

 

 

 

II.2.1. The Jews and the Stain of Scandal 

 

When exploring the meaning of the human stain in connection with moral 

judgement, it might seem obvious to define the stain as the concept of sin that appears in 

the Bible, that is, as an error, the failure when it comes to hitting the bull’s eye. Failing to 

meet society’s standards is not exactly the same as that failure, and this is an idea that will 

be explored in this section. The question is whether the human stain is merely calling for 

the readers’ empathy or for sheer sympathy for the characters’ plight. Alan Cooper, for 

example, believed that Roth’s aim was to write with sympathy for “the most failed human 

beings, Epstein, for example, so that the reader can derive, not as moral judge but as 

expanded consciousness, a sense of what that act of failing is like” (Cooper 1996: 37). 

Admittedly, Roth explained he sought to offer an understanding and humorous view of 

Epstein, purposefully showing how others judge him and misjudge him for his actions, 

but the stain does more than that as it shows how the very foundation for that judgement 

could be wrong. Indeed, Roth has written specifically about moral and personal crisis in 

the Jewish American context and the stain is particularly accurate for this situation.  

This function of the stain brings this study back to the first traces found in Roth’s 

early stories. Jewish identity plays an important role in the subject matter of “Eli the 

Fanatic” (1959) and it features a clear image of the human stain as there are descriptions 

of a mysterious darkness that both repels and attracts the main character. This story is 

about Eli, an attorney who needs to take a message to a small group of Orthodox Jews 

who act on behalf of the prosperous Jewish community of a suburban American town: 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

210 

 

they will be evicted on the grounds that they are breaking the law by having a school in a 

residential area. The real reason is that they are worried that these strange Jews might 

jeopardize their position in American society. As he speaks with the yeshiva headmaster, 

Rabbi Tzuref, Eli defends the law but he finds that the Rabbi confronts him with a 

different Law, which in turn makes Eli reconsider his opinion.  

But most of all, Eli is challenged by the strange darkness, the human stain that is 

present in the narrative. It appears in the shape of the strange black clothes that are worn 

by one of the survivors of the death camps. This Jewish man, who is called a “greenie” 

by Eli’s neighbors, is at first a complete stranger. But gradually Eli realizes that instead 

of being different to the Orthodox Jews, he has become one of them, and in the act of 

changing his clothes, he puts on this identity to show it everybody. He walks through the 

town and all his neighbors watch on at this moment when he finally knows who he is, 

even though people believe he is having a mental breakdown. As Eli is given an injection 

to calm him down, they take off the black clothes that are so offensive to them: “In a 

moment they tore off his jacket -it gave so easily, in one yank. Then a needle slid under 

his skin. The drug calmed his soul, but did not touch it down where the blackness had 

reached” (1959: 275). The last lines of the story can be compared with those of “Epstein”, 

when Epstein’s wife asks the doctor if his rash might be cured, the implication being that 

the stain cannot really be cured. In the end, it is not just a moral reflection about the 

significance of the law that brought Eli to that point: it is by the means of the human stain 

that he has seen a reality that is deep within him. Nevertheless, generally speaking, 

throughout Roth’s writing career, he wrote about many different types of Jews: Those 

like Job, those who have no faith, those who do believe, those who act like the stereotype 

and those who do not (“New Jewish Stereotypes”, “Writing about Jews” and “Imagining 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

211 

 

Jews” in Roth 2017; 1975). But most of them are plagued with the same problem of 

society’s judgements and misunderstandings.  

The unsurmountable difficulty that resides in reading people accurately is a theme 

that is repeated in Roth’s work, and it is especially present in the novels of ST, AP, HS, 

and DA. I want to show how it is by the means of the human stain that Roth has shown 

interest in moral fanaticism by delving deep into the experience and consequences of 

moral ambition. As Roth put it in an interview with Jerry Mangione in 1966, in many of 

his books, going back to his early stories, characters end up finding “a kind of moral 

ignorance” in people who try to be good, but have “a deep innocence about the nature of 

evil” (Searles 1992: 10). Roth refers to the innocence and ignorance that leads people to 

throw themselves into dangerous situations, driven by moral ambition. What brings 

characters such as Gabe Wallach in Letting Go (1962) or Lucy Nelson in When She Was 

Good (1967) to their destruction is the same moral ignorance that leads characters in 

Roth’s later novels to accuse others of immorality, and Roth’s attitude towards this 

experience is that he thinks at the same time that it is absurd and that it is horrible too. 

In addition, the very people who believe they could create a pure society by 

repressing sexual freedom are presented as the authoritative judges who would put 

characters like David Kepesh, Coleman Silk or Mick Sabbath on trial. Furthermore, this 

society is close to the characters, it is not just their neighbors or community, it is their 

closest relatives, their family, who judge them. For example, in DA it is Kepesh’s own 

friend George and his son, along with Consuela, who judge or lecture him in the end. 

Similarly, in “Epstein”, it is his family, his wife and daughter who judge him. In ST, 

Sabbath is judged by his wife Roseanna and in AP, Seymour is judged by his brother and 

his daughter is judged by Seymour himself. 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

212 

 

 

 

II.2.2. The Misconstruction of an Individual’s Artificial and Inner Life 

 

The human stain shows how it is unavoidable to be wrong about the reality in 

people’s lives because of its double or hidden nature. It does so by either illuminating the 

opacity of secrets or by darkening the artificial light of dreams. In AP, for example, the 

narrator imagines the Swede’s story as “the revelation of the interior life that was 

unknown and unknowable, the story that is tragic and awful and impossible to ignore [...]” 

(Roth 1997: 80, ellipsis mine). Through constant questions and the exploration of a 

variety of possibilities, the novel allows the reader to question the deceiving feeling of 

certainty that one has when judging other people’s lives. Moreover, as Jack Knowles 

notes, the phrase “I was wrong” is repeated with a specific purpose, as it “recurs 

throughout American Pastoral as an insistent refrain, and it comes to signal the 

demythologization of national experience and the emergence of history (Knowles 2020: 

26). This aspect will be further discussed in the next section, which deals with the 

representation of the stain in American History. 

In his narration, Zuckerman quotes from Tolstoy’s Ivan Ilych (1886) in order to 

illustrate how the Swede led a decorous life, approved by society, and he may not regret 

it, in America, though “Ivan Ilych’s life had been most simple and most ordinary and 

therefore most terrible” (Roth 1997: 31). Velichka Ivanova argues that Zuckerman’s 

reference to Tolstoy’s statement “is in fact both its re-actualization one century later, and 

its contestation. Not only does it point to the central leitmotiv of American Pastoral—the 

dream of order invariably brings a terrible disorder—it also suggests the dialogic 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

213 

 

orientation of Roth’s narrative” (Ivanova 2011: 241-241). Ivanova compares this novel 

with Ivan Ilych by pointing at how both Tolstoy's and Roth’s characters are fleeing from 

the unpleasant in their lives only to be caught up with it later in their lives. However, it is 

not because of an empty inner life that the Swede does not know about imperfection, it is 

only that he has managed to curb it, he never had to fight it till he is faced with Merry’s 

bomb. This is why Ivanova states that the Levovs are only concerned with order and 

beauty and that they “live an artificial life”, because Zuckerman’s initial suspicion is just 

that they have tried to stay away from the dark, disagreeable aspects of life, they only 

seek to embrace what is good and beautiful in their view. But Ivanova states that “the 

Swede is more concerned with external appearance than with inner life” (244-245). 

Instead, I would like to argue that the Swede is imbued with dreams and does have a rich 

inner life, it is just that it consists of dreams of purity. This accusation of an artificial life 

has come from the voices of various characters, and the way the Swede responds is central 

to the theme of the human stain. 

Firstly, the first chapter ends with Zuckerman’s verdict, “This guy is the 

embodiment of nothing”, and then, a shocking confession that acts as a cliff-hanger: “I 

was wrong. Never more mistaken about anyone in my life” (Roth 1997: 39). And then 

Zuckerman’s narration proceeds to tell what it is that filled the life of the Swede, who is 

very much alive and proves to know the human stain in his own skin. If by making a 

parallel with Tolstoy's character, Ivanova echoes the novel’s statement that the Levovs 

“live an artificial life” (2011: 245), I think this is only partly true. It is not so before the 

bomb, and it is only when they are traumatized by facing the meaninglessness of life that 

they have to put up a mask to conceal their pain. “Artificial” is actually the adjective used 

by Zuckerman when he explains what happens to the Swede after he realizes life makes 

no sense: “And when that happens the happiness is never spontaneous again. It is artificial 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

214 

 

and, even then, bought at the price of an obstinate estrangement from oneself and one’s 

history” (Roth 1997: 81). There is no more real and complete joy in life so he has to feign 

it. It is artificial only superficially, to others’ eyes, in that he has to pretend to be happy 

to hide his suffering: “Stoically he suppresses his horror. He learns to live behind a mask. 

A lifetime experiment in endurance. A performance over a ruin. Swede Levov lives a 

double life” (81). He cannot recover the innocence or the wholeness he knew before. 

This artificiality was Zuckerman’s initial suspicion, but it has to be cast away, in 

light of the narrative that gives insight into the Levovs’ lives and thoughts. In the novel, 

the character Rita Cohen also judges the Swede and Dawn as artificial, claiming they only 

care about the surface of things and have no idea of what is underneath the skin (Roth 

1997: 137). However, as the Swede’s thoughts show, he listens to everything Rita has to 

say precisely because he wants to know the truth, painful though it may be. It is up to the 

reader to form their own idea of the Swede, but it has to be drawn from the narrator’s 

description and report. The text performs a kind of miracle because Zuckerman has to 

illuminate “the Swede’s opacity” (77). If Zuckerman highlights one idea over and over 

again, it is this one: It is impossible to avoid being wrong about people. In this way, he is 

wrong about the Swede in the beginning, and he shows how the Swede was wrong about 

his daughter. Because just as Zuckerman is losing his patience, bored by the Swede’s 

righteousness, the readers may be tempted to give up, and yet the text teases them into 

waiting for the revelation of what lies under the veil, or the snow, to use some of the 

metaphors from the novel.  

 

 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

215 

 

II.2.3. The Equivocal Stain as an Instrument of Unblinding 

 

Both the characters and the readers have to be unblinded during the reading of 

Roth’s novels, and they do so by lifting the veil with the resource of the human stain. It 

is not easy for the Swede to maintain an appearance of control when he experiences the 

chaos of history in his own skin, a terror attack so close to his home. The text shows his 

fall and “how he must have imagined that it was founded on some failure of his own 

responsibility”, for he makes himself “unnaturally responsible. Keeping under control not 

just himself but whatever else threatens to be uncontrollable, giving his all to keep his 

world together” (Roth 1997: 88). The narrator implies throughout the text that these 

events are really none of the Swede’s fault, and yet he feels they must be. Because of the 

text, the reader realizes that the real mystery is not the Swede, but his daughter. Whilst 

the narrator speaks with the Swede’s voice, Merry’s voice is only heard in conversation 

with other characters, and her thoughts, her inner life, are never revealed. She is like a 

gap in the narrative. Her voice is heard and yet, the reader is in the same situation as the 

Swede, being ignorant about her true thoughts, wondering whether she means what she 

says. 

As seen in Chapter I, the human stain can be interpreted as the illness or as the 

cure, and in AP the Swede sees it as a false cure stemming from good intentions, when 

he believes his daughter uses filth as a penance. This happens when he questions his 

daughter about the bombs and the people she has killed. She is guilty and she accepts the 

full burden of responsibility: “How strongly you still crave the idea of your innocent 

offspring. [...] I am the abomination. Abhor me” (Roth 1997: 248, ellipsis mine). Finally, 

the truth is revealed: Without a tempter, she has done it: “everything angry inside her had 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

216 

 

broken into the open”, it was her intention to commit murder (249). In the light of her 

crime, it seems clear to the Swede that she is a Jain because she is punishing herself. He 

is still holding on to the goodness he believes is in her: “you’re a good girl and so you 

want to do penance” and so she will die “from filth” (249). The human stain becomes her 

self-imposed punishment and her death sentence even. There is a deep irony in the double 

reality of her terrorism and her Jainism. Sánchez Canales talks about this sarcasm in his 

essay in Ivanova’s book about AP (2011: 214).  

 This use of the image of the human stain brings back the biblical meaning of 

original sin which carries with it the penalty of death, as discussed in Chapter I. When the 

Swede at last sees what is under his daughter’s veil, he realizes that even though he 

recognizes her as his, she is still “unknowable”: “The veil was off, but behind the veil 

there was another veil. Isn’t there always?” (266). The Swede’s brother is the first and 

also the last of the characters to accuse the Swede of leading an “unnatural, artificial” life 

(277). The problem is that Jerry, like Job’s friend, does not really want to listen to the 

Swede and so he does not know him: “He hears only himself” (276). And yet, during his 

final conversation with him, the Swede acknowledges something important: It is true, he 

may not have been enough to stop his daughter from doing what she did, but now he 

knows, he did his best, so “what anybody is is not enough” (280).  

At this point the Swede realizes nobody has the power to stop themselves or others 

from becoming a monster. As Jerry says, “We are none of us enough! Including the man 

who does everything right!” (280). These words seem to echo the words of the Book of 

Psalms: “They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is none who does good. […] 

They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does 

good, not even one” (Ps. 14:1-3, ellipsis mine). In Roth’s work there is no divine 

perspective, however, and it is the human mind that realizes its failings. It is achieved 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

217 

 

through irony and the human stain. Valerie Roberge has further explored Roth’s use of 

irony in a paper presented at the Roth Remembered Conference (2019). In “Roth’s Lesson 

in Irony”, she presents the effect this irony has on the reader of Roth’s fiction and how 

empathy emerges from the ironic experience. Drawing on Roberge’s description of irony, 

I see how the ironic mode is how the human stain functions in its representation of purity 

and impurity on the one hand, and transgression and punishment on the other hand. 

According to Roberge, irony sets the readers free from the world’s judgement but also 

from their own moral consciousness as they explore a new fictional world. 

Immersed in the ironic experience, and trapped by Zuckerman’s narrative, the 

reader sees that the Swede had no capacity to “penetrate the interior of people”, and so he 

was fooled by many: “he failed to see into his daughter, failed to see into his wife, failed 

to see into his one and only mistress -probably had never even begun to see into himself” 

and nobody really has more idea than he does (Roth 1997: 410). The surprising revelation 

is that Merry is the one who helps him see how wrong he had been about life: 

 

[...] the instrument of his unblinding is Merry. The daughter has made her father see. [...] 

She has given him sight, the sight to see clear through that which will never be 

regularized, to see what you can’t see [...]. He had seen that we don’t come from one 

another, that it only appears that we come from one another. [...] He had thought that most 

of it was order and only a little of it was disorder. He’d had it backwards. He had made 

his fantasy and Merry had unmade it for him. (Roth 1997: 418, ellipsis mine). 

 

The presence of the unexpected emerges in the text allowing characters to know 

themselves and to deal with surprises. In “The Conversion of the Jews”, one of Roth’s 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

218 

 

early stories, there is a description of the feeling of surprise at one’s own shocking actions. 

When Ozzie asks himself whether it is him who had insulted the Rabbi and who was 

prancing about on the roof, it is compared by the narrator to the question a criminal may 

ask himself before committing a crime or a bridegroom before getting married. After 

hesitating whether it is them, really, who will do those things, they just do the deed and 

realize that it is in fact, themselves. They recognize themselves in their actions, as they 

bear their human stain. This theme will be explored to the extreme and with detail in these 

novels. In AP, the Swede is surprised as he finds out who his daughter really is, but also 

his wife etc. In HS, Coleman asks himself what he has done to become who he really is.  

Furthermore, the question of whether it is really oneself who will do something 

decisive is connected to another one: Who is it that judges our actions? Is it possible to 

know the judge of human beings, or God? Cooper believes that in “The Conversion of 

the Jews”, Rabbi Binder is a hypocrite and Ozzie’s response is more of a test in his pursuit 

of freedom than a question of theological truth (Cooper 1996: 32). Interestingly, if Ozzie’s 

reply to the Rabbi, “You don’t know anything about God!” is one of the lessons from the 

Book of Job, as Cooper points out, then human error about the divine judge might be 

linked to human error when it comes to judging one’s own moral character and one’s 

equals too. This issue is addressed in Sánchez Canales’ essay about Roth’s presumed anti-

Semitism (2021), because there is a passage in which Alex Portnoy has a strong argument 

with his father because he refused to go to the synagogue. He openly says he is an atheist 

and that consequently he does not believe in the existence of God. Portnoy’s Complaint 

was published one decade later than the stories mentioned above, which shows that Roth’s 

characters had not dramatically changed. 

In AP, the human stain helped the Swede see through his daughter because of how 

her appearance had changed, which highlights the importance of what is visible and 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

219 

 

palpable, once again: The body. As seen in the previous section dealing with sexuality, 

in DA, Roth explores how much can be known of a person through his or her body: “The 

great biological joke on people is that you are intimate before you know anything about 

the other person. In the initial moment you understand everything. You are drawn to each 

other’s surface initially, but you also intuit the fullest dimension” (Roth 2001: 15). In 

expressing how much it is possible to get to know by the body before the mind, the body 

becomes significant too. Just as meaningful as the mind, in fact, and as people cannot 

avoid this intimacy, they are bound to know each other. But still, in DA that possibility 

to create an artificial connection by lust that bridges all limitations is contradicted as soon 

as Kepesh and Consuela have sex and he states he will “have no idea what she is, how 

clever she is or how stupid she is, how shallow she is, how deep she is, how innocent she 

is or how guileful she is, how wily, how wise, even how wicked” (Roth 2001: 27). All 

these things are of interest and would soothe his lack of confidence, for he would feel 

sure of her only if he felt he really knew her. All of this is getting to know the mind in 

depth rather than just the body. Consuela is described as someone who is hard to decipher, 

who does unexpected things, making it impossible for Kepesh to truly know her, so that 

ironically, maybe the body does not tell the whole story after all. 

In the train of thought of the Socratic paradox (“I know one thing; that I know 

nothing”), the human stain in Roth’s work shows how the characters become aware of 

their own ignorance and it shows the wisdom of acknowledging that uncertainty. When 

attempting to describe ST’s main character, one is at a loss, for Sabbath’s life seems to 

rely mostly on waywardness, hence escaping any clear-cut definition. That is why when 

he is confronted with pain, the history of his losses offers no satisfactory explanation. 

Reflecting upon his own life, he can only say that everything he knows is wrong. Even 

though he decides how to act, how to behave, Sabbath believes that the troubles in his life 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

220 

 

have no solution. There is no clarity in his aims, nor in the means to accomplish anything, 

nor is there a clear essence of his identity, nor limits to his person. That is why his actions 

are never explained without confusion or contradiction: “There was no unsnarling an 

existence whose waywardness constituted its only authority and provided its primary 

amusement” (Roth 1995: 108).  

That waywardness is why Sabbath does not wholly assign the sense of futility to 

his personal tragedies, he is just telling the story of what has happened to him, because it 

is the only thing he can be sure of, and even that certainty is ambiguous: “That’s all you 

could know, though if what you think happened happens to not ever match up with what 

somebody else thinks happened, how could you say you know even that? Everybody got 

everything wrong” (Roth 1995: 109). This acknowledgement of uncertainty can be 

considered wise. He knows the limits of human knowledge, while at the same time the 

narration offers a deep insight into human nature. There is, however, something that can 

be known about it: it bears a stain. 

This theme appears too in HS throughout the novel, but especially in the chapter 

titled “Everybody knows”, as Coleman Silk strives to conceal his true identity but the 

truth comes to the surface in the end. Similarly, in AP, the Swede is surprised by how 

much he ignores about his daughter. Matthew Shipe has pointed out how Zuckerman has 

to realize that he completely misread the Swede and that this argument is present in a 

large amount of Roth’s later fiction (Shipe 2019: 132). Zuckerman’s realization unleashes 

his conclusion that it is impossible to be right when trying to understand anyone because 

we are ill-equipped “to envision one another’s interior workings and invisible aims” 

which is why he sums up: “The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is 

all about anyway. It’s getting them wrong that is living […]” (Roth 2000: 35). 

Paradoxically, at the same time, in Roth’s work we find the reality that fiction serves as 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

221 

 

a vehicle for understanding ourselves” as Shipe argues (2019: 132). The human stain 

captures the tension of this apparent contradiction as it is a metaphor that shows but also 

hides its meaning in the text. 

Sabbath describes life as a “meaningless mess” (Roth 1995: 111), which will later 

echo in the second section, in the words written by Shakespeare in Macbeth: “Life’s but 

a walking shadow, a poor player/ That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,/ And then 

is heard no more; it is a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/ Signifying nothing.” 

(V, v, 24-28). It seems that Sabbath’s life has come undone and he is left with nothing 

but a theater. “To a life that had come to nothing, a crude theatrical instinct was lending 

a garish, pathetic touch of last-minute drama” (Roth 1995: 111). His work as a puppeteer 

gave him the opportunity to create characters and stories, seducing his audience for the 

sake of the performance, for art’s sake, which needs no moral justification. Experience 

remains a mystery even if Sabbath tries to be sensible and make sense out of his life, there 

is always regret and frustration because of the lack of control he has: “Life is 

impenetrable” (248). This pervading mess in life can also be found in the experience of 

Coleman Silk in HS. Gustavo Sánchez Canales writes about the issue of free will vs. 

determinism in his article on HS (2009: 111-128). As he points out, Coleman does 

everything he can to prevent any outer force from limiting him (114). Coleman has the 

strong desire to be in control, but as we see in Greek literature, the moira, the forces of 

destiny, cannot be avoided and so, there is no escape from the true identity of the 

characters. Precisely in trying to flee, he will fall (119). 

 

 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

222 

 

II.2.4. The Human Stain Behind Indictment and Beyond Judgement  

 

HS is about a “human secret” that comes out in detail. The secret has implications 

of Coleman’s personal shame and also the shame of the Athena community that pretends 

to appear as stainless in the eyes of the others. The political context of the novel is 

significant because the affair between Coleman and Faunia is compared to the affair of 

President Clinton with his intern Monica Lewinsky in 1998. But Roth emphasizes not 

only how people judged it or regarded it as a scandal, he also chooses to narrate the 

physical details of their story. The human stain serves to tell the story of the mind in the 

body, once again. The locals think that Faunia is Coleman’s slave while she is actually 

his liberator, his gateway to freedom. Falsely accused of being a racist, Coleman is also 

accused of being a misogynist, which is an accusation Roth has also received and an issue 

he has written about, as discussed in the first section of this chapter. In fact, Coleman’s 

story was inspired by what happened to a friend of Roth’s, Melvin Tumin, who used the 

word “spooks” in the same way as it appears in the novel and was accused of racism by 

the University of Princeton and after a few months he was vindicated of the charges (Roth 

Pierpont 2013: 254). Probably, the fact that Roth knew that such a witch hunt could indeed 

happen, just as it happened with the scandal of Clinton’s affair, shows how the novel is 

rooted in reality.  

Not only does the Athena community believe lies about Coleman and judges him 

harshly, Coleman’s own children also turn against him, and so the question that is 

constantly on his lips is: “What is my crime?” (Roth 2000: 62). He is seized by 

indignation, a feeling that many of Roth’s characters share, but in his case, knowing 

Ancient Greek Literature very well, he is aware that such a rage will destroy him. It is a 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

223 

 

furious madness, a despair that comes from believing that he is unjustly wronged. There 

is irony too in the name of the institution, as Sánchez Canales has pointed out, because 

Athena makes reference to Pallas Athena, the Greek Goddess of wisdom (2009). The 

people who falsely accused Coleman in Athena were all professors who lacked wisdom. 

And Coleman himself gave the best education to his own children, so it seems like it was 

all a fruitless effort. Because the result is that at a critical time such as this, Coleman’s 

children believe lies about their father without questioning them. Of course, there is an 

important irony here, which is that, even though it is true that Coleman taught them well, 

he also lied to them their whole life about his race and his original family. He taught them 

to believe lies, in a way.  

What Coleman most desires now is to let go, to ignore people’s judgment. Letting 

go is one of the themes in Roth’s fiction, as can be gathered from the title of one of his 

early novels, Letting Go (1962). This phrase means to surrender to the circumstances that 

the individual tries to fight, to give in to one’s desire and forget about moral responsibility, 

in a way. “It was time to yield, to let this simple craving be his guide. Beyond their 

accusation. Beyond their indictment. Beyond their judgment. Learn, he told himself, 

before you die, to live beyond the jurisdiction of their enraging, loathsome, stupid blame” 

(Roth 2000: 64). However, this is a difficult task, taking into account the hypocrisy and 

vanity of those who are quick to judge Coleman. For example, his attorney Primus, who 

puts up a tremendous show in order to pretend to be clean of chaos: “no weaknesses of 

character nor extreme views nor rash compulsions nor even the possibility of inadvertent 

error, nothing ill or well concealed […]” (Roth 2000: 78, ellipsis mine). All those 

characteristics of the frailty of human beings can be found not only in Coleman, but also 

in other main characters of Roth, such as Sabbath, who actually embrace such things as 

part not only of their nature, but of humanity in general.  



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

224 

 

Nonetheless, Primus claims he can “draw the line” and in this way, “no 

incriminating impurity will be permitted to breach it” (Roth 2000: 79). The question is 

whether one has the power to do such a thing. Coleman, who has been humiliated, asks 

himself: “But didn’t I draw the line and draw it no less rigorously? Was I less vigilant in 

the pursuit of legitimate goals and of an estimable, even-keeled life? Was I any less 

confident marching in step behind my own impregnable scruples? Was I any less 

arrogant?” (79). All his caution could not prevent his disgrace: that just because of one 

word that came out of his lips, his whole life was shattered by people who saw him naked, 

as it were, who found him lacking in truthfulness. No matter how hard he had tried to 

build up a respectable life, impurity had caught up with him and he was found guilty. That 

is why even though he tries to keep the chaos away, it still overcomes him. This is an 

experience shared with other characters, such as Kepesh in DA or The Swede in AP.  

Primus’ view is that chaos is only present in some people, and that by keeping 

them away, there is safety and people can remain uncontaminated by their stain. This is 

a similar way of thinking as that of the community of American Jews that appear in the 

story mentioned in the introduction, “Eli the Fanatic”. They feel so safe in their modern 

community, that they believe their status can only be maintained by keeping those who 

seem strange at bay. Their old black clothes are what make them fanatic, supposedly. The 

story asks with irony who is more fanatic, really. Intransigence and intolerance are shown 

to be in those who cannot stand the human stain and try to eradicate it completely. Then, 

in this line of thinking, for people such as Primus in HS, “the world” and its dangers must 

be avoided at all costs. There is a division in the world, different kinds of worlds. 

Following this logic, Coleman’s attorney tells him to keep clear of Faunia, because she is 

“not of his world” (she belongs to a part of society that has suffered too much and thus 

carries their burdens and dangers with them), and she will no doubt bring disaster to him. 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

225 

 

But social status makes no difference, the attorney is wrong, because Coleman’s world is 

really just the same as Faunia’s, and everyone, in fact, shares the same chaotic human 

nature. No one is safe from it, as Sabbath says in ST and as examined in Chapter I.  

Just as in ST, the representations of the stain indicate the real, chaotic human 

quality of Sabbath’s life, which is really more than theater, just as in Coleman and 

Faunia’s stain there is more than an empty scandal. This human factor can be found in 

the physical realities that point at aspects of Sabbath’s being which he cannot help or 

control as if he himself were a puppet. But the opposite position is also marked by the stain. 

As in AP, where there are two brothers with opposing views, and yet, Jerry also bears the 

imprint of the stain: “he is king” He reveals everything about himself all the time, “And 

these two are brothers, [...] one for whom the aggression has been bred out, [...] (Roth 

1997: 277-278, ellipsis mine). The cruelty with which Jerry treats his brother might stem 

from his outlook on life, as he states that “everything is horrible”, and “we are none of us 

enough” (278, 280). Jerry thinks that Merry planted the bomb because she hated her father 

and his lifestyle, but the Swede does not accept this explanation: “it is not rational, it is 

chaos” (281). Like Coleman in HS, the Swede is aware of the reality of chaos in his life.  

The double nature in the characters is revealed drastically by their own discourse. 

For example, after a passionate and rational description of his trade, the Swede suddenly 

switches into the speech of a madman as he is asked whether he is happy or not. “Am I? 

he asked, and felt as though he were going to be dissected, cut into by a knife, opened up, 

and all his misery revealed” (Roth 1997: 130). Roth’s fiction shows this sword that brings 

conflict into character’s lives because it confronts truth with lies, or it holds up a mirror 

so characters can see the dark reality underneath the surface. 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

226 

 

How do people come to change? The human stain appears too as the liquid, the 

fluid identity inside people, which surprisingly people try to get rid, draining themselves 

out from it. The Swede realizes “that people were manifold creatures didn’t come as a 

surprise to the Swede, […] What was astonishing to him was how people seemed to run 

out of their own being, run out of whatever the stuff was that made them who they were 

and, drained of themselves, turn into the sort of people they would have once felt sorry 

for” (Roth 1997: 329, ellipsis mine). The words “stuff” and “drained” indicate that this 

liquid is like a character’s fluid and changing identity. Change comes from an escape 

from one’s own essential identity, and also from a rejection of what they consider impure, 

unseemly, only to come to miss it and wish they could get back to it: “It was as though 

while their lives were rich and full they were secretly sick of themselves and couldn’t 

wait to dispose of their sanity and their health and all sense of proportion so as to get 

down to that other self, the true self” (329). Being “sick” with the human stain, they 

dispose of their “health”, that is, they discard purity as if it were waste, in order to find 

themselves. 

The stain is hidden away by people only to be looked for again, in search of that 

“true” self, the human nature. That is why reading a novel like AP brings up the following 

questions: Why do people have a double nature? How can they hide the stain so 

effectively? In the Swede’s view, Orcutt, the man who is having an affair with his wife, 

is “All façade and subterfuge [...] Up top the gentleman, underneath the rat. Drink the 

devil that lurks in his wife; lust and rivalry the devils lurking in him” (Roth 1997: 382). 

Orcutt pretends to be civilized and respectable, but in secret he is a beast: “His civilized 

form of animal behavior” (383). Orcutt’s very name seems to imply a split-up personality.  

In conclusion, the Swede fails to really see into the people he thought he knew 

best -himself included (409-410). He discovers that people in general really fail to know 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

227 

 

themselves, and when they say who they are, they are completely wrong: “What was he, 

stripped of all the signs he flashed?” (410). Besides, after the traumatic experience that 

opens the Swede’s eyes to the reality of his life, the Past loses its innocence. Everything 

is re-examined: “He saw that everything you say says either more than you wanted it to 

say or says less than you wanted it to say” (93). Every action has got a reaction that is 

extreme, exaggerated, does not correspond to the character’s intentions, and so life proves 

to be a dangerous and cruel stage.  

 

 

II.2.5. The Question of Morality 

 

In the realm of the human stain the conventional ideas of morality fade, and ethics 

is left outside when it comes to the representation of this experience. Now, it is confusing 

because Roth includes the notion of morality in the dialogues to show the judgements that 

people make, and then these are questioned. The important thing is whether people have 

a realistic understanding of human nature. A key passage to consider in light of this idea 

can be found in the part ST titled To be or not to be. Sabbath considers that his tapes with 

the recording of the sexual phone conversation with a girl who was his student constitute 

a work of art rather than rubbish (Roth 1995: 213). To throw them in the garbage would 

have been a sin (“like defiling a Picasso”), which warns ironically that what can be 

considered dirty because of its sexual impurity, can be considered very valuable to 

Sabbath: “Because there was in the tapes a kind of art the way that he was able to 

unshackle his girls from their habit of innocence” (231). ST has a dual tone, a dual vision. 

With double passages such as this one, as the reader chooses to read the phone 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

228 

 

conversation first, the innocence of the student is mitigated (Cooper 1996: 285). Like in 

Nabokov’s Lolita (1955), these young girls are not more innocent than the adults. With 

Lolita there is the same irony, as Humbert Humbert can only write about his prison, which 

is his passion for Lolita. The purpose of Roth’s narrative is not only to show the impurity 

that lies hidden beneath a surface of purity, but to show that impurity can be art, or that 

art can be impure and has to be preserved just like what is considered pure art. 

Sabbath analyzes the crooked psychology that fuels such an exchange: The young 

girls are drawn towards this particular illicit act because “the very repugnance that his 

aging body inspired in them had to make their adventure with him feel a little like a crime 

and thereby give free play to their budding perversity and to the confused exhilaration 

that comes of flirting with disgrace” (Roth 1995: 213). The entrance to the “lurid 

interstices of life” is appealing precisely because of the human stain. It is important to 

note how the girls are described as naturally perverse and willing to break the law. These 

tapes are actually Sabbath’s only legacy, which is very meaningful (he planned to leave 

them to the Library of Congress collection, as he remarks jokingly). This proud attitude 

of the seducer can be compared to Kepesh in the DA and his habit of having affairs with 

his former students.  

The focus of the conversation is on the body and it reflects the girl’s experience 

with “the risks that deviancy entailed” which is awakened by Sabbath’s “insidious art of 

giving license to what was already there” (Roth 1995: 214). This passage is analyzed by 

David Brauner, who writes about “Sabbath’s Nietzschean attempt to recalibrate 

conventional indices of morality” in this section, conformed by two parallel narratives: 

On the upper side of the page there is an account of Sabbath’s conversation with his 

student, and on the lower side there is a transcription of the infamous telephone 

conversation. The conclusion of the conversation features Sabbath’s comment: “let them 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

229 

 

be unrealistic”, alluding to people who expect others to be pure according to their 

morality. Sabbath, according to Brauner, uses “the term ‘realistic’ as an antidote to the 

poisonous idealism of those with rigid notions of morality. To be ‘unrealistic’ about 

human sexuality in Sabbath’s view, is not simply to exhibit a tenuous grasp of reality, but 

to create a climate of intemperate morality that is, paradoxically, immoral” (2007: 131-

132). I agree with Brauner that Sabbath’s comments and his “impure” words are an 

antidote to that poisonous idealism. 

Mostly, Sabbath’s urge to escape from a moral judgement can be considered to 

reflect a Nietzschean attempt because this character follows a path that the philosopher 

illuminated when questioning morals. Many are drawn to literature, Roth said in “Writing 

About Jews”, to discover “all that is beyond simple moral categorizing” (Roth 2017: 51). 

When at the end of the passage of the phone conversation, Sabbath has to acknowledge 

how clueless he is about the girl’s real motivations and about how he should act, he 

confesses: “So little in life is knowable, Reader-don’t be hard on Sabbath if he gets things 

wrong. Or on Kathy if she gets things wrong. Many farcical, illogical, incomprehensible 

transactions are subsumed by the manias of lust” (Roth 1995: 232-233). In this direct 

address to the reader, the narrator makes him an accomplice in a similar way as Humbert 

Humbert does in Nabokov’s Lolita. The question is that there are no grounds of knowing 

what is right and what is wrong, and because of its nature, lust cannot lead to rational 

decisions. Posnock has argued that there are important points of comparison between 

some aspects of Emerson’s thought and Roth’s work, in particular, for their love of 

agonistic combat and rude truth” and their defense of the defiant immaturity of a soul that 

“never reasons” (2006: 9-10). In addition, as Emerson wrote in “Circles” included in his 

Essays, “nothing is secure, but life, transition, the energizing spirit”, life is “a series of 

surprises” (Emerson 1983: 413). This inability to know what will happen is a recurring 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

230 

 

theme in HS, AP and DA, which are all novels that represent the idea that “the individual 

is always mistaken” as Emerson says twice in “Experience” (1983: 484). 

Despite all these things that he does not know, Sabbath does have a strong 

awareness of the human stain, and he also feels drawn to it. The narrative also gradually 

creates a clear picture of that reality for the reader. So, it is obvious that because of his 

nature, Sabbath has no choice but to transgress: “if you can still do something, then you 

must do it! Anything living can figure that out” (Roth 1995: 233). As Nietzsche put it in 

Beyond Good and Evil, “‘being conscious’ is not in any decisive sense the opposite of 

what is instinctive: most of the conscious thinking of a philosopher is secretly guided and 

forced into certain channels by his instincts” (Nietzsche 1886: 201). Posnock has also 

compared Nietzsche’s philosophy to Roth’s for a similar enmity of ideology and 

bourgeois pieties” (2006: 9). Accordingly to Nietzsche’s words, Sabbath’s awareness of 

reality is often guided by his instincts. He is not only aware of his anxieties about human 

nature and the nearness of death, he is obsessed by these realities because of his instincts. 

For an extended analysis of the presence of concepts of the Dionysian and of tragedy and 

other ideas of Nietzsche in Roth’s work, especially in ST, see Patrick Hayes’ Philip Roth: 

Fiction and Power (Hayes 2014: 82-87). 

In addition, when Ross Posnock speaks about Roth’s references to Dostoevsky, 

he refers to philosopher and critic Lev Shestov, who was “one of the first to emphasize 

the Nietzschean side of Dostoevsky”, saying about the Russian author that he “lauds 

caprice, unconditional, unforeseen, always irrational, and makes mock of all the human 

virtues” (qtd. in Posnock 2006: 161). Dostoevsky wrote in Notes from the Underground 

(1864) about man’s “sheer perversity”: “Merely to have his own way,” a man will 

“intentionally desire the most wicked rubbish […] simply in order to inject his own 

pernicious, fantastic element into all this positive rationality” (22, ellipsis mine) (qtd in 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

231 

 

Posnock 2006: 74). This is a perfect description of Roth’s Sabbath. Another Russian 

writer who was not only influenced by Dostoevsky, but who also influenced writers such 

as George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, is Yevgeny Zamyatin (1884-1937). Dostoevsky’s 

idea of writing about a perverse man who has immoral desires in order to inject his 

element into rationality is very similar to Zamyatin’s novel We (1924), as the experience 

of the main character shows how he engages in transgression unwillingly at first, but he 

actually cannot help doing it because even though his actions constitute a rebellion against 

the laws of the One State, he feels there is a mysterious beast within him that has to do 

his own will. Similarly, Sabbath is not deceiving anyone and he is not pretending when 

he lives the way he does, unapologetically transgressive.  

Brauner analyzes the dilemmas posed by the juxtaposition of the two parallel texts 

mentioned above, that feature very different levels of discourse: “This passage offers both 

a striking counterpoint to the sexualized language of the conversation that appears 

beneath it and a justification of it” (2007: 127). Consequently, “the air in text one, though 

rarefied, is hardly purified. What finally subverts and redeems the pornography of text 

two, however, is the irreverence and mordant irony in text one” (128). The effect of the 

combination of humor and thoughts of mortality is indeed striking and complex in text 

one, and opposed to Brauner’s interpretation, it seems that text two cannot be redeemed 

nor “purified”, because that would imply that the contrast of thoughts about mortality 

with the expression of carnal desire is more valuable than the crude conversation between 

the teacher and his student. It is meant to be a ‘filthy’ sexual narrative that needs no 

justification because of its very nature, and it is precisely what it is, a transgressive 

recording, included in the narrative with the purpose of showing Sabbath’s performance 

and the way there is no innocence in the girl either. It is true that such passages are 

disagreeable, and that is because the human stain embodies the unpalatable, as Posnock 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

232 

 

states (2006: 2). The conversations end with the girl telling Sabbath he is a “human 

animal” and saying she is a “bad girl” while she knows that she has to be a good girl, 

because “it’s what people expect.” The conversation ends with an image of the mess that 

points at the human stain as Sabbath replies “Well, you be realistic and let them be 

unrealistic.  Jesus. There’s a mess here” (Roth 1995: 234). 

Another reason why there is no justification or redemption needed for this passage 

is that its vulgarity functions as a medicine, a life-giving drive that is essential to fight 

against the blindness of believing in moral innocence. Posnock writes: 

 

Rudeness in Roth is a source of stylistic energy, but also a principled (even moral) 

position, the antidote to the condition of ‘anti-humanity that calls itself nice. Nice’ […] 

Implied here is that the anti-nice, the rude, is synonymous with a vitality won from 

socializing forces bent on exacting obedience, restraint, repression –basic constituents of 

mature adulthood. (Posnock 2006: xi, ellipsis mine) 

 

Roth wants to address the issue of sexuality in a way that deals with what is 

forbidden by the Jewish faith but also by any other social or religious moral systems. This 

could be termed a “Nietzschean” focus because it questions why an action is pure or 

impure according to certain standards. Roth has been doing this throughout his work, 

starting with Goodbye Columbus and Other Stories (1959) as well as Portnoy’s 

Complaint (1969), his first attempts to deal with his Jewish background in a transgressive 

way. The Jewish element appears in ST too in the image of the traditional skullcap. In 

this scene, Sabbath is accused of desecrating his “own people” and his religion because 

he is urinating on Drenka’s grave while wearing the skullcap of his religion. To Sabbath, 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

233 

 

however, the golden shower is a celebration of his love for Drenka, as Pozorski notes in 

her interpretation of this passage (2011: 36). This is why he is proud of his action instead 

of ashamed of it. Again, there is an ambiguity in the answer to these questions of morality. 

In response to such questions, scholar Ross Posnock argues in his book Philip 

Roth’s Rude Truth: The Art of Immaturity that ST is the book “that most makes the 

raunchy, the immature, and the literary virtually synonymous” (Posnock 2006: 156). In 

his view, Roth has chosen to be impure in his work and it is so because this is how he 

understands literature. In order to support this, Posnock quotes Zuckerman’s words in 

Deception (1990), which he considers “a hymn to art as outrage and impurity”:  

 

All that timidity, disguised as ‘discretion,’ about a man’s contradictions and pagan urges. 

The fear of desanctification and the dread of shame. As though it’s purity that’s the heart 

of a writer’s nature. Heaven help such a writer! As though Joyce hadn’t sniffed filthily at 

Nora’s underpants. As though in Dostoevsky’s soul, Svidrigailov never whispered. 

Caprice is at the heart of a writer’s nature. Exploration, fixation, isolation, venom, 

fetishism, austerity, levity, perplexity, childishness… The nose in the seam of the 

undergarments –that’s the writer’s nature. Impurity. (Roth 199 96-7, qtd. in Posnock 

2006: 156)  

 

However, Sabbath’s misbehaving is confronted by the other characters’ 

judgement of him. Not only his friend Linc, but also his wife Roseanna and Matthew, 

Drenka’s son, who condemn him. Sabbath knows Matthew thinks he depraved Drenka. 

Matthew’s insult summarizes the general opinion about Sabbath: he is “sick” and “filthy” 

(Roth 1995: 451). In HS, Roth “attacks the ‘tyranny of propriety’ and ‘virtue mongering’ 

that can be found in all sorts of people, and this problem appears in ST in the judgment 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

234 

 

that Sabbath is subjected to. Many are blind to the human stain in them, and are quick in 

pointing out the stain in others, while they are unable to recognize it in themselves. When 

accusations ensue, characters like Sabbath cannot help but to be bolder in their defiance 

against the people who want to impose their moral rules on them. The way Posnock puts 

it is that “rampant moral didacticism incites resistance –the rudeness and rage that drive 

HS (and ST)” (Posnock 2006:  xvii). That is the reason why Sabbath reacts with such 

anger against Matthew, Linc and even Roseanna in many scenes. This also happens with 

Coleman in HS, with Kepesh in DA and with Merry in AP. Posnock claims that this clash 

between righteous characters and impure characters such as Sabbath is due to the 

impossibility of purity:  

 

Pastoral will always fail (at least in Roth’s novels) because it pursues purity, and purity 

is a doomed project, for it is blind to our fallen epistemological condition: that ‘error’ is 

‘the heart of the world,’ since ‘everything that lives is in movement’ (Roth 1998: 318). 

And purity is a lie because it freezes. John Calvin’s American Puritan heirs could not 

have said it better. The aesthetic correlative of the recognition of impurity is art’s 

obligation ‘to allow for the chaos, to let it in’ (Posnock 2006: 85).  

 

This is an example of the essence of Sabbath’s chaotic identity: “I am disorder”, 

“I am disorderly conduct” (Roth 1995: 203,323). That is why he enjoys the freedom of 

not having to please, inspired by his intense sense of the precarious, as Posnock observes 

(2006: 157). Sabbath accepts the accusation of rashness: “I’m a rash guy. It’s inexplicable 

to me, too. It’s displaced virtually everything else in my life. It seems to be the whole aim 

of my being” (Roth 1995: 449). Patrick Hayes has argued that because Roth’s fiction 

includes everything that is normally excluded from intellectual discussions of literature, 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

235 

 

and mostly, because his fiction insinuates “that our highest aspirations tend to be rather 

interestingly entangled with the more embarrassing sides of life”, it is unthinkable that 

Roth could have received the Nobel Prize because of how his work unsettles these 

institution’s stale propriety (Hayes 2019: 65). Finally, when Sabbath is accused of causing 

people a lot of pain, he nods, “people continuously telling me that the great thing I was 

called to do in life was cause pain. The world is just flying along pain-free –happy-go-

lucky humanity off on one long fun-filled holiday –and then Sabbath is set down in life, 

and overnight the place is transformed into a loony bin of tears. Why is that?” (450). 

Roth’s harsh representation of pain is offensive because of the human stain that is used 

to represent it. Consequently, pain and suffering will be the subject of the third and final 

Chapter of this dissertation. 

• • • 

In conclusion, the human stain appears in two different ways when people fail to 

notice the “plank” in their own eye but are judging others for the “speck” in their eye (as 

in the text in Matthew mentioned in the introduction of this section). It functions both as 

the plank and as the stain. After looking at how Roth’s characters (starting with Eli and 

Epstein in the early stories, and eventually with the main characters in ST, AP, HS and 

DA) defy society’s expectations by embracing the stain, there are two conclusions in the 

interpretation of these novels: They might reject the human stain or deny the Law and the 

laws, but in the end, they have to accept the stain and make it theirs.  

To the question of what it is that the human stain that appears in HS has in 

common with the rash featured in Epstein, the answer lies in the fact that what connects 

them is that even though one is more universal and the other has a clear Jewish 

background, these images are both used as a sign to transgress moral rules. In conclusion, 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

236 

 

Roth’s human stain allows the exploration of moral fantasy in fiction and shows the 

difficulty that resides in reading people accurately. It does this by illustrating how people 

are figuratively blinded as the stain illuminates their secrets and darkens their dreams. 

The human stain marks the difference between what is artificial and what is real, 

for example by means of the description of the filth that Merry lives in and the state of 

her body, that goes from pure to impure. The net of images that is created serves to put 

across the truth that it is necessary to acknowledge that we will be wrong again and again 

about people, and that we do not know anything about anyone. Secondly, the stain is also 

used to describe how the characters try to keep themselves uncontaminated by impurity 

and how even though they do their best to avoid chaos, the stain invades their existence. 

Throughout this section, the desire that appears in the novels is one of the 

propelling forces of the power of the stain to transgress. As seen in the previous section, 

the characters defy the rules in sexuality and the stain is the mark of how the profane 

invades the sacred. As a consequence, society judges this breaking of the law. In Roth’s 

novels, we find that not only the Jews have laws that dictate many aspects of social life, 

but also in contemporary America society tends to judge the behavior of individuals that 

goes against their moral rules. In these novels, when society judges, they are looking at 

the human stain and pointing at it.  

To sum up, the device of the stain enables Roth’s exploration of moral 

consciousness, in addition to his narrative style of indignation and rebellious energy. He 

not only shows the pressure of judgement, but he also uses the human stain as a sword of 

conflict between the characters and to show the struggle within themselves. The human 

stain also appears as a mirror that shows a true reflection of humanity. Therefore, the final 

irony lies in that the stain blinds the eye of those who judge, while it is also an instrument 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

237 

 

of unblinding. This is the paradox: the stain is like the plank that blinds but Roth also 

turns the speck in the eye into the literary device that unblinds. 

Also, as will be examined in the third section of this chapter, the stain captures 

the experience and the effect of the unforeseen of American History. When analyzing the 

ineluctable force of the unforeseen in Roth’s fiction, this thesis arrives at a reading of the 

human stain’s presence in history: “History, so to speak, arrives with the termination of 

the fantasy of complete knowledge” (Knowles 2020: 21). Because the stain shows the 

characters that they do not know themselves, it will also reveal our ignorance about what 

is happening in the world.  

 

 

II.3. THE STAIN IN AMERICA 

 

 In his work, Philip Roth has especially sought to show life as it is experienced in 

the shape and manner of immediate reality, which is why his writing has to seek proximity 

to it instead of fleeing far away from it. Instead of using a narrative mode that only allows 

the reader to observe from a distance, Roth uses the resource of the human stain, which 

enables the text to get under the skin of individuals, but also of society as a whole. As it 

is not his intention to cast away the world or to escape from it, his characters have to 

embrace it fully. This is not something that is easily accomplished. Firstly, there are 

obstacles because of the sense of discontinuity that individuals have experienced due to 

the cultural and social events of Roth’s times.  



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

238 

 

As Malcolm Bradbury says speaking of Roth’s work amongst other 

contemporaneous authors: “The sense of discontinuity between society and the 

individual, between the historical tremors and the individual life, was evident in all the 

above writers, and it greatly intensified in their work in the Sixties: [...] in Roth's vision 

of form having to yield to confession and desire, [...]” (Bradbury 1992: 185, ellipsis 

mine). In Chapter I, this literary form that features confession and desire was analyzed 

particularly in “Epstein” and PC. Now, for Roth this immediate reality had to be 

American. As he said, if he was not American, he was nothing. (qtd. in Ozick’s review of 

Blake Bailey’s biography of Roth for The New York Times, 2021). Rejecting the Jewish 

American label on his work, he struggled to identify his work as just American but at the 

same time he continued to engage with Jewish American elements in his fiction. One of 

these subjects is the Holocaust. Roth has written about it in novels such as The Ghost 

Writer (1979); and he wrote about Israel in The Counterlife (1986) and in Operation 

Shylock (1993). However, his interest in America is the reason why the human stain needs 

to be studied especially in his representation of American reality. As Roth described in 

an interview with Alain Fienkielkraut for Le Nouvel Observateur,  

 

America is the place I know best in the world. […] My consciousness and my language 

where shaped by America. I’m an American writer in ways that a plumber isn’t an 

American plumber or a miner an American miner or a cardiologist an American 

cardiologist. Rather, what the heart is to the cardiologist, the coal to the miner, the kitchen 

sink to the plumber, America is to me. (“Interview with Le Nouvel Observateur 133-34). 

 

Following this analogy, in this section I will explore how Roth diagnoses and 

treats the human stain in the heart of his patient, America. This will be done by tracing 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

239 

 

the images of wounds and punctures in the heart (America) in his fiction. As Matthew 

Shipe put it, Roth’s whole work revolves around the meaning of American identity, 

because his “sizeable oeuvre reveals a sustained engagement in determining the 

significance of what it has meant, and continues to mean, to identify oneself as an 

American” (Shipe 2009: 44). Shipe has dedicated several essays to unravelling the 

difficult question of how history is understood in Roth’s work, and his criticism 

illuminates the understanding of the stain in America, even though he never identifies the 

stain as a resource Roth uses, which is what I intend to do in this section.  

In his contemporary scene, Roth finds an appropriate stage for his stories, his 

characters’ dilemma being therefore culturally grounded. His works are not just 

individual stories that function as universal metaphors, his character’s plight makes sense 

because of the history they belong to. As he wrote in the other novel that forms part of 

what has been termed the “American Trilogy”, together with AP and HS, I Married a 

Communist (1998), “you flood into history and history floods into you” (qtd in Pozorski 

2011: x). Especially in these three books, Roth makes his own contribution and attempt 

of “the Great American Novel”, grappling with the questions of the American character 

and identity of the nation. The novels that are the focus of this dissertation are set in these 

moments of American history: ST is set in the 1960s but Sabbath takes the reader back to 

World War II; AP is set in the 1960s and it includes the War in Vietnam as well as the 

Watergate scandal; HS is set in 1998, during the period of President Clinton's 

impeachment hearings and the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Finally, DA is set on the eve 

of the new millennium, that is, at the end of 1999 and the beginning of 2000.  

This interest in the complexities of America and the representation of some points 

of its history as if it were a cancer links Roth’s work to other important writers. For 

example, it could be said that Norman Mailer’s conception of writing is in the same line 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

240 

 

of thinking as Roth, taking into consideration what Bradbury points out in The Modern 

American Novel: “Writing was a merging of self-awareness and a report of the psychic 

and social workings of a cancerous history” (1992: 187). The word “cancerous” is 

reminiscent of the stain as a cancer in history, which is an image that will be analyzed in 

this section. Indeed, Roth was particularly concerned with the problem of tackling the 

representation of American reality. Andy Connolly has claimed that as to Roth, the chaos 

of American postwar experience supposed a great challenge to the writer’s imagination, 

and that is why it can be argued that his fiction is “less concerned with directly addressing 

matters of social identity and political conflict than with the stylistic problems of how to 

make credible and revealing fictions out of a reality that threatens to outstrip the powers 

of the literary imagination” (Connolly 2019: 21). The disorder of history and 

contemporary reality is a test to the writer, who in my view uses the resource of the human 

stain to convey the source and the consequences of this chaos.  

We should also take into account that Roth was not only interested in American 

history, as he also became aware of the political and social situation in Eastern European 

countries such as Czechoslovakia.  This interest of his led him to take action, which 

becomes clear in an editorial job he did for the Penguin Publishing House. In the 70s and 

80s, Roth had travelled to the then called Czechoslovakia. He met, among others, the 

writer Milan Kundera, who would become a good friend of his. Roth wanted the 

American readers to know the until then long ignored literature of the East. He edited a 

four-volume edition with works translated into English for the first time by Tadeusz 

Borowski, Danilo Kiš, Milan Kundera and Bruno Schultz.  

In her biography of Philip Roth, Roth Pierpont wrote that in 1972, when Roth 

went to visit Prague because of his interest in Kafka, he found something else that aroused 

his interest (2013:86). He was introduced to the “real” literary Prague, and then he started 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

241 

 

to study Czech culture, literature and history, which reflects his interest, and he made 

many Czech friends. In Roth’s second trip, one year later, he met Ivan Klíma and Milan 

Kundera, among many others. He felt the responsibility to offer them help and so, when 

he returned to America, he created a fund and asked other American writers to contribute 

towards the work of writers in Prague. Finally, Roth edited the series of Writers from the 

Other Europe, published by Penguin (1974-1989). As John Knowles states, “Roth’s 

activities as an agent of cultural transmission throughout the 1970s and 1980s remain 

neglected in the burgeoning scholarship” (2020: 16). Taking these into account will offer 

a wider perspective to an understanding of Roth’s representation of America. 

This international scope of Roth’s fiction is connected to the works that Roth’s 

fiction alludes to, as can be seen in Ross Posnock’s description of Roth’s 

“cosmopolitanism”, which involves “a refusal to revere local or national authority and a 

desire to uphold multiple affiliations” (Posnock 2006: 6). This is the reason why Posnock 

believes it is easier to understand Roth’s work in an international context, and so his book 

Philip Roth’s Rude Truth builds “overlapping frames of reference, using them as a 

resource for literary criticism of the fiction, and making vivid Roth’s creative engagement 

with a rich lineage of intellectual history” (3). Among other scholars who have looked at 

Roth from this point of view, Valerie Roberge takes up Posnock’s idea that Roth’s 

cosmopolitanism allows Roth to escape fixed identities and explores Roth’s aesthetic 

bounds by looking at his “conversation” with Kierkegaard in his work (Roberge 2017: 

76). Roth’s representation of the characters’ delusion and his use of irony are highlighted 

when taking into account the connections with other authors. 

However, Roth did not stop portraying American life during those decades, but 

he returned to it constantly and continued doing it until his last works, which feature a 

keen interest in historical and social questions that are particular to America. One of these 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

242 

 

novels is Indignation, published in 2008, which as Matthew Shipe argues, “foregrounds 

the violence and reality of the Korean War” (2018: 3). Gerard O’Donoghue also explores 

the representation of American political and historical reality in AP and Indignation in 

order to find where Roth’s “seriousness” lies when dealing with this subject and why it is 

so difficult to adapt to the screen (2020). O’Donoghue studies the meaning of images of 

flesh and blood in these stories, and these images are embedded in the narrative and reflect 

the ambiguity of the position of the characters’ values and aspirations. As these images 

are instances of the human stain, they will be analyzed in this section.  

In her book Roth and Trauma, Aimee Pozorski offers a reading of Roth’s late 

works focusing on how American history is represented, interpreting the texts in the light 

of trauma theory in order to see how the USA has experienced “turbulence and 

unpredictability” rather than the promised freedom and stability of the unfulfilled 

American Dream (Pozorski 2011: x). She has argued how Roth’s work puts forward the 

idea that there is no innocence nor purity, no pastoral after all in America. Supported by 

Pozorski’s detailed reading of Roth’s texts, I will look for the images of the human stain. 

In this section, the stain will be read as the evidence of the unravelling of the American 

Dream and also as the reflection of a deep sense of fracture in postwar America. In 

addition, Pozorski has also pointed out that HS “is as much about surviving Vietnam as 

it is about Bill Clinton’s White House affair”, as in HS there is a book that contains the 

story of Vietnam and also its traumatic effects on the people who took part in the war, as 

shown in the Vietnam vet Les Farley (Pozorski 2017: 105). Roth’s novel connects the 

Clinton scandal with Vietnam, as Pozorski has argued, in the final scene at the lake in 

HS, where Zuckerman has to decide whether he will stay to listen to Les Farley or not. 

Here, the readers witness how American politics, embodied in the figure of Bill Clinton, 

“becomes inextricably bound up with the past of Vietnam and post-traumatic stress in 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

243 

 

order to become precisely the moment when Zuckerman realizes why he must stay” (114). 

As Les Farley denounces the injustice that the president “gets off everything” while he 

thinks of “the guys who didn’t get off nothing” because they had to go to Vietnam and 

now they carry a secret of horror (Roth 2000: 351).  

According to Roth, regarding its political and military actions, the US is not 

innocent, has never really been, in fact. The image of the stain offers a new side to 

exploring the ways in which American society is damaged, as in contrast to the beauty of 

the pastoral, the human stain is hidden in the pond of history and politics, violence and 

terrorism, covered by ice, as in the last scene of HS, hidden but still there. In this section, 

Roth’s representation of America will be illuminated by the human stain, as in these 

novels, the country, which was the new Garden of Eden for the Puritans, eventually 

became stained by the very human stain which they also bore with them. 

Roth understands the spirit of liberation but also the forces that go against it, as 

mentioned by Max Rudin, the President of Library of America in an interview radio 

released in PBS news hour to honor Roth after his death (Rudin 2018). As Rudin points 

out: 

 

Philip was on kind of two sides at the same time. He was on the side of vitality, you know, 

of libido and liberation. And it’s a ’60s theme, you know, the era where his work really, 

really begins. And yet he was also a ruthlessly honest observer of the historical forces 

arrayed against that liberation and vitality. And I think, as the work goes on, I mean, that 

darker side gets explored more and more, you know, the forces of political violence and 

the war in Vietnam in American Pastoral, the McCarthy era in I Married a Communist, 

and the way a certain era of political correctness could be used as a bludgeon in The 

Human Stain. He’s one of the great ironists in our literature, because he was at once in 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

244 

 

sympathy with the impulses of liberation, and yet understands deeply the forces, as I say, 

that block that liberation, the forces of fate and history.” (Rudin 2018, n.p.) 

 

Roth was interested in getting as close to reality as possible in these three novels, 

and as Rudin says, he does so with the use of irony, which is a device that has been 

analyzed as an important element throughout this chapter, and this section too will look 

at its importance. I believe that the sheer energy in this contrast that Rudin describes also 

takes shape in Roth’s descriptions, particularly those that are considered shocking and 

excessive. I believe that these are part of the human stain, which allows for the anger at 

the pretense of purity to be represented in striking images that show the violent excess of 

indignation, transgression and the ambiguity of impurity.  

America is no mere background of the story in Roth’s fiction. However, Roth was 

interested in portraying “the density of surface” like in Jackson Pollock’s paintings, which 

are completely covered with paint, and painted with energy. In the same way, in these 

novels, as Roth himself put it in his interview with David Remnick, he “tried to cover 

every square inch with real stuff” (Remnick 2003, n.p.). Roth’s long sentences and 

paragraphs lead the reader into surprising discoveries and shocking trains of thought, 

because, as he describes them: “It’s like taking a ride on the subway, you get on at one 

place and get off at another” (Roth Pierpont 2013: 276). Therefore, the descriptions of 

American life are intricately connected to the purpose of the narrative, in order to show 

the reality of the characters’ predicament. 

The reason of Roth’s interest in America is because, as Victoria Aarons argues, 

“America is seared behind the lenses of his characters’ visions of themselves, their 

making, their stories, and their place in history” (Aarons 2019: 30).  In Roth’s fiction, 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

245 

 

America becomes one more character whose fate is entwined with the other characters, 

Aarons concludes (30).  

The first question is whether it is possible to locate the “original sin” in American 

history. Roth’ work seems to suggest that it is impossible. However, the human stain can 

be found as a mark to testify to this corruption and its effect on individuals. And as Shipe 

has argued, Roth’s fiction not only suggests the original sin in America cannot be rectified 

but it also portrays how “the chaos of history is always on the verge of consuming the 

individual” (Shipe 2019: 15). Secondly, what is Roth’s assessment or opinion about the 

transformation that his nation has undergone during the postwar era? As Shipe notes, 

Roth conveys the astonishing measure of that change but he does not seem to comment 

on “the meaning, or the value, of that change. History, for Roth, whether it is the life of 

an individual or a nation, is neither progress nor regress -it is simply ‘astonishing’” (Shipe 

18). I believe that in spite of this resistance to interpretation, it is worthwhile studying the 

signs of this collapse, which are marked by the stain in Roth’s novels. 

 

 

II.3.1. Blindsided by History 

 

Roth’s depiction of American history in particular and his writing in general were 

both undoubtedly influenced by Postmodernism in the 60s. Bradbury argues that 

Postmodernism was characterized by a sense of absurdity and specifically a feeling of the 

absurdity of American history, and he quotes from Roth’s 1961 essay “Writing American 

Fiction” in order to state that Roth’s fiction, “like that of others, began exploring the 

unreliable borders between the outward world of history and the imaginary life of fiction” 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

246 

 

(Bradbury 1992: 199). This will be looked at in detail in this section, in connection with 

the device of the human stain, which is what makes such a literary exploration possible. 

According to Bradbury, while most American writers played with history “with a 

parodic and disruptive spirit” (201), Roth included it in the subject of his novels showing 

how it floods into the lives of individuals. Many novels grew self-conscious and reflexive, 

says Bradbury, treating fiction’s subject as fictionality itself (203). In accordance with 

this view, Matthew Shipe applies the concept of “metafiction” as defined by Linda 

Hutcheon to Roth’s depiction of history: “metafiction” being a narrative form that shows 

a “theoretical self-awareness of history and fiction as human constructs” (Hutcheon 1988: 

5). This awareness of history and fiction as a construct is central to the use of the human 

stain in its depiction of the constructs of purity and impurity in history. 

This subject has been dealt with in depth by Roth scholars. For instance, in his 

analysis of Roth’s depiction of history by means of the anti-pastoral narrative mode, 

David Brauner has argued that Roth’s protagonists Zuckerman and Coleman (in HS), and 

Seymour Levov (in AP) as well as Ira Ringold (I Married a Communist) are all “victims 

of what might be seen as different manifestations of American Puritanism, […] different 

versions of the pastoral dream of a Utopian world that has always been at the heart of 

America’s mythology of itself” (Brauner 2007: 150, ellipsis mine). American Puritanism 

is important to understand not only the literary origin of the image of the human stain and 

its religious significance, as seen in Chapter I, but it is also the social context of the 

morality that Roth sees as a blight on America. Brauner identifies this moralistic impulse 

as the “purifying rituals” Roth exposes, as movements that try to eradicate what they see 

as contamination as they look for a pure, ideal State (2007: 150) (For a discussion of AP 

in the American literary tradition of the pastoral, see McDonald 2004: 27-40).  However, 

as Brauner sees it, Roth presents ambivalence in the characters’ idealism, for on the one 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

247 

 

hand, there is a certain liberation but on the other, a sense of futile escape (2007: 151). 

This ambivalence will be therefore be reflected in the stain.  

As Samuel Cohen writes about AP’s demythologizing impulse as embraced by 

Merry and Rita: “it is not a value-free activity; that is, it works from its own ideals, its 

own vision of perfection, and it can tear down more than it intends” (Cohen 2009: 89). 

And Cohen explains that AP reveals that the “idea of tearing things down and starting 

over itself partakes of the myth that such a thing is possible, that a new, innocent work 

can be made” (89). In essence, both the American Dream and the rebellion that runs 

counter to it are constructed on the same myth, which is why the characters who embody 

the two discourses bear the human stain and suffer from it. 

 

 

II.3.2. The Plague: The Destruction of the American Dream 

 

If the previous section presented the stain as the vehicle for the representation of 

the problem of truly knowing and judging other people, now it will be transformed into 

the device that depicts the issue of how to understand history. As Matthew Shipe writes, 

Roth’s work, instead of just looking back at the past, “illuminates the various myths that 

shape out historical narratives and exposes how we are vulnerable to the circumstances 

of history” (Shipe 2019: 133). One of these myths is the American Dream, and one of the 

ways Roth represents its illusion as well as its destruction is through the body of the 

characters. 

Nemesis (2010) shows a character who has to become aware that all assurances 

are provisional. It is informed by Roth’s darkening and pessimistic tone: “Any biography 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

248 

 

is chance, and, beginning at conception, chance -the tyranny of contingency- is 

everything” (2010: 242-243). In Nemesis, the polio epidemic attacks the individual body 

of the children who suffer from it, but the illness also assaults the nation, so there is a 

connection between the representation of the body and America. Ann Basu reflects on 

this link in her 2019 essay about Jewish American identity in HS, but her point supports 

my reading of America as bearing a stain just like the characters’ bodies, who suffer from 

physical ordeals: “In the American trilogy and other later novels, from Operation Shylock 

to Nemesis, Roth associates these bodily trials with tests of national identity generated by 

historical and political processes. The body of an individual who is at the center of the 

narrative then becomes important for its resemblance to the figurative body of the 

American nation” (Basu 2019: 37). In her reading, Basu claims that HS portrays the 

unravelling of the American Dream and strips the nation of its innocence by testing “the 

mythology of national unity” (38).  

The second of the novels that conform the American Trilogy, I Married a 

Communist (1998), describes McCarthyism in the 50’s (Safer 2006: 3). But Aimee 

Pozorski sees that there is a deeper vision in this novel of how the US democracy appears 

“as inherently and irredeemably flawed” (Pozorski 2011: 62). The destruction of the 

American dream is also represented as a painful experience in AP. In this novel, written 

in 1997, Roth portrays the life of three generations that are supposed to have achieved 

more freedom, more safety, more education and a better life. But the novel narrates how 

their dream does not come true, for there is still violence and chaos in the 60s and 70s. In 

fact, the novel is set during the summer of the Watergate hearings (1973).  This chaos is 

not only visible in the lives of the grandfather or in the father, but mainly in the daughter: 

Merry. Instead of being “the perfected image” of her parents, she becomes a distorted 

image of them, bringing about the Fall in this Paradise. The “counterpastoral” is 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

249 

 

introduced by Merry: “the daughter and the decade blasting to smithereens his particular 

form of utopian thinking, the plague America infiltrating the Swede’s castle and there 

infecting everyone” (Roth 1997: 86). The phrase “the plague America” is striking as it 

suggests that America itself is an image of the stain, a virus that infects everybody. In 

Chapter III this will be further discussed in order to see how America is one of the images 

of the stain as an illness.  

Merry shatters her father’s view of America as a safe and secure place. She mocks 

his idea of the “secure and peaceful lives” that they lead in America, in contrast with the 

families in Vietnam. Her stuttering makes her speech even stronger, putting her point 

across in a violent way as the words “B-b-blown to b-b-b-b-bits” are a foreshadowing of 

the bomb that will blow up the post office in Old Rimrock (Roth 1997: 108). As Goldberg 

argues, the Swede is “congenitally unable to see the world for what it is: profoundly 

unequal, oppressive and loath to protect the most socially marginalized” (Goldberg 2020: 

45). The Swede’s ignorance can only be blown to pieces by a violent act of transgression, 

in Goldberg’s reading. This is why Marcia Umanoff says at the end that transgression is 

necessary to achieve knowledge, which is an argument that at the end is about “seeing” 

(48). She sees the limitations of the Swede’s perspective and also of his father’s 

perspective about morality and decay, and in this ironic moment, when Orcutt almost 

blinds Lou Levov, it is a moment of vision (Roth 1997: 423). In this scene of final laughter 

in AP, Marcia laughs at the “frailty” of “supposedly robust things”, emphasizing, 

according to Matthew Shipe, that Roth shows how “easily the façade of American 

progress and infallibility crumbed at this time” (Shipe 2017: 146). To sum up, Merry 

unmade her father’s fantasy about America by introducing transgression into his life by 

means of the bomb and the kiss, thus bringing about the Fall from Eden. 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

250 

 

Roth’s portrayal of the Fall in his particular character’s Eden can be read in its 

context within the American literary tradition. We find references to Eden in most of the 

scholarship written about AP. Ihab Hassan writes about the Garden of Eden as an image 

that can be found throughout American Literature in order to express the loss and conflict 

that keep making a return: “But there is also the Eden we lost and which we persistently 

attempt to recapture by transforming the substance of our failure, our passion, into values 

for the conduct of life [...] a running debate between Utopia and Eden” (1961: 36, ellipsis 

mine). In contemporary American fiction, Hassan finds “a persistent escape toward 

freedom” (36). An escape toward freedom is precisely what Epstein, Portnoy, Sabbath, 

Merry, Coleman and Kepesh are looking for in the works analyzed in this thesis. As 

Hassan wrote, it consists in an escape from the present, from the ravaging of time and 

death (38). The escape from death will be looked at in more detail in Chapter III. 

However, this escape toward freedom that emerges as a result from this fight between a 

utopia and Eden has been read by Roth scholars as a conflict that is full of irony. 

Consequently, Brauner points at the irony in AP, as “all the utopias so relentlessly 

pursued by Seymour Levov -the most beautiful woman, the perfect child, the successful 

factory, and the perfect assimilation into WASP America- lead to a completely opposite 

result (2007: 168). The most important irony of the novel, as Brauner writes, is that “the 

serpents in Seymour’s Eden” are also victims of their “particular dreams of Utopia” (171). 

Rita, for example, is set on her own ideology and she is convinced hers is the right way. 

Speaking about the serpent in Eden, The Swede refers on several occasions to the tempters 

who must have deceived his daughter, lured her into committing those crimes. However, 

his discovery is that there really was no tempter as Merry did it all by her own convictions. 

The serpent, however, would also be the one who tricks man into believing something 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

251 

 

that is a lie. In that sense, Seymour was the serpent to his own Eden all along. He believed 

in the power of goodness and order.  

There are also external forces that put the Swede’s world in danger, as Jack 

Knowles has acknowledged in his essay about AP and Roth’s relationship with writers 

from Czechoslovakia (2020). Amongst these dangers are the changes that are happening 

in the world as a whole, which place this story in a much larger historic and global context: 

“the growing momentum of globalization is at least one of the material forces threatening 

the Swede’s Edenic dreamworld” (Knowles 2020: 15). Merry’s conscience starts 

developing the moment she is affected and horrified by the injustice she sees in the world, 

and this is most evident in the image of the burning monk that she sees on TV. When the 

Swede thinks about the possible reasons the idea of the bomb started to take shape in her 

mind, he looks back at this moment in the early sixties. The shocking image of this 

Buddhist monk’s self-immolation in Vietnam was deceiving because at first it seemed 

like an innocent circus performance, but its reality was brutal: “No screaming, no 

writhing, just his calmness at the heart of the flames -no pain registering on anyone on 

camera, only on Merry and the Swede and Dawn, horrified together in their living room” 

(Roth 1997: 153). The stain travels to the other side of the world through the images on 

their TV, from Vietnam to their living room: “into their home on Arcady Hill Road the 

charred and blackened corpse on its back in that empty street” (154). The blackness of 

this dead body is an image of the human stain that leaves a strong imprint on the 

characters’ imagination and Merry becomes obsessed with it, traumatized by it and 

connects these images with the corruption she sees in her country.  

I would say it is one of the external forces that break the Swede’s world, but what 

really destroys his dream is his daughter and his vision of America is a symptom of the 

stain that he discovers because of her criticism of capitalism. It is through Merry that the 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

252 

 

Swede is confronted with “the something that is demented […] American history! […] 

Welcome to the fucked-over-by-America human race!” (Roth 1997: 257). It is precisely 

with the excuse of doing business in Czechoslovakia that the Swede is able to speak with 

Rita and learn the harrowing truth about his daughter. Knowles believes that “Roth’s turn 

to American history itself, and, more specifically, the literary strategies that he employs 

in order to generate his own kinds of fictional purchase on the historical, owe much to the 

inventive material published in “Writers from the Other Europe” and to the dynamics of 

the project itself” (17). I agree that Roth looks at his experience and his personal 

confrontation with defining moments of History, not only in America but also in other 

countries. And he does this especially in his writing in the 90s, to ask himself about the 

purpose, nature and meaning of history, as Debra Shostak notes (2004: 230). AP, together 

with other fiction published around the same time, explored the social tumult of the 1960s. 

Even though the novel was published in the 90s, Roth began writing a draft of the novel 

earlier, in 1972, which included the most important events of the final version: the kiss 

and the bomb. These are the scenes of the images of the Fall.  

The Vietnam war (1961-1975), a conflict that marked American history, appears 

not only in AP, but also in HS, through the character of Les Farley, a Vietnam vet who 

suffers from PTSD and is portrayed as the one who probably caused Coleman and 

Faunia’s accident. In AP, it is especially ironic that the Swede was a symbol of hope 

during World War II, only to be dragged by Merry into an abyss of terror, violence and 

lack of hope. Her bomb and her protest against the Vietnam war ultimately turn her into 

the symbol of rage and despair in the face of war. “Terror starts at home”: Merry brings 

violence and chaos into the Swede’s life at the same time that the text describes vividly 

the riots in Newark and the violence in the streets, and the worst is that it is all totally 

irrational: “They’ll kill anyone” (Roth 1997: 26). In AP the story of one family becomes 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

253 

 

representative of a wider reality. The Swede suffers from the pressure to “escape 

insignificance”, to make something of yourself, just like all Americans of his generation, 

just after the war. When writing this novel, Roth was inspired by the detail that flooded 

over him, that he was immersed in as a child, when he came to know all the details about 

everybody and he noticed how they make each family uniquely shaped in its own complex 

set of circumstances.  

The final scene of HS with Les Farley, the Vietnam vet, prompts the second key 

passage of the novel to understand the meaning of the human stain. If in Faunia’s 

conversation with the crow the stain is presented as the human imprint that precedes 

everything and leaves its trace everywhere, here it is ironically shown as the human figure 

itself, the body of a man becoming a mark like a signature of a person who cannot write: 

“the icy white of the lake encircling a tiny spot that was a man, the only human marker 

in all off nature, like X of an illiterate’s signature of a sheet of paper. There it was, if not 

the whole story, the whole picture” (Roth 2000: 111). The human marker, embodied by 

Les Farley, who looks deceptively innocent and “pure” in the “peaceful” “arcadian 

mountain in America” is the human being in the golden utopian past. The human stain 

cannot tell the complete story but it can show the whole image. Patrick O’Donnell points 

out Roth’s ironic “acceptance of the unreadability -the sheer opacity- of the human and 

the impossibility of ever relating ‘the whole story’” (O’Donnell 2019: 111).  

Ivanova explains how the situational irony which we find in passages such as this 

one, and which is also used in Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus Rex for example, can also be 

found in AP (2014: 117). This type of irony is understood as when an action leads to the 

opposite consequence than intended. In my view, it seems that Levov’s situational irony 

arises from the presence of the human stain, which in all instances is represented through 

this irony. Ivanova presents her interpretation based on the premise that irony creates a 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

254 

 

dialectic text which allows for a reading of different meanings and perspectives in the 

same text (119). Irony makes it possible to read a novel by taking into account many 

ironic connections between different assertions in the text, as Kundera proposes (qtd. in 

Ivanova 120). “The lack of wit or irony in the Swede constitutes an important difference 

between the two voices the reader hears in the book: the voice of the deluded Seymour 

Levov and the voice of the narrator” (120). 

 

 

II.3.3. An Inheritance of Filth  

 

The bathroom scene in Patrimony has frequently been revisited by critics when 

studying Roth’s engagement with American history. As seen earlier, in this scene Roth 

interprets “the shit” as the patrimony he inherits from his father (Roth 1996: 175-176). 

But as he finds out, in spite of cleaning, there will always remain some residue. In AP 

there is a powerful scene with filth that develops this image and takes it further into the 

narrative. First, the text presents an image of purity, only to shock the readers into the 

discovery of an enormous amount of filth, which is hiding behind a veil.  

When Merry sees her father again, after all those years, she immediately 

recognizes him, runs to her father like “the carefree child” of his dreams, and the scene 

seems beautiful, only shadowed by the mysterious presence of the veil she is wearing 

over her face. The chapter ends with that hug and the tears of the father “whose center is 

the source of all order [...] and the daughter who is chaos itself” (Roth 1997: 231, ellipsis 

mine). But the next chapter reveals the meaning of the veil that she wore: she had become 

a Jain, and because of this religious belief, the veil kept her from harming microscopic 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

255 

 

organisms in the air; she did not bathe nor did she wash, for the same reason, out of 

reverence for all life: “The only way ever to become free of matter and to arrive at what 

she described as ‘self-sufficient bliss for all eternity’ was to become what she 

reverentially called ‘a perfected soul’” (232). This perfection could only be achieved 

through self-denial and nonviolence. As pointed out above, there is great irony in Merry: 

she is a terrorist but practices Jainism, which is a non-violent religion. 

Merry’s body looked different because she was so close to starvation, to her 

father’s horror. Her room is even smaller than the prison cell the Swede had dreaded she 

would be. Her life is even worse than he imagined in his nightmares. In order to get to the 

building, they had to go through an underpass filled with garbage, characterized by a 

degree of filth that horrifies the Swede: “The place hadn’t been cleaned in ten years. 

Maybe it had never been cleaned” (Roth 1997: 233). The filth is described in detail to 

give a clear picture of the degradation of the place but also because of the association of 

Merry with this filth. She has let the human stain grow all over her, she has chosen to live 

in the human stain itself, and he has even become the embodiment of the human stain. In 

this scenario, the only thing that keeps the Swede from breaking down is the thought that 

it is their life that is at stake and he cannot let her go. He holds on to his daughter’s hand 

telling himself that regardless of what surrounds her, she is still Merry. The lament for 

the decay of the city of Newark, where even the streets are stolen, functions as a parallel 

narrative of the destruction of the hopes from the past. The dream was broken down, just 

as Merry was not what he hoped she would become. “She would have lived better than 

this, far better, if she were one of Dawn’s cattle, in the shed [...] if only she had become 

an animal” (237-8, ellipsis mine). She loses her dignity as a human being, becoming “a 

travestied mock-up of a human being, so meager a likeness to a Levov it would have 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

256 

 

fooled only a bird” (239). The smell, the sight, and the words of Merry’s new life, 

characterized by death rather than life, would have killed her mother.  

DA has been difficult to tackle by critics because of its complex and 

uncomfortable descriptions of sex, it is blunt and explicit in its representation of desire, 

some would say it is “filthy”. However, there is another kind of filth that is explored in 

this novel in its depiction of history. As it evokes World War II and the Cold War at the 

moment of the global celebration of the new millennium, exactly at the moment when 

fireworks are broadcast on TV, these are portrayed as dark instead of bright (Roth 2001: 

144). To Kepesh, they light these fireworks “to welcome the shit and the kitsch of the 

new millennium” (Shipe 2017: 144-146). As Matthew Shipe argues, Roth’s “sense of 

dissolution” was shared by Roth’s contemporary writers, and he names, for example, Joan 

Didion, Norman Mailer, Saul Bellow and John Updike (Shipe 2017: 145). However, in 

my view, what distinguishes Roth’s work from the rest is that the disgusting, the human 

stain, forces itself into the national consciousness. And what was previously assumed to 

be sacred became the target of blasphemy. What was imagined to be “impermeable” 

eventually “yields” to the human stain, to use some of the words the author himself 

employed when describing the effect of “the demythologizing decade” of the 1960s.  

Following Gerard O’Donoghue’s interpretation of the images of cleaning shit and 

blood in Roth’s fiction, I agree with him when he reaches the conclusion that “historical 

subjects inheriting their patrimony can marshal all the energy they want but will never be 

able to keep the place kosher” (O’Donoghue 2020: 63). In other words, no matter how 

hard one tries, it is impossible to deny the close relationship between filth and the dream 

of purity in America, and Roth accomplishes this by making visible the link between 

violence, pollution and the “clean” image of American life. 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

257 

 

 

 

II.3.4. Flesh and Blood: The Human Stain in America 

 

The human stain as flesh and blood appears as human or animal flesh and blood, 

but it ultimately refers to the reality of the human body. These images of flesh and blood 

are used by Roth in rendering “the unwritten as written without denying the primacy of 

the unwritten or the derivativeness of the written, to use O’Donoghue’s phrase (2020: 62). 

In some instances, such as in AP, blood is half-hidden in the narrative but it is a powerful 

instance of the human stain as it informs the characters’ imagination.  

As the Swede reads Merry’s vows, consisting in life renunciation in order to 

paradoxically, respect life, he is astounded. And all of it “for purity”, so he asks himself 

why she needs this purity: to wash away the blood on her hands, or because she needed 

it even if she had never hurt anyone? He thinks again at that moment of transgression, the 

kiss. But it does not make sense to him. If respect and affection could ruin her life, what 

was the value of his own morality? Should he have been violent with her? Ironically, 

when he finally talks with Merry and would have the opportunity to solve the mystery 

and find an answer to the questions he has, she says she had no motives, there is no logic 

to her actions. She claims to “relinquish all influence”, which is ridiculous to the Swede 

because she has influence over him, and as he says, her powerlessness means that she has 

power over him. 

As Ivanova describes, the text shows the contrast between the Swede’s moral 

awareness of the crimes committed by his daughter and Dawn’s denial and self-

centeredness (2014: 126). She seems immersed in her daydreams of beautiful Switzerland 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

258 

 

pastures and milkmaids, her personal pastoral, unwilling to let go of it and face the painful 

truth. But as the ending of the novel states, even in their refuge, the Levovs cannot hide 

from the world’s chaos. Their rock has been breached and it is broken, past mending. The 

novel ends with the following questions: “And what is wrong with their life? What on 

earth is less reprehensible than the life of the Levovs?” (Roth 1997: 423). Jack Knowles 

argues that the purpose of these questions is to “amplify the confusion of an era and trace 

the legacy of the fractures, only further to emphasize the unhealed ruptures with the open 

angles of the interrogative” (2020: 22). The Levovs’ sense of confusion is shared by the 

narrator, the writer and the readers’ incomprehension of history. In Shipe’s view, Roth 

intends to show that “the disorder of the 1960s is not so much an anomaly within the 

United States history as it is our natural condition, always on the verge of puncturing our 

sense of progress and order” (Shipe 146). This reference to a natural condition points at 

the presence of a human stain that is embedded in the fractious trauma that Aimee 

Pozorski sees as present from the very beginnings of the country’s history in Roth’s 

fiction (2011).  

The Swede’s innocence and naiveté, which led him to believe in a false myth, can 

be compared to Marcus Messner’s in Roth’s later work Indignation, set in the 1950s, 

characterized by the social and sexual repression. As Matthew Shipe has argued, Marcus’ 

sexual naiveté would never encounter the Sexual Revolution because he dies in Korea: 

“Roth wants us to hear all that is absent from his voice. That is, Marcus’s innocence can 

only exist because he is ignorant of how history turned out” (Shipe 2019: 19). This 

ignorance is felt by the readers, who are immersed in the experience of the 

incomprehension of history in Roth’s fiction. 

Indignation is relevant here because of its use of the human stain, which can be 

compared to the novels that this dissertation focuses on. In Indignation, violence is 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

259 

 

portrayed with blunt imagery, and as Shipe points out, speaking about the main character, 

“Marcus’s narration defamiliarizes the past -stripping it of any of the nostalgia that other 

Roth narrators might have had for the 1950s” (Shipe 2018: 4). Marcus’s parents wear 

aprons that are covered in blood, and although he grew up with blood, he never got used 

to it: 

 

I envisioned my father’s knives and cleavers whenever I read about the bayonet combat 

against the Chinese in Korea. I knew how murderously sharp sharp could be. And I knew 

what blood looked like, encrusted around the necks of the chickens where they had been 

ritually slaughtered, dripping out of the beef onto my hands when I was cutting a rib steak 

along the bone, seeping through the brown paper bags despite the wax paper wrappings 

within (Roth 2008: 35). 

 

In my view, the choice of blood as a recurrent image is no coincidence, and in 

linking the blood of war in Korea to the blood of impurity that has to be cleaned in the 

kosher shop, Roth uses the same image of the human stain in order to establish a 

connection. As Gerard O’Donoghue writes, Marcus has grown up with blood because of 

the kosher butcher shop and he has never liked it, but in spite of this, “it is the inestimable 

value of his particular flesh and blood that motivates Marcus’s devalorization of flesh and 

blood in general substances (O’Donoghue 2020: 61). Because of the brutal death of his 

cousins in World War II, the family has lived “steeped in their blood” (Roth 2008: 37). 

In order to avoid being butchered in Korea, he needs to enroll in college at all costs. 

Ironically, at college he will only encounter more blood and be covered with the stain, 

foreshadowing his final death, in fact, as he will be steeped in blood in Korea too.  



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

260 

 

That is why Marcus’ obsession with purity is ironic, because even though he is 

doing his duty, he is accused of being vile. The war in Korea is foreshadowed by the 

details of the butcher shop when Marcus says he knows how sharp knives are and what 

blood looks like. In addition, the human stain is present in the book in the portrayal of 

bloody punches, pain, and the dashing of a record against the wall. Marcus reacts to all 

this with utter disgust, unlike characters such as Sabbath in Roth’s ST, who embraces the 

nastiness of the human stain. Horrified by these bodily fluids, Marcus is more similar to 

Seymour in AP, because they both reject the human stain and do not recognize it as their 

own. 

 

 

II.3.5. The Chaos of History 

 

When considering the historical context of a novel such as DA, it is important to 

realize the weight of the feeling of a “sense of an ending” at the end of the 20th Century. 

The shadow of the Holocaust and various global disasters gave substance to a nightmare 

in people’s imagination. This is the setting of a novel that is fittingly obsessed with death 

and so it shows that the old system has disappeared and it has been replaced by fear. DA, 

in fact, was published only months before the deadly 9/11 attacks in 2001. In 

consequence, in an excellent chapter published in A Political Companion to Philip Roth, 

Matthew Shipe rightly considers this novel “a portrait of this liminal moment in American 

history” (Shipe 2017: 136). In my view, this novel is connected to how Roth treats the 

subject of history in ST, AP and HS, as an unpredictable force of chaos that reveals its 

dark stain in the narrative. In fact, Shipe explores how DA challenges the myth of progress 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

261 

 

“a faith in infinite advancement that has continually informed, to various degrees, 

America’s understanding of itself” (136). The myth of progress is destroyed through the 

use of the stain just like the American Dream, as seen earlier. 

Shipe claims that the motion of progress is central to Roth’s novels of his late 

period because as he represents the reality of aging and struggling with physical change, 

his novels at the same time critique the idea of progress. Once again, the human body 

functions to reflect the reality of American ideas. However, it not only American ideas, 

but also American actions are represented by the images of the human stain. In her essay 

“Philip Roth’s Fictions of Intimacy and the Aging of America” (2009), Georgiana Banita 

argues how in Roth’s work the theme of aging is connected with his other subjects, such 

as the struggle between the forces of desire and restraint, and that in works such as HS 

and DA the body reflects the political body of the nation (Banita 2009: 91).  

In this transition that goes from “a private to a national allegory”, Banita looks at 

how Roth writes about the process of aging and she focuses on its feature of self-

consciousness (92). Politically, the struggle of Roth’s protagonist when aging would 

correspond to a post-Cold War America that is divided between an ethical yearning and 

the temptation of pleasure (92-93). Because of Consuela’s Cuban-American identity, 

Banita interprets the forceful sexual act of fellatio that Kepesh has with Consuela as a 

moment that represents not only Kepesh’s illusion of control in their relationship, but also 

as part of a political metaphor, as America’s attempt to control Cuba (2009: 98). And 

Banita continues to analyze how the manner in which Consuela defends herself with her 

challenging bite, her snapping is a defiance of Kepesh’s dynamics and also represents 

Cuba’s response to America with the references to Fidel Castro (98). This throws a 

different light on an important aspect of DA and it demonstrates how the characters’ 

struggle reflects the nation’s own problems. 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

262 

 

Because of the tension between the forces of puritanism and liberation, there is a 

language of debate and struggle in Roth’s characters. Elaine Safer’s book Mocking the 

Age: The Later Novels of Philip Roth (2006) is important when analyzing the use of irony 

in the inner contradiction in the characters. They desire one thing and do another, or they 

know they should do something, but cannot help doing the opposite. In Operation Shylock 

(1993), the character Philip is struggling with two aspects of his own being rather than 

with his double, his false self. As Safer suggests, this interpretation would fit with the 

reference to the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel of the Lord in the Bible, which 

Roth uses as one of the epigraphs for the novel (“so Jacob was left alone, and a man 

wrestled with him until daybreak”, Gen. 32:24). As Safer points out, it can be interpreted 

as an inner struggle which would coincide with Kierkegaard’s sentence which is the 

second epigraph: “The whole content of my being shrieks in contradiction against itself... 

Existence is surely a debate” (Safer 2010: 172, ellipsis in original). This struggle can be 

seen in DA and ST and the awareness of this contradiction is what unblinds the characters 

and characterizes the tension that is felt in their American experience. 

Damon Barta explores how AP challenges the narrative of postwar lost innocence 

by means of two opposing registers: The Swede’s, who espouses American innocence, 

and Zuckerman’s, who lays bare its contradictions in his narrative (Barta 2018: 25). 

Merry’s register represents the sixties’ counterculture. Barta proposes that instead of 

emphasizing Roth’s identification with one character or another, it is more important to 

see how he uses the characters “to target a master narrative of postwar American 

historiography that emerged in the nineties to re-establish an imperiled American nostos” 

(27). The double perspective of the narrative creates a double central question in the 

novel, for as the Swede asks himself how it is possible that his daughter would destroy 

his world, Zuckerman asks “why Merry’s act is so incomprehensible to the Swede” (29). 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

263 

 

This is the pattern that Shostak identifies as a counterlife, and Barta illustrates how in AP, 

Merry and her father “represent seemingly antithetical positions that illustrate a paradox 

[...], contrapuntal roles that are fundamental to the same teleological historical narrative, 

a narrative that begins with postwar optimism and ends with the Cold War” (29, ellipsis 

mine). Both characters hold views that are generalized poles, the “pastoral” and the 

“counterpastoral”, and it is the narrator, Zuckerman, who reveals how both actually rely 

on fantasies of innocence, and that is why we find so many “dramatized arguments about 

innocence that illustrate its importance to the consensus-counterculture narrative” (31). 

 I would like to add how the images of the human stain in the discourse of both 

characters shows that purity is a mere fantasy in both stories, and how this resource 

uncovers the reality behind both arguments, how innocence falls short. Both the claims 

of innocence and knowledge are shown in a new light by means of the resource of the 

human stain. When Merry and her father are arguing, they accuse each other of childlike 

ignorance and also of addressing each other as if they were children. However, the adults 

choose to remain in a childlike state of ignorance and immaturity, turning a blind eye to 

the world’s reality when they choose to believe a false narrative. This is the story of 

“Merry’s absolute innocence” that becomes an anchor for the characters not to lose grip 

on what they hold on to (Roth 1997: 365). Without it they would be lost, not knowing 

how to accept evil and transformation within their own lives.  

According to Barta, Roth’s portrayal of the culture war is linked to the fantasy of 

innocence embodied by America: 

 

[…] illuminates an ongoing reliance on the trope of lost innocence to justify decidedly non-

rhetorical wars. The sixties that American Pastoral sets against postwar American cohesion 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

264 

 

is a grotesque figuration that stands in, at what was arguably the height of the culture war, 

for the menacing Other that had recently been the “evil empire” of the Cold War and would 

soon become the omnipresent “evildoers” of the War on Terror. (Barta 2018: 33) 

 

Furthermore, not only does Roth narrative show the effects of being blind to reality, 

it shows the dangers of maintaining a myth founded on counter realities, because as Barta 

says, “the Swede’s notion of violent, uncritical radicalism as the central fact of the sixties 

is one such counterreality that Laura Tannenbaum argues “has obscured the context of 

the extreme violence of the Vietnam War itself” and the “repressive state response to 

dissent” that ensued (qtd. in Barta 2018: 34). To conclude, Roth presents anti-utopian 

narratives by means of the human stain, as the text shows how Merry’s dream of purity 

is false just like her father’s. Posnock describes utopian thinking, and then its contrary, 

dystopian, which is really the other side of the coin, the same reasoning, for, and he quotes 

Havel, “a trace of the heroic dreamer, something mad and unrealistic, is hidden in the 

very genesis of the dissident perspective. In the very nature of things, the dissident is 

something of a Don Quixote” (Havel 192 qtd. in Posnock 2006: 187). Posnock notes “the 

dissident is not immune to utopian imagination; indeed within him is ‘the germ of 

utopianism’ (192,175). Posnock continues arguing: “But this ‘germ’ contains a ‘devilish 

temptation’ that if left unchecked can end up ‘degenerating’ and enslaving one to an 

abstraction –a ‘project for a better world.’ Often, megalomania ensues, followed by 

zealous indoctrination of the masses” (187). 

As with the analysis of irony, when looking at Roth’s use of humor, Safer’s 2006 

monograph is essential. Remnick also wrote about this humor placing it in the tradition 

and context of Jewish American Literature: “At his best, Roth internalizes the 

metaphysical drive of Bellow’s comedy, as well as the moral dilemmas and the uneasy 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

265 

 

sense of being adrift characteristic of Malamud’s comedy.” What makes Roth’s different 

is that he locates “the comic perspective as integral to the moment of crisis itself. This is 

possibly what takes the reader, notes Remnick, to “laughing loudest just at the moment 

when the abyss widens” (2000: 78). So “Roth, in his entire work and particularly in 

Sabbath’s Theater, lets his comic imagination unabashedly engage the human comedy of 

the protagonist’s ‘low-life existence […] and his yearning for higher illumination’” 

(Weber qtd. in Neelakantan 197-198, ellipsis mine). 

 

 

II.3.6. The Fluidity of the Modern  

 

In HS, Coleman Silk is a character who represents the possibility of changing your 

life and forging your own identity in America. This is described in the narrator’s voice 

and Coleman’s actions, both of which bear the imprint of the human stain and its fluid 

meaning. This image has already been presented in the previous section, but here it takes 

on a new meaning in relation with America. As Ira Nadel points out, “the fluidity of the 

modern becomes the very nature of Roth’s America” (Nadel 2018: 39). As the narrator 

of HS puts it, “To become a new being. To bifurcate. The drama that is America’s story” 

(Roth 2000: 342). Ira Nadel argues that it is possible to interpret the representation of 

swimming and water in Roth’s texts as the concept of “liquid modernity” of Zygmunt 

Bauman. This phrase refers to the constant change that characterizes the state of 

“becoming”, “avoiding completion, as we see in the unstable, variable heroes of Roth’s 

fiction and his own chameleon-like persona” (38). Roth engages with this issue of 

“fluctuating self-identity” in his narrative experiments which convey mobility and 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

266 

 

change. The American tries to carve a statue of himself, sculpting it in hard rock, but the 

stone will crumble and break into pieces.  

Not only is the American individual unstable, but America itself is unstable in 

Roth’s fiction. Both the internal and the external world are fluctuating. Andy Connolly 

writes about how in Roth’s fiction, “history is thus not a stable context”; rather, “history, 

in all its messy unevenness, reveals a dispersive and fluctuating external world that 

presents both an opportunity and a challenge to the creative energies of a writer (Connolly 

2019: 17). The words “messy” and “unevenness” suggest the presence of the stain in 

history. Therefore, the stain in America is revealed as Roth’s novels explore America’s 

foundation, because according to Michael Kimmage’s explanation they dramatize the 

impossibility of creating history in a coherent way, which is why we cannot be the authors 

of history, instead history shapes our life (Kimmage qtd. in Connolly 17).  

Not only is it impossible to see national history in a coherent way, but it is also 

impossible for Roth’s characters to forge their own lives in a coherent way. Far from 

erasing contradiction, Roth shows it is at the core of human beings: “Until he meets 

Faunia and ‘lets the whole creature out’ unfurled, Coleman regards his life as an artifact, 

sculpted by decisions and acts produced by his executive will. That his understanding is 

at once brave and deeply inadequate is part of the perplexing irreconcilability that Silk 

will grapple with” (Posnock 2006: 186). Coleman is forced to flow along with history. 

Roth, as Posnock notices, “is skeptical, to put it mildly, of purification. It breeds deadly 

violence, and attracts those allergic to ‘everything that flows’” (86). Opposed to rigid 

stone, the stain appears as water in order to represent a desirable fluidity. This is most 

evident in the final scene of HS with Zuckerman’s conversation with Les Farley at the 

frozen lake. It is a pristine place that connotes the natural purity of the American pastoral, 

described as “unviolated”, “unspoiled” “a clean place”, and it is because it has not been 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

267 

 

contaminated by human beings, as Farley argues: “That’s why it’s clean” (Roth 2000: 

347). However, as Farley’s story of the aftermath of violence in Vietnam will show, under 

the lake there is a hidden stain. 

 

 

II.3.7. Impurity and Transgression expressed with Irony and Paradox 

 

When writing about the failures of the American Dream, literary critics have to 

take into account that America is founded on promises but also on paradox. As Ihab 

Hassan argues about its origin: “Men as different as Calvin and Rousseau shaped its 

conscience” (1961: 35). And Hassan also writes in the same line of thought mentioned 

above, when speaking about Roth’s acknowledgement about the country’s lack of 

innocence: “America, we see, was not born blameless” (36). This has informed Roth 

scholars’ views of history in his fiction, such as Pozorski’s (2011) and Shipe’s (2017). 

This is perfectly represented in ST’s memorable image of Sabbath wrapping 

himself up in the American flag, as Aimee Pozorski notes (2011: 28). As Roth stated in 

his interview with McGrath, out of Sabbath came the American trilogy (McGrath 2000). 

Sabbath is the American voice to Roth, and seeing him enveloping himself in the very 

symbol of national identity at the same time that he mourns his brother’s death presents 

a stark image of the toll that a nation takes on an individual. Aimee Pozorski has analyzed 

this scene in the context of the novel, focusing on the details of the appearance of the 

American flag in different passages of ST (2011). First, the flag in the house of Sabbath’s 

cousin, Fish, is not only “washed out” but also completely dirty: “If this cleaning lady 

were interested in cleaning, she would have torn it up for rags years ago” (Roth 1995: 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

268 

 

28). Secondly, Sabbath wraps himself with the flag of his dead brother, and finally, he is 

accused of desecrating the American flag (446). The stain on the dirty flag means that 

America is not innocent.  

Harold Bloom remarked that ST “has earned [Roth] a permanent place in 

American Literature by a comic genius that need never be doubted again” and praised its 

“perfect marriage of form and content” (Bloom 2003: 6). In order to appreciate that union, 

the use of humor and the ideas that are entangled with it have to be analyzed. These are 

shaped in the novel by the action of irony modes and paradoxes. By focusing on the ideas 

and images of impurity and transgression, it is possible to see how the concept of the 

human stain keeps evolving. This is especially evident in the area of sexuality. From the 

very beginning, there is a sense of disillusion that is progressively revealed, as even 

though Sabbath seeks sexual satisfaction, there is no cure for his pain in the end. He 

delights in his illicit relations and comes undone when he witnesses how these come to 

an end. And that is how there is another adding to his losses, Death being the ruler over 

it all, and therefore the line between comedy and tragedy becomes blurred in this novel. 

In Roth’s earlier works, there is comedy in what he called his protagonists’ 

‘superseriousness’, “their comic predicament result[ing] from the repeated attempt to 

escape [their] comic predicament” as the author himself put it (Roth 2001 a: 159). In ST, 

however, the main character seems to accept his comic predicament, while he fights 

against his tragic predicament.  

As Roth opposes seriousness with a counterforce of irony, the result is that 

everything that is held serious is challenged in his work, as Gerard O’Donoghue argues:  

 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

269 

 

The seriousness of piety and duty are contested as forms of vanity and submission. 

Commitment to absolute moral ideas is challenged as arrogance or a neurotic obsession 

with purity. The seriousness of diligent husbandry is challenged as culturally valorized 

greed. The seriousness of a life of the mind is contested as derivative of the body and 

powerless before the compelling force of bodily appetites. (O’Donoghue 2020: 62). 

 

The ironic mode, used by Philip Roth as a resource in order to achieve several 

effects, has been studied by several scholars. It is worthwhile to analyze what makes 

Roth’s irony so special, as it has been considered a valuable trait of his narrative. Firstly, 

it is a sharp, hard irony, because it challenges moral grounds to the extreme, and it is 

difficult to tell how ironic it is. In some passages it may be a lighter irony than in others. 

Roth’s fellow writer Saul Bellow has given a name to this peculiar ambivalence: “One 

literary manifestation of Roth’s acute feel for the unsettled has been what Saul Bellow 

once called the ‘sliding’ focus of his irony: ‘You don’t know when he means to take you 

seriously. When you think you’ve got him connected to a position, you find he’s gotten 

away from you’ (qtd. Shostak 2004: 269, qtd in Posnock 2006: xiv). This is why it is clear 

that in order to interpret Roth’s novels adequately, it is important to read his ironies 

correctly and be aware of the possibility that he may be serious when one thinks he is 

being funny or both at the same time. This quality makes his fiction very valuable, and 

this, among other characteristics, would probably have motivated Saul Bellow when he 

sent a note to the Swedish Academy in 2000 to support Roth’s candidacy for the Nobel 

Prize. The note goes like this: “I wish to nominate the American novelist Philip Roth for 

the Nobel Prize. His books have been so widely examined and praised that it would be 

superfluous for me to describe, or praise, his gifts” (Taylor 2010: 546). 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

270 

 

As mentioned before, one of the aspects that are treated with this sliding focus of 

irony is the issue of sex. This is relevant here because to Drenka, her lover represents 

America. This is why she says to Sabbath: “you are America, yes you are my wicked 

boy” (Roth 1995: 419). Sabbath is a “dirty” adulterer but at the same time he gives her a 

new understanding and knowledge of America. It is interesting to note in what light 

sexuality is put because in ST, the description of sexuality appears as something 

ambiguous, which has an enormous power but also as something wounded, has been 

noted by several scholars. Speaking about the union of confession and irony in Roth’s 

depiction of a wounded sexuality, Milan Kundera has found a very particular type of 

literary eroticism in his work. As mentioned above, Roth’s friendship with Kundera was 

fruitful, but this was not only due to the books that were published with Penguin, but also 

because both authors shared an interest and an appreciation for specific modes and themes 

in fiction. In Roth’s book Shop Talk: A Writer and His Colleagues and Their Work (2001), 

Kundera is interviewed by Roth, among other writers such as Primo Levi and Aharon 

Appelfeld. In this interview, carried out in 1980, Kundera tells Roth about the importance 

of humor and the different attitudes that laughter can convey. “Human life is bounded by 

two chasms: fanaticism on one side, absolute skepticism on the other” (Roth 2001b: 95). 

As Kundera lived in a state that suffered the oppression of a Totalitarian regime, he also 

reflects about the irony in the utopian fiction present in that particular ideology: 

“Totalitarianism is not only hell but also the dream of paradise” (Roth 2001b: 95). Once 

the dream becomes reality, everything changes. When delving into this matter, Kundera 

reveals something that we also find in Roth’s fiction as an ironic paradox: “People like to 

say: Revolution is beautiful; it is only the terror arising from it that is evil. But this is not 

true. The evil is already present in the beautiful, hell is already contained in the dream of 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

271 

 

paradise, and if we wish to understand the essence of hell we must examine the essence 

of the paradise from which it originated” (96). 

As stated earlier, one of the most important elements to understand Roth’s fiction 

is the use of opposites, as seen with the nice Jewish boy and the rebellious one. Regarding 

this issue, Alan Berger and Gloria Cronin edited a book titled Jewish American and 

Holocaust Literature: Representation in the Postmodern World in 2004. In the chapter 

titled “Philip Roth and Jewish American Literature at the Millenium”, Bonnie Lyons 

argues that Roth’s work can be interpreted through structuring ideas and through sets of 

opposites, such as purity and impurity. She explains that this happens throughout Roth’s 

fiction: “From his earliest book, Goodbye, Columbus, with its assimilated Jew versus 

alienated Jew, thinking and fictionalizing through oppositions has been a predominant 

strategy in Roth’s fiction” (Lyons 2004: 177). Furthermore, Lyons points out that 

“American Pastoral has the Rothian pattern of two antithetical brothers. The Swede and 

Merry are also dialectical antagonists in their diametrically opposed responses to America 

and in their opposite temperaments— the father seeks moderation and conciliation, the 

daughter demands extremes and violent responses. But the most interesting opposition of 

all is external to the novel: the Swede as a counterpoint to Mickey Sabbath” (177).  

The presentation of antithetical discourse in the same novel characterizes Roth’s 

complex and layered work. This is, along with his emphasis on human contradiction, 

makes it especially difficult to adapt his work in order to use it politically. Gerard 

O’Donoghue has written about Roth’s literature and its adaptation to film in order to 

“question the expectation that Roth’s fiction might possess a political instrumentality” 

(O’Donoghue 2020: 55). In the same line as Andy Connolly, who believes it is not 

possible to read Roth’s fiction as a salve to the current political context, O’Donoghue 

argues for a focus on the potency of the embracing of contradiction in Roth’s fiction that 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

272 

 

goes beyond the softening generic constraints of the Hollywood industry (55-56). In my 

view, Roth’s double perspective can be compared to the anti-utopian vision that was 

portrayed by the Russian author Yevgeny Zamyatin in the 1920s, in his essays and in his 

fiction. Zamyatin adopted a narrative mode that sought to question the very articles of 

faith in the possibility of a utopian hope, and that is why instead of writing dystopian 

stories in which there is a hopeful alternative which is the opposite to the nightmarish 

reality, in his work, the characters are puzzled as they discover the complexities of the 

changing meaning of good and evil within them and the world that surrounds them. For 

example, in his novel We (which served as a model for 1984 (1949) by Orwell and for 

Brave New World (1932) by Huxley), the main character discovers how everything he 

thought about freedom and slavery is wrong. John Huntington gave a theoretical 

framework to this narrative mode by proposing a term, anti-utopia, which refers to a 

“skeptical imagining that is opposed to the consistencies of utopia-dystopia” (Huntington 

1982: 123). While this term refers to science fiction, it can be extrapolated to Roth’s text 

as it shares the use of these skeptical literary mechanisms for very similar purposes and 

with the same effects on the characters and the readers. 

According to this theory, the utopia or dystopia builds a narrative structure that 

offers a solution to a dilemma, whilst an anti-utopia poses questions, reveals problems 

and creates doubts in the reader. Similarly, Roth’s novels never offer a clear solution to 

the problems it perceives, it rather raises questions and problems and shows how 

complicated or troubled some aspects of life can be. For example, as O’Donoghue 

explains, there are two sides when reading a novel like AP: On the one hand, Merry might 

be read as a radical, a fanatic who identifies with people’s suffering while her father sees 

how his life is destroyed by her thinking. On the other hand, Merry’s conviction to bring 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

273 

 

the Vietnam war home makes her father’s pastoral seem delusional (O’Donoghue 2020: 

60).  

Furthermore, anti-utopia “is not simply satiric; it is a mode of relentless 

inquisition, of restless skeptical exploration of the very articles of faith on which utopias 

themselves are built” (Huntington 1982: 123). In the same way, Roth is not merely 

satirizing the human urge to find purity, but he is causing the reader to doubt the fact that 

cleaning the human stain may be possible. This is why Roth’s fiction is not “serviceable” 

as other dystopian fiction might be, and it offers no final moral or “happy ending” with 

the convenient death of evil characters in novels such as The Plot Against America (2004), 

as pointed out by Andy Connolly in his assessment of historicist criticism of Roth’s 

fiction (2019: 13).  

Consequently, anti-utopia has an interest in understanding the conflicting 

relationship between human desires, expectations, and their clash with reality. That is 

why “anti-utopia questions utopian solutions even as it proposes them. It enjoys the 

construction of imaginary community, but does not succumb to the satisfactions of 

solutions” (Huntington 1982: 124). For instance, when Sabbath finds some degree of 

consolation in his transgression or in his relationship with Drenka, one may think that this 

is the utopian solution that is being championed, but such a reading would have to ignore 

all the signs of the novel that make the disappointments and frustrations of Sabbath’s 

attempts to find rest visible.   

And finally, Sabbath’s speech and the ambivalent nature of the narrative fits 

perfectly into the description of anti-utopia that focuses on being mindful of conflict:  

 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

274 

 

At the core of the anti-utopia is not simply an ideal or a nightmare, but an awareness of 

conflict, of deeply opposed values that pure utopia and dystopia tend to override. If utopia 

seeks imaginative solutions, anti-utopia goes beyond to return to the powerful and 

disturbing ambivalences that come from perceiving simultaneous yet conflicting goods. 

(Huntington 1982: 123-124). 

 

Therefore, I believe it would be interesting to draw a comparison between 

Zamyatin’s and Roth’s treatment of purity and immorality, because even though these 

authors write in different genres, the mode is the same, as their treatment of paradox and 

irony shapes their representation of knowledge of death, the moral questions, the 

experience of sexuality and the effect of sin in similar ways in both of their works. This 

quality of questioning beliefs has a strong effect in their literary work, for it functions like 

dynamite, blowing up reader’s ideas. It is problematic because it shows the 

contradictions, the chaos in reality and adjusts human thinking to it. Both Zamyatin and 

Roth can be read in the light of Nietzsche’s philosophy, which challenged the way people 

thought about the origin of moral judgments, as can be read in Beyond Good and Evil 

(1886):  

 

How could anything originate out of its opposite? For example, truth out of error? Or the 

will to truth out of the will to deception? Or selfless deeds out of selfishness? Or the pure 

and sunlike gaze of the sage out of lust? Such origins are impossible; whoever dreams of 

them is a fool, indeed worse; the things of the highest value must have another, peculiar 

origin –they cannot be derived from this transitory, seductive, deceptive, paltry world, 

from the turmoil of delusion and lust. (Nietzsche 1886: 199-200).  

 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

275 

 

Likewise, Sabbath is considered a fool for the acceptance of delusion and lust that 

are in him, but it is exactly through the knowledge of these things that he finds truth shows 

the essence of human life. To the Swede, in AP, the opposite happens as he is first ignorant 

or blind to this reality, and so when his daughter plants the bomb, and evil and filth come 

out of perfection, he is faced with this idea. That is why he asks himself the question of 

how imperfection can originate out of the perfection he created. 

The provisional nature of all assurances in American history is connected to the 

provisional perspectives of moral values. Andy Connolly has pointed out how texts such 

as AP and HS “examine how inherited notions of causality and logical momentum in 

human affairs are deeply distressed by life’s proclivity for sudden moments of fluctuation 

and haphazardness” (Connolly 2019: 17). There is no neat scheme of lineal progress (17). 

This is what Roth calls “the terrifyingly provisional nature of everything” (Roth 2000: 

336). In addition, as seen earlier, Roth’s novels challenge the idea of judging people’s 

actions as good or bad as they show how these actions can be perceived positively or 

negatively. “For one may doubt, first, whether there are any opposites at all, and secondly 

whether these popular valuations and opposite values on which the metaphysicians put 

their seal, are not perhaps merely foreground estimates, only provisional perspectives” 

(Nietzsche 1886: 200). There is an urge to doubt people’s judgements and even one’s 

own perception of reality, that is where wisdom lies, because it is so hard to really know 

anything or anyone at all.  

Roth’s sense of crisis is evident when he insists that life in America is as 

precarious as anywhere else: “all the assurances are provisional, even here in a 200-year-

democracy” (“The Story Behind The Plot Against America”). The individuals in his 

novels are therefore “ambushed” by unpredictable events, and as Shipe has argued, in 

novels like Indignation there are allusions to an early trauma that is not named, because 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

276 

 

to Roth, the Korean War is “symptomatic of a history that has always been corrupt” 

(Shipe 2019: 15). The symptoms of the corruption of the stain affect the characters in 

violent ways. 

In the celebration of Roth’s work that took place in 2013, Philip Roth is reported 

to have spoken of ST, stating that “Facing the “infinite capriciousness of existence”, 

Sabbath takes “a savage journey into his raw wound”, but, Roth noted, he does so with 

“great sadness about the deaths of others and great gaiety about his own”. In the writer’s 

passion for the hypnotic materiality of the world, of course, nothing looks so real as the 

grave. But ultimately, Roth averred of Sabbath, “in his mischief, he finds his truth”—the 

truth of “ungovernable laughter.” (Shostak 2014: 8-9). 

As pointed out in the first chapter of this thesis, Cooper sees “Epstein” as an ironic 

account of a man whose affair is scandalous because of his Jewish heritage, and that’s 

why its consequences escape his control (Cooper 1996: 27). Cooper believes Roth’s aim 

is to write with sympathy for “the most failed human beings, Epstein, for example, so that 

the reader can derive, not as moral judge but as expanded consciousness, a sense of what 

that act of failing is like” (37).  

Matthew Shipe has argued that in Roth’s late fiction, starting with Indignation 

(2008), there is an important shift in how Roth approached history (2018). By looking 

back at the repression of the 1950s (both in the sexual and political areas of life), Roth 

revisits the era that he represented in his early work. But Shipe argues that this is not 

merely another story of a “’good’ Jewish boy’s desire to break free from the constraints 

of home” (Shipe 2018: 1). Instead, this is a rewriting of Roth’s past fiction (2). In 

recovering the violence of the Korean War (1950-53), Roth presents a story that shows 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

277 

 

how brutally history disrupts an individual’s life, as Marcus’ sense of indignation 

eventually leads him to his death.  

In conclusion, Roth’s work helps the reader to examine his own life as a citizen 

in America, as Franziska Brühwiler and Lee Trepanier write in their introduction to A 

Political Companion to Philip Roth: “Without his critical scrutiny, perhaps even 

provocation, from Roth’s works, American democracy would not be able to pull itself 

back from the brink of political madness to which it has from time to time succumbed” 

(2017: 8).  

 After Roth’s passing, Andy Connolly has reflected about the dangers of 

misinterpreting Roth’s fiction when approaching it from a historicist point of view (2019). 

After examining a wide range of commentaries that tend to read Roth’s fiction in light of 

the contemporary political moments, Connolly warns against readings that see Roth’s 

novels “as a kind of salve” against the troubling political times of the present (2019: 12). 

Connolly insists that Roth’s fiction cannot be understood as a “literary palliative for 

present ailments” (12). Nor only do I agree with him, but I also think it would be 

particularly ironic if Roth’s fiction, which is marked by the awareness of the 

pervasiveness of the human stain, would be taken as a medicine against the ailment that 

is its consequence in America.  

• • • 

 Roth’s profound and life-long interest in the United States of America as a subject 

for his fiction has led him to seek to write in immediate proximity to it, and as shown in 

this section, this is accomplished in a particular way through the human stain. The images 

of the stain present America as diagnosed with a cancer; exposing its raw flesh; stained 

with filth and blood; and finally, suffering from a plague. Images such as the black corpse 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

278 

 

of the burning monk haunt the characters’ imagination and awaken their conscience and 

the consciousness of the stain in the corruption and injustice of America. The country is 

not innocent nor clean and Roth’s fiction reveals this trauma, as Pozorski has argued 

(2011). Even though Roth’s characters may not recognize this blight as their own, in the 

descriptions of the stain there is a connection between violence, war and impurity in a 

personal sphere.  

 The moralistic impulse as seen at a smaller scale in the previous section is shown 

now at a larger scale throughout history from its Puritan beginnings and it is denounced 

as the blight on America. The American Dream and the myth of progress that fuels it 

participate in the utopian fantasy that is associated with this impulse. Firstly, with the 

stain, Roth presents purity as the renunciation of life. While Roth’s use of irony has been 

studied by Safer (2006), Ivanova (2014) and Remnick (2000), among others, I have 

explored how this irony works along with the stain in particular. Secondly, the human 

stain describes the struggle between two opposing forces in America: these two 

discourses are the pastoral and the counterpastoral, but through the stain it is clear that in 

the end they both rely in fantasies of innocence. As Posnock (2006) has argued, in the 

“germ of utopianism” there can be a temptation that can degenerate and enslave people 

to yet another project of purity, which is why I have compared Roth’s narrative with the 

anti-utopian mode. Consequently, as argued in Matthew Shipe’s reading of Roth’s 

depiction of history, instead of assigning one single meaning to American history, Roth’s 

novels expose myths and beliefs that have given shape to the narrative of American 

postwar experience, as argued by Shipe (2017). To sum up, Roth’s fiction reveals our 

limitations to comprehend history or to imagine what is in store for us (Shipe 2017: 157).  

Finally, Roth saw how the subject of American history crept into his work 

constantly after writing ST, and he thought that the historical perspective that he had 



CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION 

 

 

279 

 

acquired was a result of his aging. Chapter III will present the consequences of the 

transgression of the human stain. This consists in the experience of suffering, the presence 

of illness (which has already been foreshadowed by the image of the rash in Epstein’s 

skin in Chapter I, or the epidemic in America in this Chapter) and last but not least, the 

final enemy: death.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

280 

 

CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING  

 

 Philip Roth wrote extensively about the experience of suffering, and not only are 

his books preoccupied with the representation of trauma, but they also put forward 

important questions about the role of fiction in the midst of pain. See Aimee Pozorski’s 

Roth and Trauma (2011) for a complete study about how the description of the characters’ 

grief brings to mind the memory of an earlier trauma in their personal or national history. 

This is a characteristic trait in Jewish American Literature, where the memory of the 

Holocaust looms large, next to the problem of forgetting, that is, the loss of identity. 

However, while many Jews asked themselves the question of how they could attach 

themselves to the identity of their ancestors, and to the lost memory of the old world they 

came from (Chametzki et al. 2001: 984), Philip Roth dealt with the representation of loss 

in a different way. The trauma of the Holocaust is present in early stories such as in “Eli 

the Fanatic” (1959) and in the figure of Amy Bellette, who pretends to be Anne Frank in 

The Ghost Writer (1979). In his exploration of the subject, Roth uses the image of dark 

clothes to represent their strangeness in America and his text appeals to the character’s 

struggle to deal with suffering. As Debra Shostak argues, in books such as ST, Roth poses 

questions such as: How do you live with the dead? Who are you? And how do you “invent 

a self in the face of desire and death”? (Shostak 2004: 48).  

 But Roth was not only interested in the collective tragedies that happened in his 

lifetime. He was certainly no stranger to pain, illness, and death throughout his own life. 

As Claudia Roth Pierpont tells in her biography of the author, Roth was grieved by the 

loss of many close friends and family members. Among them was Primo Levi’s death, in 

1987. Roth had visited Levi, the author of If This is a Man (1947), in Turin, Italy, and 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

281 

 

maintained a correspondence with him afterwards, and he was shocked by his death, 

which had a staggering effect on him, and he even compared it to the blow of the 

assassinations of the sixties (Pierpont 2013: 165). 

According to Pierpont, when Roth’s father died in October 1989, three months 

after Roth had undergone emergency bypass surgery, he had suffered but at least he had 

been able to care for his father, unlike what had happened when he lost his mother. It had 

been extremely difficult for Roth to be there for his sick father while he had to recover 

from his heart surgery and he also kept it secret from him (Pierpont 2013: 171). Roth has 

written extensively about his personal experience with loss, illness and death; in fact, he 

had been writing Patrimony, which is about his father, when he learnt about the tumor in 

his father’s brain.  

During Roth’s basic training at Fort Dix, in 1955, when he was twenty-two, he 

acquired his first and lasting back injury (Pierpont 2013: 29). It was exactly at this time, 

when he experienced an acute pain for the first time, that he began to write. As he was 

granted an honorable discharge and given a desk job at a hospital, he was able to use the 

typewriter that came with the job for his stories, because he was allowed to use it in his 

free time. In this sense, one could say that writing and pain have been connected in Roth’s 

life from the very beginning. He even wrote a story about his injury later: “Novotny’s 

Pain”, which first appeared in The New Yorker in 1962. This back injury led to many 

years of pain, surgeries and painkillers, which drove him over the edge. But in the story 

inspired by this pain, as well as in other novels, such as The Anatomy Lesson, Roth 

explores questions related to the meaning of pain and the self. As Debra Shostak argues, 

it is by this focus on physical pain that Roth “reminds us that identity is incomplete 

without one’s consciousness of one’s body” (2004: 41). I agree, and I intend to argue that 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

282 

 

it is precisely through pain that Epstein, Sabbath, The Swede, Coleman and Kepesh gain 

a revelation about their identity, and that the text reveals a stain on their bodies. 

Shostak further notes that “pain is the exquisite consciousness of our embodiment. 

To confront the breakdown of the body-in a sense, its coming to consciousness, its assault 

on the subject/object distinction- is in a sense to face reality” (2004: 41). This will be 

most evident in DA. Caught in a Kafkaesque predicament; Roth’s characters confront the 

irrational nature of their pain (For an in-depth analysis of this influence, see, among 

others, Andrzejczak, 1991; Green, 1987; Kimmage, 2013; Medin, 2007; and Sánchez 

Canales 2011c). In Roth’s story “Novotny’s Pain”, as Shostak concludes, pain has no 

identifiable source or meaning, and so, “the assumption that one’s psyche is inevitably 

written upon one’s body, rather than the reverse, grows doubtful” (2004: 42).  

Roth did not only experience physical pain; he also struggled with psychological 

pain. His marriage with Margaret Martinson Williams (Maggie) had brought about a 

conflict in his life that he was unable to deal with and caused him to feel much resentment 

and rage. He had married her in 1959 but he separated from her three years later, although 

the legal separation did not happen until 1963 and it was very difficult. For this reason, 

he turned to psychoanalysis for help in 1962, which helped him and also inspired him to 

write “A Jewish Patient Begins His Analysis” in 1967. He was particularly haunted by 

the image of Maggie’s deception, a trick she played on him when she bought a pregnant 

woman’s urine and so made him believe she was pregnant and manipulated him so he 

would marry her. This scheme and its impact on the author were included in My Life as 

a Man (1974) and in Roth’s autobiographical novel The Facts (1988).  

Roth also suffered from heart disease, and this struggle is what took him closest 

to the reality of death. He was told in 1982 that he only had a fraction of normal cardiac 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

283 

 

function, and so he became aware that he could only take a day at a time, as he had no 

certainty that he could return to his work the following day. In her book Countertexts, 

Counterlives, Debra Shostak writes, “Death is, of course, what makes us most aware of 

our corporeality, the literalness of our bodies” (2004: 44). Many of Roth’s characters 

suffer from a disease that can cause their death and forces them to confront the reality that 

their lives can end at any time. The famous graveyard scenes, spread all over Roth’s work, 

speak of this ongoing concern.  

As Shostak says, speaking of the symbolic weight of one of such scenes in The 

Anatomy Lesson, “Nathan’s crisis occurs in the place of death, where the unavoidable 

reminder of bodily existence consists in the iconography of loss -the gravestones that 

mark the places where bodies have crumbled to dust” (Shostak 2004: 45). The graveyard 

bears a universal warning sign: Remember that you will die too. Interestingly, Shostak 

says that the gravestones mark the place where the dead turn to dust (45). To my mind, 

this word, “mark”, is like the stain in Roth’s novels, which marks the reality of the 

consequence of sin, which is death. In addition, in her article “Roth’s Graveyards, 

Narrative Desire, and ‘Professional Competition with Death’”, Shostak analyzes the 

motifs and textual strategies that appear when Roth’s characters become aware of death 

in the cemetery scenes of different novels, like ST (2014). Her reading of these scenes 

will be referred to in the last section of this Chapter in order to understand the key issues 

of death and desire in the light of the motif of the stain. 

 In Chapter I, the stain signifies moral impurity; in Chapter II a transgressive drive, 

and in this Chapter, it appears as a wound from the past, a sign of the trauma caused by 

the pain of losing beloved people. As seen in Chapter I, the human stain appears as a 

wound that can be physical, as it appears as a real illness, a lethal wound, and it is 

described in detail. But the worst enemy is the death that awaits the characters. Indeed, 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

284 

 

Roth has been interested in the nearness of death and its effect on life from his beginnings, 

in his early stories, such as “Epstein”, where the main character’s life is overshadowed 

by the threat of the end of life. Similarly, in Letting Go (1962) and in When She Was Good 

(1967), death is portrayed as a shocking retribution for the characters. 

Death is ever lingering in Roth’s characters’ minds and they try to seek comfort, 

life and hope in sexual relationships. Eros-Thanatos is a major theme in Roth’s fiction: 

Eros is the only way the Rothian protagonist has to try to escape from death (Thanatos). 

I will address this idea in more detail throughout this Chapter, to show how the characters 

find themselves utterly crushed under the power of death. Especially in HS and DA, 

Roth’s narrator Nathan Zuckerman has entered a “competition with death” and DA, 

written in 2001, represents a new stage in Roth’s fiction, in what is termed as “late Roth”, 

comprising his work from that novel to the last novellas, which Roth termed “tragedies”. 

DA is the novel that most clearly shows how the metaphor of the human stain comes to 

signify everything that has been lost, and the cost of suffering and the weight of 

impending death on the characters.  

Gradually, death becomes the main subject in the “late Roth” period, gaining 

significance throughout the following novellas: First, Everyman (2007), which is named 

after a late fifteenth century morality play, an allegory about death. Then, after writing 

Exit Ghost (2007) which is about time, age and ghosts, in Indignation (2008), he explored 

the terrible fate that awaits a young man who in trying to escape being drafted, cannot 

avoid death in the end. The Humbling (2009) features an aging depressed actor who 

contemplates suicide; and finally, Nemesis (2010) is a tale of a devastating polio 

epidemic. Scholars such as Victoria Aarons (2007, 2013), Aimee Pozorski (2004, 2011, 

2015), Derek Parker Royal (2009) and Elaine B. Safer (2006, 2011), among others, have 

devoted research specifically to these novels of the late Roth period. At the time he wrote 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

285 

 

these novels, Roth had suffered the loss of a number of his friends (including Janet 

Hobhouse, Melvin Tumin, Veronica Geng, George Plimpton and Saul Bellow). 

Particularly his fellow writer’s death, Bellow’s, sent Roth into despair, according to his 

biographer Pierpont (2013: 284). And at this time, in 2005, he also had undergone surgery 

on different occasions and he spent more time at his house in the country (282). 

This is also reflected on his writing, as the subject of death is especially present 

from the start to the end of HS, written in 2000. Its narrator, Nathan, takes the time to 

reflect on it particularly during the scene of the concert rehearsal, when he pictures 

everybody’s death, imagining how their illnesses are growing invisibly, and he thinks 

about “the ceaseless perishing. What an idea! What maniac conceived it?” (Roth 2000: 

209). The stain of death, lying invisible and deep contrasts with the surface of a clear, 

harmless and pretty day on earth. How can all that destruction go on under the surface of 

life? The invisible threat that is pending over everybody seems horrifying in this novel.  

 The Old Testament book of Job will be an important biblical and literary reference 

in this Chapter because its subject is precisely the question of suffering. It asks 

fundamental questions about the reasons for pain, illness and death and it represents the 

devastating consequences of these experiences to an extreme degree, because it is not the 

story of an individual but a representation for all humans. Job is also remarkably a book 

that goes against dualism, as it shows how body and spirit are one and how life on this 

earth does matter. As in the Book of Job, Roth steers away from a diagnosis of the ailment 

that the main characters suffer from, leaving it to other characters, who are always proved 

wrong. Just as in The Anatomy Lesson (1983), there is no easy explanation for a physical 

ailment or for psychological distress in these novels. For example, in AP, several people 

try to explain the reason for the Swede’s tragedy. But the text shows that not knowing 

why something is painful is just as bad as knowing the reason. The writer never gives a 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

286 

 

definitive answer, a single cause, for his intention is to describe the experience of pain as 

it unfolds and the speculation in the mind of the character, detailing the constant questions 

and doubts.   

 

 

III.1. THE STAIN IN PAIN 

 

“Why are things the way they are?” is the question that is echoed throughout 

Roth’s fiction and particularly in these four novels. When considering the disillusion and 

frustration, the tragedies and impending death that mark everybody’s life, to Roth, the 

first question to consider is where this pain comes from. In considering the origin of the 

state that human beings are in, it is necessary to look back to the story of the Fall that is 

analyzed in Chapter I. But this question leads to the problem of how pain is represented 

in Roth’s work. In this section, we will look at the stain of loss and the loss of the stain. 

In this reading of the text, erasing the stain can be compared to how people are erased out 

of life.  

As Bernard Malamud, an important Jewish American literary predecessor of Roth, 

said: “Every man is a Jew though he may not know it”, and to him, this notion meant “the 

primal knowledge that life is tragic, no matter how sweet or apparently full” (qtd. in 

Chametzski et al. 718). Malamud saw the American Jew as someone who is particularly 

conscious of the struggle of life, and in his work, suffering and pain were inextricably 

linked to the experience of being a Jew. Roth’s writing is also characterized by an 

awareness of the experience of pain.  



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

287 

 

In seeking to understand what she terms Roth’s “Anatomies of Desire”, Debra 

Shostak has written about the reasons why ST is not only obsessed with the erotic but 

also with death: Time ravages Sabbath’s body, and with it, his ability to perform the self 

(Shostak 2004: 51). But in Shostak’s analysis of DA, she focuses more on subjectivity 

and the abject and the representation of sexuality than on the aspect of pain (59-65). Of 

course, the former is essential to understand the latter, which is why this Chapter must 

come after the second one that deals with sexuality and desire. As mentioned earlier, 

Shostak specifically addressed Roth’s literary techniques when writing about death in her 

2014 essay on the graveyard scenes in several novels. Interestingly, she also comes to the 

conclusion that the representation of the struggle between Eros and Thanatos often ends 

in closing ambiguities through the questions of the narrative (2014: 9).  

Victoria Aarons, on the other hand, has written about the ironies of body and spirit 

in Roth’s Everyman and the failure of the main character to accept his mortality (2007). 

Aimee Pozorski has focused on trauma and therefore offers an interpretation of DA 

centered on the experience of suffering (2004). Similarly, she argues that the child who 

is the victim of history is an important focus of his work, from “Eli, the Fanatic” to 

Nemesis (Pozorski 2019: 126). Most of the Roth scholars who have written about the 

issue of tragedy and pain in Roth are interested in his obsession with death and trauma, 

but I would like to focus on how the meaning of the human stain changes from novel to 

novel in connection to pain.  

Therefore, the themes that will be explored in this Chapter revolve around the 

following questions: Firstly, how does the human stain represent pain, loss, illness and 

death? And, if the past lives on in the present, is there any sense in concealing the stain, 

the wounds and scars of traumatic loss? Finally, how is the search for a remedy 

represented through the image of the stain? In a recent call for papers for a Special Issue 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

288 

 

of the Philip Roth Studies Journal, the editors invite essays on Roth’s response to Judaism 

and the impact of the Torah and the Talmud on Roth’s work. There is clearly a need to 

expand our understanding of this issue in Roth studies. Even though there are scholars 

such as the editor of this Special Issue, Timothy Parrish, who also edited The Cambridge 

Companion to Philip Roth in 2007, who has written about the role of Jewishness in Roth’s 

work, I also believe that there is a need for a closer reading of Roth’s work in the light of 

biblical texts that are an important reference in these texts, such as the Book of Job, 

especially when illuminating the role of the human stain to represent the experience of 

pain. 

 

 

III.1.1. “The Cruelty of Life”: Images of Injustice from the Book of Job in Roth’s 

Fiction 

 

Aimee Pozorski’s work focuses on pain, and therefore her analysis of Roth’s 

novels, starting with ST and ending with Nemesis, focuses on passages such as Sabbath 

grieving his dead brother (2011: 28); or on characters who are plagued by the experience 

of intense pain, such as Les Farley in HS, who suffers from PTSD (2017: 105). Pozorski 

finds a common element in the trauma experienced by Roth’s characters, and it is the 

impact of American history on their lives (see her book length study on Roth and Trauma, 

2011). However, her analysis of Roth’s texts also reveals the importance of Roth’s choice 

of words and the images he uses to represent their pain. It is on this aspect that I want to 

focus in this section. Once again, in order to look at Roth’s words, first it is necessary to 

understand the source of his references. One of the most important figures that embody 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

289 

 

the reality of pain in the Jewish literary imagination is Job. Ihab Hassan comments on 

Northrop Frye’s characterization of the ironic hero in American fiction by emphasizing 

the figure of the biblical character of Job: “a would-be rebel whose failure, unlike that of 

Prometheus, is more bitter or absurd than tragic.  He is, in his self-taught irony, who 

represents better than Adam or Christ the existential man” (1961: 121). But there is 

another aspect that Job shares with Roth’s characters. 

Firstly, the injustice of life is one of the main aspects of suffering that is 

represented by the human stain. At first, in AP, seeing himself as Johnny Appleseed, the 

Swede thinks that the Lord (or life, as he’s not religious) is good to him because he gives 

him all the good things he needs. However, when ill befalls him, he experiences 

excruciating pain and cries out that it is unfair, like the biblical character of Job. Nathan 

Zuckerman, the narrator, (who has also had his share of pain, loss and illness in his life) 

recalls a book, The Kid from Tomkinsville, whose hero he compares to the Swede. It is 

“the boys’ Book of Job” and it presents “the cruelty of life. The Injustice of it” (Roth 

1997: 9). The hero, a good kid, suffers from an unexpected tragedy that cuts his life short. 

The realization that this can indeed happen makes Zuckerman wonder if the Swede was 

aware that this too could be his fate. The absence of a tragic flaw does not keep the 

“thundering heavens” from destroying the hero (9). Now, as mentioned in the introduction 

of this section, the Book of Job reflects on pain and loss philosophically and presents 

different voices and an evolution in Job’s thinking. Job poses the question of the 

judgement of the innocent, the question of God’s justice and power, as well as Job’s 

constant question:  

 

Why did this happen to me? 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

290 

 

 “If I have sinned, what have I done to you, 

    you who see everything we do? 

Why have you made me your target? 

    Have I become a burden to you? (Job 7:20)  

 

And God’s answer to Job consists of questions too, as he asks him: Do you know 

how to take care of the world’s creatures? Or who is in control of nature? (Job 38-42). 

Job finally has to recognize God’s power over everything and his own need for a 

mediator. In the same way as Job, the Swede, who is a successful man in every aspect of 

his life, will suffer a complete loss: he will lose his children, his wife, his health, his status, 

his sanity and his hope. This feeling is destroyed by Merry’s bomb, which seems to be 

directed at him, in Jerry’s interpretation:  

 

The violence done to his life was awful. Horrible. Never in his life had occasion to ask 

himself, ‘Why are things the way they are?’ Why should he bother, when the way they 

were was always perfect? Why are things the way they are? The question to which there 

is no answer, and up till then he was so blessed he didn’t even know the question existed. 

(Roth 1997: 70)  

 

The burden of pain, as shown in Roth’s novels, is overwhelmingly terrible and it 

has no redeeming quality at all. The aim of the narrative is to represent its physical reality 

and to address several questions: what does it mean, what is the cause, and what is the 

result of pain in life? As Roth puts it in The Anatomy Lesson, speaking about physical 

pain: “It’s impossible just to suffer the pain, you have to suffer its meaning. But it’s not 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

291 

 

interesting and it has no meaning –it’s just plain stupid pain, it’s the opposite of 

interesting, and nothing, nothing made it worth it unless you were mad to begin with.” 

(Roth 1983: 391). In Roth’s fiction, pain does not bring about anything good. The main 

character, Zuckerman, knows he did not deserve this pain and that it could not possibly 

be caused as a relief of guilt feelings, because he was sure he did not have any. “It wasn’t 

punishment or guilt that he was expiating. […] He hadn’t been writing for twenty years, 

writing principally about irrational guilt, to wind up irrationally guilty” (391, ellipsis 

mine). Pain comes to devour life, taking up everything: 

 

What prevents my recovery, what I do or what I don’t do? What does this illness want 

with me anyway? Or is it I who want something from it? The interrogation had no useful 

purpose, yet the sole motif of his existence was this hourly search for the missing 

meaning. Had he kept a pain diary, the only entry would have been one word: Myself. 

(Roth 1983: 411) 

 

As a result, pain brings the human being back to himself. However, Roth does not 

offer an answer to the question that pain raises in the individual. That is why, in his 

analysis of AL, David Gilotta sees how “Roth does not allow his narrative to end with an 

easy vision of recovery” because the main character must “come to terms with his body 

and his pain” (2010: 112). In a similar way, Sabbath’s narrative is open-ended but the 

stain on his body is the means of confronting pain in this text. 

If one had to choose one character who speaks especially about the subject of pain, 

it would be Mickey Sabbath in ST. And so, if one had to draw a portrait of Sabbath, in 

this picture it would be visible that Sabbath’s life is a life that speaks of pain; he has a 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

292 

 

calling against his will to cause pain, so it becomes a curse for him. While his drive is 

purely about persevering in his desire, indulging in any impure impulse he may have, and 

in grieving death and considering the disappointments he had in life. He is filled with 

loss. The “beast in the jungle” (as in Henry James’ story) is not hidden for Sabbath, for 

to him there is no need to keep a secret or to wait for the beast without taking action. 

Sabbath must fight back, clinging to life by means of his affair with Drenka. He does 

suffer, and experiences much emotion, for he is very much active and has several 

breakdowns. He knows the value of the days of his life, as he approaches the degradation 

of his body and sees how his powers fail him. All of this leads him to mistrust life while 

at the same time, cling to it. 

Not only is old age the cause of pain in ST, it is also violent death in war that 

which kills Sabbath’s brother Morty, or a deadly cancer that kills Drenka. Roth decidedly 

focuses on grief in this novel, as he imagines the impact of loss on a man, on a whole 

family. “How would the bereft creature who was oneself ever again be a child? I 

wondered what it would be like never again to know delight. [...] when I came to write 

Sabbath’s Theater, I found out for myself by imagining the anguish of the grieving 

Sabbaths of Bradley Beach, New Jersey” (Roth 2014: 53, ellipsis mine). The author 

remembers the shock of hearing about the tragedy of the grief people experienced when 

they lost their children in the war and through this narrative that grief is represented 

strikingly. The “maddeningly improbable” and the “unforeseen” keeps surprising Roth’s 

characters (Roth 1995: 3). They cannot plan their lives, there is nothing they can count 

on.  

Instead of seeing the stain in the Swede’s life, at the beginning, Zuckerman only 

sees an “incognito” wrapped in “good nature” and praise for his family (Roth 1997: 23). 

Everything is an interrogation mark, until looking back to the past reveals how it is 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

293 

 

undetonated, holding within the dynamite that is ready to explode later. But the Swede’s 

own stories betray his secret, so the text gives the readers a clue, a foreshadowing of the 

disaster that the Swede does not want to speak of. This clue resides in the only topic that 

the Swede speaks of with sadness and rage: the fate of his beloved city of Newark. The 

place where his factory was is now a dump, and the downfall, the change of this city goes 

parallel to the Swede’s own downfall, to his disappointment in the destruction of his 

dream, even though he does not admit it at this point. 

As Zuckerman hears about all the suffering, death and chaos that befell one of his 

old classmates, he is amazed at his ignorance: He did not know of all that in the past, 

when he was enjoying life. Encapsulating this moment of revelation, of the journey from 

innocence to knowledge, Zuckerman dances to the song with the words that are quoted at 

the beginning of the novel, “Dream… when you’re feelin’ blue, … dream… that’s the 

thing to do” (Roth 1997: 84, ellipsis in original). The sound of the song that brings back 

memories from the past and the knowledge of all the painful events crushes Zuckerman, 

who, under the weight of “unruly emotion” thinks of the Swede, who awakens to the 

horror and the truth of evil and suffering in the world and it is such a hard blow. He 

awakens “to the horror of self-reflection”, and to “normalcy interrupted by murder” (85).

  

 

III.1.2. The Metaphor of Sickness and the Masks that Hide the Scars  

 

 The destruction of the American dream is also painful: generations that are 

supposed to have more freedom, more safety, more education and a better life see how 

their dream does not come true, for there is still violence and chaos. Merry, instead of 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

294 

 

being “the perfected image” of her parents, becomes a distorted image of them. Equally, 

the “counterpastoral” is introduced by Merry: “the daughter and the decade blasting to 

smithereens his particular form of utopian thinking, the plague America infiltrating the 

Swede’s castle and there infecting everyone” (Roth 1997: 86). Identifying the whole 

country with an epidemic is a powerful image to show the relationship between the 

individual and the society he lives in, and the plague is the human stain by definition, 

having both a positive and a negative effect. The representation of illness will be studied 

more in depth in the second section of this Chapter. 

In the same manner that Job asks about the reason for his suffering, in AP there is 

a similar universal question, applicable to everybody: “Who is set up for tragedy and the 

incomprehensibility of suffering? Nobody. The tragedy of the man not set up for tragedy, 

that is every man’s tragedy” (Roth 1997: 86). In the second section of the novel, the reader 

is given an insight into the Swede’s cracks, for he puts up a facade indicating everything 

is normal, but by rendering his thoughts, the narrator shows the interior monologue that 

betrays his permanent sense of loss, his madness even. He starts calling Rita “honey” the 

way he would call his daughter and he was not able to stop himself. Rita’s reference to 

his apparent happiness rips through his crack: “‘Am I?’ he asked, and felt as though he 

were going to be dissected, cut into by a knife, opened up and all his misery revealed” 

(130). The utter despair growing under his mask of calm is revealed gradually, as the 

narrator explains the effort he has to make to keep from losing control: “having managed 

momentarily to quash everything that was shadowing him and menacing him [...]” (130, 

ellipsis mine). He lives prey to his fears and his grief, described like beasts that are waiting 

to devour him. His inner monologue runs more intense and it is represented with 

hyphenated sentences that convey the obsessive nature of his thoughts about madness, 

mourning, death and even Hell. He also feels alone, plagued by the presence of “this 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

295 

 

horrible riddle” (131). He is in a desperate situation, unable to be cured from his grief: 

“He clutched at his own effusiveness the way a sick person clutches at any sign of health, 

no matter how minute” (132). The Swede’s inner life is nightmarish, gruesome, lonely, 

ridden with “self-castigation” and “unflagging remorse”, even for that innocent kiss long 

ago (173). Finally, the text points at the Swede’s feeling of shame, he is not proud to be 

living a double life, of “masquerading as the ideal man” (174). 

Merry suffers not only from her stuttering, that stands for her own imperfection, 

but also from witnessing the pain of innocent people. A striking image of this pain is the 

scene in which she watches the Buddhist monk going up in flames on TV, analyzed earlier 

in connection with the subject of America. That image caused her to empathize with 

“these gentle people” and to ask whether anybody cared for them or had a conscience 

(Roth 1997: 154). Her father’s explanations did not satisfy her, and for her the horror was 

reduced to the fact that only few people had a conscience. But Merry is not the only one 

to ask this question in the novel. Later, the question is repeated in the context of the riots 

at Newark (165). The question could be repeated over and over again, endlessly: Where 

is everybody’s conscience? 

Watching the news about the war in Vietnam on the television set held Merry 

captive, and her father, as he recollects this memory after the bomb, wonders what it was 

that she was thinking as she watched. Is that enough to make somebody a bomber? 

Terrorism acquires an existentialist aspect in this novel. To the Swede it is important to 

understand the process that his daughter has gone through. Nowadays, the debate still 

goes on. Does religion come first and then a radicalization? Or is it first an extreme 

ideology and then religion that comes into play in the mind of a terrorist? Merry’s case is 

an example of somebody who goes through periods of obsession and beliefs in different 

systems or ideologies. It is a set of values that she acquires and then exchanges for the 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

296 

 

next one. She chooses to follow an idol, upholds something as the origin of good, and 

something else as evil, and also a goal, the end towards she lives. It is in this way that we 

can read the Swede’s wanderings through the different phases or her life, her articles of 

faith at each time. From images of Jesus and the Virgin to the Communist manifesto, as 

well as Audrey Hepburn: “Merry outgrew everything. And then she would have found 

something new to hate and new to love [...]” (Roth 1997: 160, ellipsis mine). The detailed 

description of everything she believed in, from the political ideology to the apparition of 

the Virgin, causes the reader to think about the value of what one puts one’s faith in. 

Merry ironically goes from being oppressed by madness to becoming mad herself: 

“Why must she always be enslaving herself to the handiest empty-headed idea?” (Roth 

1997: 241). She is “tyrannized” by “the thinking of crackpots”, and she subjects to their 

ideology in spite of her intelligence and education. As the Swede recalls his arguments 

with her, it is evident that there is no use in trying to reason with her, she just fiercely 

denies every argument and accuses her father of being a conformist and of not thinking 

(242). There is no way of making her see the incongruity of her reverence for life which 

is causing her death, because she has no real desire to live anymore, her goal is to die: 

“self-starvation. The price paid for perfection” (244). In view of this, is it better to be self-

seeking or to be selfless? Merry has fallen into the trap of “the lying, inhuman horror of 

all this selflessness”, and her “flawless speech” linked to her “monstrous altruism” is 

awful (242). The Swede asks her: “For whom? For what?” and she says she believes in 

“the sanctity of life, not in the sovereignty of God, and that is why she sacrifices her life. 

Paradoxically, the Swede notices her monotonous explanation lacks the “sound of life” 

(245). It is realizing that his daughter is mad what causes the Swede a pain worse than he 

had imagined. His efforts were in vain, “being reasonable with her was his madness. 

Sitting there trying to act as though he were respectful of her religion when her religion 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

297 

 

consisted of an absolute failure to understand what life is and is not” (247). His daughter 

is completely isolated, her situation is terrifying. 

While some characters, such as Merry, not only confront the stains and even make 

it part of their appearance, other characters, such as Dawn, try to erase the stain from their 

body and their life. Dawn has been hospitalized twice for suicidal depression, she is sick 

with fear, and no dream of beauty can distract her from her pain. She blames her husband 

for luring her into his life and is full of regrets that lead her to “the relentless crying about 

her shame, her mortification, the futility of her life [...]” (Roth 1997: 187, ellipsis mine). 

And the remedy she seeks is a face-lift, which is like a mask, a superficial cure, which the 

Swede knows will not heal the real problem within. This truth is revealed right after the 

surgery, as instead of renewal, there is only a sense of the death of the old Dawn, as if in 

removing the scar of her trauma, everything is cast away -even the very existence of her 

daughter. This can be read as a metaphor of Dawn’s attempt to remove a stain, as she tries 

to start anew. However, instead of seeing beauty, the Swede sees mutilation, and when 

he looks after her, her bandages make him think of the “burial of her corpse” (188). The 

old identity of his wife has died with the changes in her body. In ST, Drenka experiences 

suffering as an eraser, in Sabbath’s view: “He’d seen her suffer and this was what it 

looked like. The blurriness broadened out from the middle of her face rather like an eraser 

crossing a blackboard and leaving in its wake a wide streak of negated meaning” (Roth 

1995: 18). Suffering here appears as a stain that paradoxically “erases” the visible identity 

and characteristic traits of a person’s face, leaving the effect of a stupefied blur. 

Not only does Dawn need a change of face to start a new life, she also wants a 

new house. She wants to sell the big old stone house that represents the Swede’s dream 

of a perfect life. Her hate for the house means hate for her husband and his dream of their 

life together. And a house that was characterized by regularity and order is now cast away, 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

298 

 

the indestructible house is destructed, the daughter is lost, and the past is cast away, 

buried. Nothing is left of the old pastoral. The daughter named Merry, who brought them 

joy, has now brought them utter desolation, which is sadly ironic when thinking of her 

name, as mentioned earlier in the previous chapters of this thesis. All of this makes the 

Swede realize that he did not know his wife either, just as people misjudged her when 

they believed she had no more aspirations in life only because she was Miss New Jersey. 

And then, on top of that, the Swede eventually learns that Dawn is having an affair with 

their neighbor.  

In AP, the human stain appears in the image of rape as imagined by the Swede. 

He visualizes how his daughter was raped repeatedly (Roth 1997: 266). Throughout the 

novel of AP, it becomes clear that there is no real safety anywhere. Danger, violence and 

rape are to be found in the places where one would least expect it to happen. Early in the 

novel, Merry tries to tell her father that there is no way of knowing where evil comes 

from, their conversation thus foreshadowing what will happen to her later. Even more 

tellingly, she says that he, as a father, is not only not able to save her from danger, and 

she says even fathers are capable of doing evil: “Sometimes daddies do the raping” (Roth 

1997: 111). This is a blow to the Swede because he perceives himself as innocent. The 

unthinkable to him is that he would be considered guilty of anything, and that is why 

being considered a criminal, an exploiter, in the eyes of Rita Cohen, Merry and the 

Weathermen is so upsetting to him. Nevertheless, the real blow comes later in the novel, 

when he is forced to confront the reality that his daughter has in fact been raped several 

times during the time she went underground after the bombing. As the Swede imagines 

the rape, all the other details are “blocked out”, the faces of the perpetrators are “out of 

sight” and they disappear along with their “blameless innocence” because the stain erases 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

299 

 

it, showing only a dark blot in a clear image of the human stain: “The rape obscured 

everything else” (Roth 1997: 267). 

 

 

III.1.3. The Hurt that Comes from Being Human 

   

Another attempt of erasing the human stain can be found in the cleansing of water. 

Just as Dawn’s face-lift in AP, bathing in water is an image loaden with the meaning of 

the search of purification. The connotations of water as cleansing have been mentioned 

earlier and have been considered by scholars such as Ira Nadel (2018). However, these 

interpretations fail to acknowledge the ambivalent way in which water is present in Roth’s 

text. Water actually subverts the meaning of purity in these novels because of the human 

stain. In ST, Sabbath runs a bath when he is at his friend’s house and he is trying to 

indulge in his desire but at the same time he is confronted with his limitations and the 

frustration of his sense of loss (Roth 1995: 337). His dirty clothes reflect his stained state, 

his attempt to masturbate and his rummaging through his friend’s wife and daughter’s 

personal belongings further reinforce this image of filth (330). Sabbath experiences a 

gradual descent into hell. There is a question posed by Sabbath that invites the reader to 

think about it during the whole novel: “flight from what?” (Roth 1995: 125). It may be 

death, or it may be the human stain, that condition of which he cannot rid himself, which 

is sometimes portrayed positively and other times negatively. In any case, it produces 

pain. The subject of Sabbath’s pain is further explored as the events unfold. Towards the 

end of the novel, he recites a long list of grievances, the blows that life has dealt him:  

 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

300 

 

Wifeless, mistressless, penniless, vocationless, homeless… and now, to top things off, on 

the run. If he weren’t too old to go back to sea, if his fingers weren’t crippled, if Morty 

had lived and Nikki hadn’t been insane, or he hadn’t been –if there weren’t war, lunacy, 

perversity, sickness, imbecility, suicide, and death, chances were he’d be in a lot better 

shape. (Roth 1995: 142-143) 

 

Not only has he suffered these things, he also adds to the list sufferings that are 

particular to his artist’s vocation: “isolation, poverty, despair, mental and physical 

obstruction” (143). The reason why Sabbath is in a miserable shape is the burden of his 

particular sufferings and what the ghost of his mother sees as “human life. There is a great 

hurt that everyone has to endure” (Roth 1995: 143). It is in these simple words that 

Sabbath sees truth. That is why, to him, “empathy” or “sensible” words are nothing but 

lies (144). He is utterly broken, which is why he does not believe in therapy (145). In 

contrast, Gurumurthy Neelakantan, who offers a reading of ST with a focus on its ethical 

aspect, has argued that in this novel, therapy is redefined as an “empowering philosophy 

of life” (2017: 93). Instead, I think what is redefined in this novel is actually the 

experience of human pain. Drawing on the benefits of psychoanalysis, Neelakantan 

emphasizes how Sabbath might learn to live “virtuously” in a “salubrious” way, and that 

the novel’s ending with its memories, which are “redemptive”, allows Sabbath to 

overcome trauma (100). Far from being able to “heal the wounds” and achieving “peace” 

(101), I instead argue that Sabbath finds that he is utterly incapable of doing so. 

Remembering does not heal his wounds, it opens them instead. At the devastating scene 

where he opens the box that contains his dead brother’s objects, the memories only bring 

pain. I totally disagree with Neelakantan when he interprets that they “rejuvenate his 

conscience” (102). 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

301 

 

Because Sabbath’s psychological and emotional wounds are due to more than the 

loss of his brother Morty, Nikki, and also to the frustration of not being able to continue 

his career as a puppeteer. The conclusion that Sabbath reaches is related to the idea 

mentioned previously, the fact that nobody really knows anything about each other, even 

though they think they do, which Sabbath experiences as the frustrating fact that people 

who pretend to help and understand don’t really know anything at all (146). This issue 

also appears in HS, when Coleman is subjected to everybody’s mistaken judgement. In 

ST, Roth chooses to reveal this feeling of helplessness with a description of an emotional 

crisis through crying and tears: Sabbath breaks down and cries three times at this climactic 

moment, and while the first times he seems to make the reader believe he could be putting 

on an act, the last time his tears are definitely genuine, and he confesses he cannot stop 

himself (147, 149). ST features more tears, in the description of his wife Roseanna’s wail 

of desperation: “This sound accompanied Sabbath […]” and no matter how loud he 

played music, he could not “cancel it out”, for it was “a truly record-breaking wail” that 

made Sabbath decline sex later, because he was so haunted by this expression of pain 

(Roth 1995: 240).  

Sabbath’s vulnerability is shown when he breaks down, facing the prospect of loss 

and death, when Rosa is comforting him as if he were a baby (Roth 1995: 184). This 

description of human frailty can also be found in AP, in several striking descriptions that 

reveal Levov as a vulnerable person who finds out the myth on which his happiness is 

based crumbles down as it is no more than a mere illusion. Likewise, in DA there is a 

description of Kepesh as well as Consuela’s horror when confronting her illness, death 

and the loss of her beauty. All of the main characters in these novels go through traumatic 

experiences and a feeling of impotence when facing a harsh reality. And this is on their 

minds when they try to explain the way they live. Greenberg, too, sees Sabbath’s pain in 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

302 

 

relation to his transgressive nature: “A powerful undertow of emotional pain and a 

desperado philosophy with roots in the existential Absurd have built up in his life […]” 

as a consequence of the greatest losses and failures he has experienced (Greenberg 1997: 

503, ellipsis mine). This sense of an increasing passion actually grows throughout the 

novel as the reader follows Sabbath’s steps. Paradoxically, though, it seems like he may 

try to move away from his transgressive lifestyle as he gets closer to death (by visiting 

the cemetery where his dead relatives are buried). Roth explained that “to meet the dead, 

to be reunited with them, is never far from Sabbath’s mind. The closer he gets to the dead 

-to his dead -the stronger the geyser of tormented feeling and the further he moves from 

the wild and antagonistic performance that is his life. The book is a savage journey with 

the dead into his own raw wound” (Roth 2014: 58-59). 

Sabbath’s wound is revealed by means of the narrative, the strong imagery and 

his powerful words. He is trying to discover the nature of his wound too, and he needs to 

think about death and be close to the dead in order to do so. He needs to speak to them, 

to question them as well as himself. The reader consequently travels this same distance 

with him in a wild journey. Many questions are raised as it is hard to understand some 

aspects, not only the reason for transgressive behavior, but also the reason for unexpected 

feelings of happiness, relief or even joy in Sabbath. The circumstances are not typical for 

such feelings, so where do they come from? Roth has remarked that he is aware of the 

irony in the narrative: “there is Sabbath’s great grief about the death of others and a great 

gaiety about his own. There is leaping with delight, there is also leaping with despair” 

(Roth 2014: 59). As discussed earlier, in Chapter II when looking at the use of irony, this 

constant switch of tones or perspectives gradually creates a double view of the complex 

reality of life, and death in this case. (For a detailed analysis of irony in Roth’s works, see 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

303 

 

Safer’s 2006 book-length study).  But there is also a description of joy in the sense of 

peace, of Sabbath really finding something he is looking for, as we will see. 

 

 

III.1.4. “A Symphonic Portrayal of Human Frailty and Filth” 

 

Ihab Hassan defines the figure of the new hero in American fiction as flawed but 

also endowed with a desire that affirms life: “flawed in his sainthood and grotesque in his 

criminality, he finally appears as an expression of man's quenchless desire to affirm, 

despite the voids and vicissitudes of our age, the human sense of life!” (Hassan 1961: 6). 

He calls this quality “radical innocence”, radical because it is “extreme, impulsive, 

anarchic, troubled with vision [...] It is the innocence of a Self that refuses to accept the 

immitigable rule of reality, including death, an aboriginal Self the radical imperatives of 

whose freedom cannot be stifled” (6). Roth’s Sabbath fits perfectly into this description. 

It is certainly puzzling to consider how Roth’s most outrageous character, 

Sabbath, finds joy in the midst of life and of death too, and this is the effect that the novel 

has had on many readers. The novelist Elisa Albert has also expressed this surprising 

experience describing ST as “a symphonic portrayal of human frailty and filth […] the 

writing had blazed off the page, left me slack-jawed, riveted, amazed, appalled, in 

stitches. The things you could get away with in fiction! The grotesque and beautiful 

honesty you could get away with, if you could tell a decent story!” (Albert 2020: 8, ellipsis 

mine). Albert here summarizes the qualities that lend Roth its force in order to portray the 

experience of “frailty” and of “filth” together in a way that escapes moralistic judgement 

and literary rules, finding freedom in its unique form of expression.  



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

304 

 

At this point, the question is how the suffering from this frailty is connected with 

the filth encountered through the human stain, and also how it is interlinked with the 

opposite emotion of joy. Because, surprisingly, Sabbath seems to find joy even at the time 

when he should be crushed by despair. The description of weakness comes along with the 

ironic consolation that his life is really human precisely because of the pain that he 

experiences. When Sabbath tries to explain why he feels great, he says maybe it is his 

freedom (as he frees himself from his wife and refuses to be bound by society’s moral 

rules): and that is why he comes to the conclusion that he has lived “a real human life”: 

 

Or maybe it was knowing that he’d never had to please and wasn’t starting now. Yes, yes, 

yes, he felt uncontrollable tenderness for his own shit-filled life. And a laughable hunger 

for more. More defeat! More disappointment! More deceit! More loneliness! More 

arthritis! More missionaries! God willing, more cunt! More disastrous entanglement in 

everything. For a pure sense of being tumultuously alive, you can’t beat the nasty side of 

existence. (Roth 1995: 247) 

 

Consequently, the mess, the stain in his life, provides him with a renewed desire 

to keep living. At the pivotal chapter in which Sabbath seeks the graveyard where his 

family was buried, there are a series of revelations and the narrative becomes increasingly 

intense, carrying the play between humor and seriousness to the extreme. When he finds 

the grave he is looking for, he experiences a strong feeling of homecoming. He has found 

what he is looking for, and he feels a primary power: “He felt himself at last inside his 

life, like someone who, after a long illness, steps back into his shoes for the first time” 

(Roth 1995: 357). Does this suggest that Sabbath is cured from his stain, his illness? Does 

he truly feel he has a new life, that he is different now? Interestingly, it is here, at this 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

305 

 

point, when there is a reference to the possibility of the existence of a soul that may live 

in the character’s body: “walls of embitterment were crashing down; the surface of 

something long unexposed –Sabbath’s soul? The film of his soul? –was illuminated by 

happiness. As close as a substanceless substance can come to being physically caressed” 

(357). It is interesting that even when describing the soul Philip Roth uses the image of 

the physical body and a caress, therefore showing again the union between the physical 

reality we know and everything that is supposedly not material. Maybe at this moment he 

feels like he has finally come home, and found what he was looking for. There is no more 

need for a quest, nothing left to pursue. Where does this mysterious feeling of happiness 

come from? As we have seen, the stain he has experienced in life helps him to feel alive 

but he also wants to be liberated from it.  

The images of water prove to be a suitable setting for Sabbath’s grief. Roth uses 

his memories of holidays at the Jersey shore when he chooses Bradley Beach as the setting 

for the moving scene in which Sabbath mourns his brother’s death. It is a significant place 

because this is where Roth, in his teenage years, experienced a sharp sense of being alive 

and free in the Ocean. It is a place that encourages feeling and emotion for characters like 

Sabbath because it is sublime but also frightening. Water, however, cannot wash away 

Sabbath’s grief completely. When he goes to his friend’s funeral and he meets his old 

friend Norman, and he is overcome by pain, he goes to the bathroom: “Sabbath has 

washed his hands, face, and beard in the bathroom, and still, he realized, he unnerved 

Norman no less than if he had been a tramp […]” (Roth 1995: 140). Sabbath cannot wash 

away the marks of his imperfection which stand out against the “perfect” image of 

Norman’s house.  

 The grave is Sabbath’s home because it is the place where his body may find rest. 

But we soon learn his mind is still very much alive and so he is not ready for this rest; 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

306 

 

and yet he keeps thinking about it. It seems a never-ending conflict. The opening quote 

of the novel is from Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1611): “Every third thought shall be my 

grave.” Roth explains that this means that to Prospero, “the irksome law of cessation has 

come to permeate his brain” (Roth 2014: 58). Because Sabbath’s death is constantly on 

his mind, he knows it will be his end and seems to be willing to be playful as well as 

serious about it, but he is aware of the fact that what he really wants is to live.  

However, there is something that man cannot conquer, and that is death, and so in 

most of his novels, Roth treats the problem of his main character and the human 

predicament in this world in general as a process of humbling, by being defeated by the 

final enemy. The experience of being humbled was especially explored by Roth in his 

homonymous novel of 2009. The Humbling actually addresses this very issue. The role 

the stain plays in the encounter with the final enemy, death, will be analyzed in the last 

point of this Chapter, but first this study will consider how the stain is present in the 

representation of illness and the loss of the strength and beauty of the body. 

 

 

III.1.5. The Dark Shadow of the Past 

 

“The past is never dead; it’s not even past”, as William Faulkner wrote in Requiem 

for a Nun (1951). The ghosts from the past that live on in the present are explored 

throughout Roth’s work, and in some of his works it is the central theme, like in Exit, 

Ghost (2007). Chapter I presented the idea of how the ghost of sins of the past hovers 

over the present lives like a stain of darkness, and similarly now the past also becomes a 

dream that never abandons the characters. It can come in the form of a nostalgic vision of 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

307 

 

cherished memories, but always with a painful edge, because the past is lost forever. This 

is a reality that is acutely experienced by Roth’s characters, as they remember the days of 

splendor in their childhood, days of happiness in which they knew no pain; but also, as 

they recall everything that they did end up losing eventually. That is why, for example, 

in ST, the shadow of Sabbath’s past walks with him and never leaves him, constantly 

reminding him of all those he has lost. He converses with his mother’s ghost, and the 

trauma of the losses of Nikki and of his brother Morty is constantly present in his mind.  

The ghost of Sabbath’s mother is also marked by the human stain of filth, as can 

be seen in this description where she is compared with debris that keeps coming back: 

“All he could talk about with his mother, who was gliding about inside the car, drifting 

and plunging like debris in the tide” (Roth 1995: 105). Therefore, the reality of the 

disappearance and death of beloved ones and the emotional loss it entails is experienced 

as traumatic, and it is anything but concealed. Similarly, in AP, The Swede and Dawn 

suffer when their child Merry disappears, just like Coleman laments the loss of his 

mother, whom he rejected, and likewise Faunia has to live with the trauma of having lost 

her children, in HS. The anxiety that plagues many of Roth’s characters results in an 

increase of the fear of the disappearance of more people. This can be found in DA, as 

Kepesh reflects upon his frailty and Consuela faces her illness and death.  

Anton Chekhov’s theater play The Cherry Orchard (1904) is an important literary 

reference in ST, and it is key to understand the subject of suffering in the novel. And 

Sabbath speaks of one of the characters, explaining that even though she flees from 

disorder she carries it within her, very much like the human stain: “Yet she carries the 

disorder within her -she is the disorder! But I was the disorder. I am disorder” (Roth 1995: 

203). Likewise, Chekhov’s humor turns bitter as it addresses how “time flies” for the 

characters, who reminisce about their youth. They have a great nostalgia about the orchard 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

308 

 

that lends the play its title. This place is like Bradley Beach in Roth’s ST, or like the 

Garden of Eden, and this property which will be lost in Chekhov’s play. It will disappear 

unlike the characters’ memories of the past, for they are also haunted by the past, like 

Sabbath: “If I could cast off the burden that weighs on my heart, if I could forget the 

past!” (20). Charlotta is a character who also experiences what Roth’s characters have to 

learn in these novels, especially in HS, as seen earlier: “I know nothing at all” (29). In 

The Cherry Orchard the past must be discarded in favor of the new life, as in AP, when 

the Swede builds his house in Old Rimrock. And it is similar to Sabbath’s feelings of 

despair when Lyubov cries “Oh my Orchard! My life, my youth, my happiness, 

goodbye!” (77).  

As well, the past is put on the spotlight by Roth when one is nearing death, in a 

painful way: The feeling that life is over, but at the same time not over yet, is what plagues 

Kepesh. Sabbath too, deals with a similar feeling. This is how Kepesh experiences it in 

DA: “To those not yet old, being old means you’ve been.  But being old also means that 

despite, in addition to, and in excess of your beenness, you still are. Your beenness is very 

much alive. You still are, and one is as haunted by the still-being and its fullness as by 

the having-already-been, by the pastness” (Roth 2001: 36). In this case, the past becomes 

a burden too. It seems like Roth’s characters try to look back to the past for answers, but 

the past, beautiful and painful at the same time, only has the effect of illuminating the 

stain in their lives.  

• • • 

To sum up, there are several images of the human stain that represent pain in 

Roth’s fiction and paradoxically their meaning lies in the erasure of the mark of the stain 

itself. There is a consensus among Roth scholars that Roth’s descriptions of graveyards 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

309 

 

are the setting for his exploration of the confrontation of the self with mortality, as 

Shostak (2004; 2014) and Aarons (2007) argue. However, there are not many studies 

about how the reality of pain is represented in Roth’s work and how it relates to the themes 

of purity and impurity. But Pozorski (2004; 2019) has focused on the subject of suffering 

in some of Roth’s novels, such as DA and Nemesis, so I have followed her close reading 

of some key passages and used her concept of Roth’s focus on the vulnerability of 

individuals in the face of trauma in order to tackle the issue of pain in these four novels 

in a broader way.  

Starting with the references to the biblical figure of Job, Roth’s characters tend to 

embody the reality of pain. Sabbath, Drenka and Roseanna go through painful 

experiences in ST; the Swede, Dawn and Merry also experience great suffering in AP; 

Coleman, Faunia and Les Farley each hurt in their own way; and finally in DA, Consuela 

and Kepesh ache because of their particular situations. Overall, I have found that the 

attempt to erase the stain is the way in which characters respond to their pain. For 

example, in “Epstein”, Goldie expresses her pain at her husband’s adultery by asking if 

his rash can be removed. Pain is made visible physically through the characters’ emotions, 

for example, through the characters’ tears, such as Sabbath’s. These tears, just like water, 

wash his face and point at the rite of purification. The pain caused by visualizing images 

of physical violence, such as the rape in the Swede’s imagination in AP, also causes an 

erasure of the physical details of the scene. In HS, Coleman’s tattoo represents the erasure 

of his real identity as an African American. 

There are also attempts to erase or remove the mark of the stain on the body, as 

can be seen in Dawn’s face-lift and in the image of cleaning with water in the bathing in 

ST. Unlike Neelakantan argues (2017), I believe that as the novel as a whole does not 

reflect a faith in the effectiveness of therapy, these images fail to offer real redemption. 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

310 

 

Rather, they point at the opposite reality, as the stain pervades the images of water and 

rain with the muddy representation of impurity and filth. These failed attempts to seek 

purity do portray the characters’ search for a remedy for their psychological and physical 

pain, but there is no final relief in sight. Finally, there are also more invisible images of 

the stain, whose presence hovers over the narrative, such as the ghosts of the past, like 

Sabbath’s mother who is like debris that floats with the tide, constantly returning and 

reflecting the pain of loss. 

 

 

III.2. THE STAIN IN ILLNESS 

 

As mentioned in Chapter II, America is compared to a patient who suffers from 

an illness and Roth is like the cardiologist who examines its state. But as Victoria Aarons 

claims, Roth’s characters and his readers also are the patients, characterized by their 

limitations and mistakes (Aarons 2019: 30). But which is the illness that ails these 

patients? Roth’s work is intent on exploring the nature, origin, meaning and mere reality 

of illness in the human experience.  

The presence of illness in Roth’s work is treated especially in Portnoy’s 

Complaint, which is completely dedicated to Portnoy’s peculiar illness or disorder, as it 

states at the beginning, where Roth humorously defines this imaginary complaint: “A 

disorder in which strongly-felt ethical and altruistic impulses are perpetually warring with 

extreme sexual longings, often of a perverse nature” (Roth 1969: i). As Alex’s doctor 

Spielvogel explains, the patient’s various sexual acts (a consequence of his “morality”) 

derive in shame and dread of retribution instead of issuing in gratification.  



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

311 

 

Debra Shostak has written in depth about how the decay of the body caused by 

illness is related to desire and subjectivity, and she focuses on the loss of selfhood 

experienced by Roth’s protagonists (2004). In addition, she has explored this issue further 

in her 2014 essay included in a special issue about Roth’s fiction edited by Victoria 

Aarons and Gustavo Sánchez Canales. In this essay she reflects on how both portrays the 

ambivalence of being caught between those who have left and the sweetness of life, that 

is, the choice between leaving and staying Shostak 2014: 7-9). Similarly, Victoria Aarons 

sees the depiction of the nearness of death in Roth’s work as the most important fear to 

the characters of Roth’s late fiction, as it means the loss of one’s own life (2006). In the 

same line, Aristi Trendel looks at the sense of mortality present in DA (2007). Sánchez 

Canales, too, has written about how the biological clock is reversed because of illness in 

DA (2014) and also about the meaning of sickness in the Bible (2021). Both Roth’s 

narrativization of illness and the issue of how illness affects women in particular in his 

work have been analyzed by Miriam Jaffe Foger (2012; 2014; 2020). Aimee Pozorski is 

also interested in this issue, as is evident in her studies of cancer as the predator in DA 

(2015) and in her previous book about Roth and Trauma (2011).  

In this section, I intend to show how the human stain represents illness and how 

its meaning is revealed differently in each of the four novels that this dissertation focuses 

on. After asking whether it is possible to conceal this stain of illness, I will look at how 

there is also a search for a remedy in the very stain that causes the fatal disease. 

 

 

 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

312 

 

III.2.1. The Metaphor of Sickness in the Bible 

 

In the first section of this Chapter, when looking at the experience of pain, we 

have found out how Roth has used the image of the symptom of an illness throughout his 

work and I would like to propose how the human stain throws light on its meaning. As 

explained in Chapter I, the image of the human stain draws from the texts in the Old 

Testament that describe physical stains on the body as signifying moral impurity. Sánchez 

Canales pointed out, as seen earlier, that these images are used by Roth as early as in 

Portnoy’s Complaint to explore questions of Jewish identity and rebellion but not with 

an anti-Semite meaning (2021: 245).  

Firstly, the blemish of wickedness stands for everything that is opposed to the 

Lord’s purity and perfect justice: “They have corrupted themselves; They are not his 

children, because of their blemish: a perverse and crooked generation” (Deuteronomy 32: 

5). The next step is to look at how the stain can be analyzed in Roth’s fiction when it is 

represented as an illness, as it appeared in the Law referring to the rituals of the cleansing 

of leprosy. Here, lepers suffer from an illness that has to be diagnosed because of its 

symptoms, the marks on the skin, but the biblical text points at what happens underneath 

the skin. If the spots of leprosy go “deeper than the skin”, the sick person is deemed 

“unclean” (Leviticus 13: 38). The law does not only dictate how to tell what the symptoms 

mean, but also that the ones who are found unclean must be isolated and if their spots 

disappear and they are healed, how they should be cleaned in a ritual of purification, and 

also how in the temple there should be a sin and a trespass offering of blood “to make 

atonement for him who is to be cleaned of his uncleanness” (Leviticus 14:14). 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

313 

 

 Just as the leprosy sores once covered the whole body of the sick person, in this 

ritual of symbolic cleansing that happens after the actual physical healing, the priest is to 

put blood and oil from the offering on different parts of the body of him who is to be 

cleansed (14). This text illuminates the Jewish concept of sin as covering the whole of 

human experience, making all aspects of human life sinful, just as no part of the body 

remains untouched or clean because of leprosy, making the whole person contaminated. 

Because sin, just like leprosy, sets the unclean apart from what is clean, showing that 

everything is sinful, not just one part of the body, and after it is cleaned miraculously, and 

that there should be an offering of blood and trespass speaks of the moral significance of 

this illness.  

While in Roth’s fiction there are no biblical lepers nor atonement sacrifices, there 

are rebellious characters who are condemned for their transgressions and there are also 

scapegoats, such as in ST and HS. In the light of recent reactions to Roth’s fiction, it is 

worthwhile reconsidering the relationship between sexuality and illness in the 

representation of the body through the human stain. Following this line of thought, I 

would like to propose a new reading of DA focusing on the representation of illness 

through the literary device of the human stain. While Roth’s representation of the body 

has been considered highly obscene and upsetting, it can be argued that Roth’s fiction can 

actually foster empathy, not only for men but also for women, which is why Miriam Jaffe-

Fogger not only sees humanity in novels such as DA, but also argues strongly against the 

misinterpretation of Roth’s representation of women as misogynist (Jaffe-Fogger in 

Aarons & Sánchez Canales 2014). There is a temptation to see a novel like DA as an 

obscene, pornographic story, where women are portrayed in a demeaning way. 

 Likewise, the novel that brought Roth to the heights of fame back in 1969, 

Portnoy’s Complaint, became an international phenomenon as critics and reviewers 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

314 

 

debated whether this was literature or if it was pornography, too offensive to be taken 

seriously. I believe a focus on the stain can solve some of these problematic issues. Of 

course, in Roth playfulness and seriousness are always interlinked and questioned. 

However, readings such as Jaffe-Fogger’s (2012; 2014; 2020) and Aimee Pozorski’s 

(2004, 2015), as well as Peter Mathews’ (2007) offer a new interpretation of DA. In 

addition, recently, younger authors such as Elisa Albert (2009; 2015) have written about 

the experience of illness and pain, influenced by Roth’s style and subject (Jaffe-Fogger 

& Pozorski 2017: 14). 

As studied in the previous section of this Chapter, the experience of loss is 

represented with images of the human stain in these novels. As Alan Cooper has stated, 

for the characters there is no comfort in sight: “Roth’s characters do not rest in loss of the 

world or feel redeemed at having wrested from that loss some single personal fulfillment. 

More than any other response to their own experience is the loss itself: seeing some 

illusion shattered without having it replaced by anything comforting” (Cooper 1996: 6). 

Roth’s brutal realism and this lack of peace as a symptom of the stain has already been 

discussed in Chapter I, when describing the consequences of the physical blemish which 

is the image of the stain. In the face of death, this unrest seems to be at its most unbearable. 

As Sabbath cannot find rest in the loss of the world, he can only feel his loss more strongly 

and the narrative makes the reader aware of how poignant that loss is.  

The overwhelming nature of loss and the ensuing lack of personal fulfillment 

when somebody is under such circumstances can mostly be observed in DA, when 

Kepesh misses Consuela, and also when she faces the prospect of the loss of her breast, 

her own life and her future. And finally, the loss of one’s own life, not only of that of 

others, is the most painful. Victoria Aarons wrote this about Everyman (2006) but it can 

be extrapolated to other narratives by Roth: “The body’s decay becomes a metonymy for 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

315 

 

failures of character and its subsequent losses, specifically the failure of the protagonist 

to come to terms with his mortality, to recognize that he is no match for death” (Aarons 

2007: 117). In Roth’s novels, life is particularly painful because there is an awareness of 

the enormity of all the physical and psychological limitations and the characters’ 

helplessness. The latter makes its appearance especially with old age, which is when the 

characters are frail even when they think their lives are still in their control, when they 

think they are in no need for help. As seen above, the belief in an unlimited human 

willpower leads to tragedy in Roth. “the delusion of self-determination -always a mistake 

for Roth’s characters” (119). Just like there is no way to overcome impurity, people 

cannot overcome death. The stain which once signified impurity now has come to 

describe the darkness of illness, death and pain. This theme is also explored in Shostak’s 

essay about the issue of the competition with death as represented in Roth’s most 

significant graveyard scenes, as mentioned earlier (2014).  

 

 

III.2.2. The Invisible Cancer 

 

The trace of the human stain is like a cancer that is the hidden reality under the 

surface. In AP, the Swede hides the fact that he has cancer from Nathan when he meets 

him. Cancer is one of the images of the stain as represented in ST, in HS and in DA too. 

But in AP, the stain that is Merry herself is connected with the cancer suffered by her 

father. Jerry refers to Merry as a monster, and when she dies, Jerry links this fact to the 

Swede’s cancer and to his death. At one point, Zuckerman believes that the trouble in the 

Swede’s life must have stemmed from the experience of illness, his “belated discovery of 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

316 

 

what it means to be not healthy but sick, to be not strong but weak; what it means to not 

look great -what physical shame is, what humiliation is, what the gruesome is, what 

extinction is, what it is like to ask ‘Why?’” (Roth 1997: 29). In other words, his discovery 

of the stain is directly linked to his experience of illness. He who once had an impressively 

strong body is now aware of his frailty, Zuckerman imagines. But he is wrong, as it is not 

the reality of the Swede’s own death that has “burst into the dream of his life”, it is 

something else. This is why illness is represented by the stain, because there is a moral, 

spiritual meaning of the stain. The question asked by Job (“Why?”) is not because of 

illness and death only, it is because he feels he has received an unfair punishment and his 

view of life is shattered, broken into pieces and he has to try to understand life in a new 

way. The text keeps suggesting different stains in the narrative and the reader must 

discover and decide which ones are the real stain. In fact, the Swede’s brother suggests 

that his stubborn love for his daughter is actually like an illness, something rotten inside 

of him which eventually caused his death (Roth 1997: 72). So, is love, unconditional, 

irrational love, the real human stain, rather than hatred and violence?  

To Jerry, the absence of violence and rage is a symptom of sickness, it is lethal. 

However, in Zuckerman’s narration the Swede does experience anger and loses control, 

and yet, even this rage does not save him from being destroyed. Jerry believes hatred is 

strengthening, but this is not the case for the Swede. Jerry sees his brother’s life in terms 

of conflict: his wife was against him, and his daughter was against him. To Jerry, the 

Swede was driven by responsibility towards his loved ones and they paid him back with 

violence and abuse. Eventually, however, Jerry asks the same questions that Zuckerman 

does: How did the catastrophe happen? What was the cause? He thinks the cause of the 

Swede’s feeling of displacement is that he was not able to “bury” what had happened, 

and it became his “poison” (Roth 1997: 74). This poison of generous love would be the 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

317 

 

stain, according to Jerry. Consequently, the Swede’s “horror”, the stain, has to be kept 

submerged like an iceberg, but it “comes back distilled” in spite of his efforts (82). It 

comes back just at the time when he is dying of cancer, “back worse than ever”, and the 

horror is his daughter, “the first child who was the cancellation of everything” (82). She 

looms over his life like a shadow, putting his physical, mental and spiritual health in 

danger. If the stain of his poisoned love is like an iceberg, it will be the cause of his 

shipwreck.  

Similarly, in DA, Kepesh’s love for Consuela becomes a dangerous iceberg, as 

hidden under the sea are his deep desires of possession and the jealousy that come with 

his love. Against his expectations, he will be wrecked against this rock. Miriam Jaffe-

Foger has written about Roth’s representation of illness and the empathy fostered by the 

narrative in DA: “To avoid falling into the chasm between body and mind, Roth creates 

fictional selves and characters that reflect off of each other to create a shared language” 

(Jaffe 2020: 4). This reading offers a new way of looking at illness in Roth, focusing on 

the meaning of body language as a signifier of the human response to pain (Jaffe 2012; 

2014 are strongly recommended in case the reader is interested in an in-depth analysis of 

this issue). That is why the characterization of Kepesh and Consuela creates the 

possibility of telling different stories. Jaffe comments on the scene in DA where Consuela 

asked her lover to take pictures of her body, which could be interpreted as objectification: 

 

The objectification is not, in this case, meant to be totally or only sexual; there is 

something beyond that limit, a deeper connection, the kind of attachment that Kepesh 

fears most: the duty of love and, by extension, care, in his act of witness. Kepesh is 

surprisingly adept at being a witness, a listener, when it comes to managing Consuela’s 

emotional response to physical decline, [...]. (Jaffe 2020: 5, ellipsis mine) 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

318 

 

 

And when Kepesh kisses Consuela’s head, her body is shown to be her whole self, 

not a mere sexual object, but a person, as Jaffe sees: “the head is an all-encompassing 

thing, both mind and body. The line continues, ‘There it was. All the horror of it in that 

head. Consuela’s head. I kissed it and kissed it. What else was there for me to do?’ (Roth 

2001: 155). In this moment where there are no words, only these kisses and kisses fill in 

where no words can be found” (Jaffe 2020: 7). Unlike Jaffe, I do not think these kisses 

signify an acceptance of illness; rather, these kisses are an expression of love and a 

manifestation of rebellion against the illness. Although it is true that Kepesh seems to 

absorb the shock when he hears the news of her illness, when he realizes that she is no 

longer the person he always knew but somebody who is about to die, who is actually 

dying and leaving him and life, then he is devastated. So, in my view, eventually Kepesh 

finds it impossible to grasp the facts of the illness, which is why when Consuela says that 

the illness puts everything in perspective, Kepesh thinks the opposite: “No, nothing puts 

anything in perspective” (Roth 2001: 129). The fact that Kepesh asks Consuela why he 

cannot touch the tumor when he holds her breasts also represents the force of the invisible 

human stain that is there, present nevertheless.  

 

 

III.2.3. The Invisible Dying 

 

Foreshadowing death, the representation of aging in Roth is marked by an 

observation of the darkness of the decay of the body. As addressed in Chapter I, 

“Epstein”, the story that Roth wrote when he was in his twenties, is a sympathetic 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

319 

 

portrayal of a man who is frustrated with the direction his life has taken and he seeks 

freedom and fulfilment by having an affair. He is marked by aging as he sees how young 

people still enjoy life and he envies them. This type of character with its mixture of 

comedy and tragedy is something Roth takes up again and uses as the center of ST. As 

ST was written many years later, it carries the weight of experience and loss in the writer’s 

own life, as well as his childhood memories and his vision of American history, sharpened 

by his move back to America (Roth Pierpont 2013: 203-204). But most importantly, the 

image of the human stain makes an appearance again, just like the rash in “Epstein”, in 

order to show the evidence of aging in the character’s own skin. Sabbath is sixty-four, he 

has a white beard and he suffers osteoarthritis in both hands, which is mentioned many 

times throughout the novel to highlight how his hands are marked by pain and his fingers 

are crooked (Roth 1995: 171).  

In Roth’s fiction, as seen in “Epstein”, suffering is enhanced by old age and 

illness: “What do you do if you’re sixty-two and the urge to take whatever is still takable 

couldn’t be stronger?” (Roth 2001: 33-34). The process of aging haunts Kepesh, for 

whom impotence means insignificance. He mourns himself and the decay of his body. To 

return to an idea which is at the core of Roth’s fiction, as seen in Chapter II, where this 

issue has been analyzed in order to understand transgression in Eros. In DA, Thanatos 

(death) is fought with the help of Eros (erotic and romantic love), but the fact is that going 

out with a young girl only makes Kepesh feel worse: “Far from feeling youthful, you feel 

the poignancy of her limitless future as opposed to your own limited one, you feel even 

more than you ordinarily do the poignancy of every last grace that’s been lost” (Roth 

2001: 34). Everything will eventually disappear.  

Consuela’s beauty will disappear too, even though he does not suspect it, how 

could he expect such a thing to happen? But Roth’s characters learn that everyone is 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

320 

 

mortal. As nobody wants to face old age before they must, the human stain becomes the 

sign that announces the inevitable. Especially young people do not want to face their own 

illness, loss of beauty and death when it is before their time. Yet this is what happens to 

Consuela, as she is forced to consider her death. To Kepesh, “Observing one’s decay all 

the while [...] one has, by virtue of one’s continuing vitality, considerable distance from 

one’s decay” (Roth 2001: 35, ellipsis mine). But he will not be able to escape its reality 

when he sees it in the person he loves. 

Aging is the invisible reality that is made visible by the human stain. Kepesh calls 

aging “Invisible dying” because one does not really realize how everyday one is closer to 

death. And yet, he does realize some aspects of his physical decay and he cares about 

what others may think. Ironically, it turns out that it is precisely due to his trying to avoid 

being the object of ridicule because of his old age that he fails to show up at Consuela’s 

party, and so disappoints her and brings about the end of their relationship. It is a pathetic 

ending to their relationship and it is because of the awareness of his old age. However, in 

an unexpected turn of events, it is the sight of the human stain in the form of the cancer 

in Consuela’s breast what makes death more palpable. 

This image that brings together the object of desire and the nearness of death 

points again at the issue considered in Chapter II, the question of transgression and 

rebellion. As it is obvious that just like Sabbath, Kepesh is old but that does not mean that 

he has no sexual desires: “nothing is put to rest, however old a man may be” (Roth 2001: 

37). There is no satisfaction to be found in life in this perspective; instead, it is always 

restlessness which plagues humans till the very end, as seen above when considering 

Sabbath’s plight. And, as always in Roth’s fiction, everything comes in abundance, death 

and suffering are not an exception. For instance, his friend’s George’s death proves to be 

another significant loss to Kepesh. The painstaking, agonizingly realistic description of 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

321 

 

the decay and death of this secondary character is so striking because of the narration of 

the physical details. His body is crumbling to pieces and the rest are just witnessing it 

caving in. And, most surprisingly, even though this man is dying, he can still feel a strong 

desire, and he can kiss his friend, hold his wife and his children. The human stain makes 

an appearance in this scene, which can be interpreted as obscene, funny or offensive in 

its portrayal of a blind sexual drive at the very gates of death, or as a tender moment. In 

a surprising description of this man’s last actions, the narrator shows how, weak though 

he is, George tries to undress his wife, in one last move of the dying animal of desire.  

 

 

III.2.4. The Carnal Edifice Caves In 

 

At the beginning of ST, there is perhaps the most memorable scene in which there 

is a connection between desire and death. This happens when Drenka reveals that she is 

dying of cancer, which is narrated in a way that is both shocking and very moving. When 

she announces this bad news, it hits both her and her lover Mickey very strongly. It is a 

scene rich with meaning especially when bearing in mind that she had been asking of him 

to be faithful, and that he refuses to do it, even though it was not even necessary because 

his other affairs were just a lie. The effect of this conflict is dramatic, pathetic and also 

humorous. As Drenka embraces her lover, the helicopter is flying over them, and he thinks 

it is his mother’s ghost. It is a surreal situation, with the extraordinary element of the 

supernatural making an appearance in the midst of reality. The reader gets insight into the 

complex play of logic and the roles that Sabbath plays, while at the same time seeing 

evidence of his and his lover’s feelings. 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

322 

 

Drenka’s cry for help (“Oh, my God”) can be compared to Consuela’s words in 

DA, when she looks for support in Kepesh, her former lover, and how she articulates her 

disbelief at the premature arrival of death: Drenka cries “I can’t believe it! I don’t! I can 

die!” (Roth 1995: 32). It is just like when Consuela says: “This is my body! It can’t go 

away! This can’t be real! This can’t be happening! How can it go away? I don’t want to 

die!” (Roth 2001: 150). Sánchez Canales wrote about the influence of Thomas Mann's 

Death in Venice and W.B. Yeats’s poem “Sailing to Byzantium” on this novel (2014). 

Both these literary works emphasize the feeling of growing old as the character and the 

poetic persona look at young people (Sánchez Canales 2014: 7). Likewise, the scenes 

describing the wound of life and the implacability of time in DA echo a cry of unbelief 

and pain that is increased because, in Sánchez Canales’ words, “the biological clock is 

reversed” as the young and beautiful will die and sees her beauty suddenly wane before 

her time, while the older man watches on (2014: 8). 

Furthermore, in my view, for Kepesh and Consuela it is not only that the 

biological clock is reversed, it seems like the whole of life and its promises are reversed 

in the face of illness. In the History of Literature, the theme of illness is connected with 

the representation of a deeper sense of human alienation and with existentialism. Texts 

such as Kafka’s Metamorphosis (1915) and Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground 

(1864) indicate the condition of self-degradation and protest that is shared by these 

characters who appear as victims in literature. Individuals are judged and found guilty, 

according to Ihab Hassan, because man in general is “victim of an unappeasable power” 

(1961: 25). In the view of Thomas Mann, according to Hassan, “disease and even death 

become an ultimate response to life” (26). This is an idea which informs Death in Venice, 

but in Roth’s DA, illness and death become an opportunity to value life and actually find 

true life. Hassan also raises the question of freedom and fatality, and “acting only in 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

323 

 

despite of that fatality” (29). Likewise, Consuela and Kepesh face that fatality in their 

lives and they have to act despite it.  

Hassan also writes about the importance of Albert Camus’ emphasis on rebellion 

in the face of fatality and illness (30-31). This topic is discussed in Camus’ The Plague 

(1947), a novel in which the characters face the destruction caused by an epidemic and 

try to fight against the spread of the illness. As mentioned earlier in this Chapter, Roth 

also wrote about an epidemic in his last novel Nemesis (2010), which is about the polio 

outbreak that took place in New Jersey in 1944. As we are currently experiencing with 

the global Covid-19 pandemic, the fear of how the virus may spread, the safety measures 

and social distancing can be understood in terms of the stain of contagion. In Roth’s 

Nemesis, although the main characters escapes from the city to the mountains in order to 

find a natural paradise, there is a bleak reminder that the virus may travel invisibly to the 

places where people feel the safest, with terrible consequences. In consequence, in this 

novel there is an even stronger emphasis on force of the unexpected and an outcry at the 

cruelty and injustice of a God who would allow this illness and death. 

Just as the references of Thomas Mann and W.B. Yeats offer context to interpret 

DA as shown by Sánchez Canales, Geoffrey Bakewell (2004) and Patrick D. Rankine 

(2010) are two scholars who address similar literary and classical references in HS. The 

weight of classical tragedy is overbearing in ST too, unsurprisingly. One of the reasons 

why the opening scene in ST achieves such a dramatic effect is because of the reference 

to classical tragedy, as it deals with the inability of man to fight against his doomed 

destiny. That is why Drenka clings to Mickey, whose knees buckle not only because of 

her full weight, but also because he feels as weak as she does. They are both impotent as 

they face death and he immediately thinks about all the beloved people he has already 

lost to death: “Mother, he thought, this can’t be so. First Morty, then you, then Nikki, now 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

324 

 

Drenka. There’s nothing on earth that keeps its promise” (Roth 1995: 32). The lesson is 

that everyone whom you love will leave eventually, everything is a letdown, and all good 

things come to an end. This is the main source of disappointment for Roth’s characters: 

Nothing good lasts, that is the truth that keeps hitting Sabbath, and how can one come to 

terms with that? 

 

‘Oh, I wanted, oh,’ cried Drenka as the helicopter’s energy roared above them, a dynamic 

force to magnify the monstrous loneliness, a wall of noise tumbling down on them, their 

whole carnal edifice caving in. ‘I wanted you to say it without knowing, I wanted you to 

do it on your own,’ and here she wailed the wail that authenticates the final act of a 

classical tragedy. ‘I can die! If they can’t stop it, darling, I will be dead in a year!’ 

  Mercifully she was dead in six months, killed by a pulmonary embolus before 

there was time for the cancer, which had spread omnivorously from her ovaries 

throughout her system, to torture Drenka beyond even the tough capacity of her own 

ruthless strength. (Roth 1995: 33) 

 

The human stain of cancer is endowed with a personality, an evil and playful will 

of its own, by Roth: Sabbath describes how appalled he is by the “sardonic and satiric 

cancer turning to carrion the female body.” The hellish cancer that has spread through 

Drenka’s whole body is stronger than her own strength, and it has the power to make her 

suffer terribly. In Roth’s fiction, doctors are almost always unable to help much in 

fighting against illness, this is the case in Patrimony, DA and ST. The same happens with 

Merry’s stammering in AP, and I believe there is a reason for this, connected to the 

meaning of the human stain. Just as with Epstein’s rash, which has to be cleaned and 

cured, these characters struggle to find a way to heal their illness but medicine has no 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

325 

 

cure for this physical and figurative stain, which frustrates them, as they are unable to 

restore their bodies or to explain their ailments. 

Eventually, everything is falling apart for the characters from the very beginning 

of ST, because Sabbath and Drenka’s “carnal edifice” is the union of their bodies, and the 

life they built, their paradise, and it all caves in. Cancer appears as an aggressive form of 

the human stain, a dark devilish force that ends life. As Pozorski notes, “Here, cancer is 

personified as having agency over the lives of its victims: the embolus emerged before 

the cancer “spread omnivorously,” and before it could “torture” her -two associations 

with a vulture or other predator” (2015: 111). The human stain becomes an enemy, the 

animal that will end human life, leading to the final enemy, as Roth used to say when he 

referred to death. 

The trauma of loss appears as an overwhelming force in these novels, as it is clear 

from the examples above that there is an abundance of loss and suffering, and it is 

depicted to its extreme in ST. Even though Sabbath speaks with a touch of bitter irony 

when he refers to Nikki’s sudden disappearance, by his words one can notice the pain he 

still feels because of it. Sabbath ought to have been warned by Nikki’s “pervasive sense 

of crisis” but he is still traumatized by his failure to understand her unexpected 

disappearance: “until a day came when the crisis of being herself simply swept Nikki 

away” (Roth 1995: 21). Nikki’s loss is communicated differently than Roseanna’s 

situation (who is as good as absent after her traumas, depression, breakdown, alcoholism, 

and the way she clings to Alcoholics Anonymous), which Sabbath describes so coldly 

and with such sarcasm that there is almost no warmth left for her, neither in his words nor 

in his gestures, but from his complaint it is evident that he harbors a lot of anger and is 

aware of the sad circumstances of his wife.  



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

326 

 

Sabbath seems incapable to do anything to change the situation, just as he could 

not remedy the loss of Nikki in the past. Sabbath knows that people are not puppets he 

can control, because they have a life of their own, they can disappear, as he states: “no 

one had to worry that a puppet would disappear, as Nikki had, right off the face of the 

earth” (21). During Sabbath’s relationship with Nikki he did try to control her but 

eventually she exited his stage, leaving him. Drenka is also taken away from him by death, 

illustrating the difference between a lifeless object and a human being, and the fact that 

the people Sabbath loves are not mere puppets entails the possibility of losing them. 

In the same way, Sabbath’s brother was taken from life and from him. The 

memory of the “endlessness” of boyhood is described in detail in a beautiful passage, as 

the two brothers had a wealth of months of the year that never seemed to stop during their 

boyhood. However, endlessness ended. The happy memories from the past in which 

Sabbath enjoyed his brother’s company cannot be lived again, and this is a constant source 

of sadness. Sabbath speaks hypothetically, wondering whether he would have turned out 

to be a different person if that tragedy had not happened, (“If Monty had come home 

alive, if the endlessness had ended naturally”) but his conclusion is that it would not have 

made any difference: “Take your pick. Get betrayed by the fantasy of endlessness or by 

the fact of finitude.” (Roth 1995: 31). Sabbath’s painful perception of life’s short span 

echoes what the Bible describes in the Old Testament like a “dream, like grass that is 

renewed in the morning: in the morning it flourishes and is renewed; in the evening it 

fades and withers” (Psalm 90:5-6). Similarly, in the New Testament human life is 

described as a “vapor” or a “mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes” (James 

4:34). 

 To Sabbath, the outcome of the betrayal that breaks him would certainly have 

been a disillusion, because death is the traitor that turns people’s weight into mere grass 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

327 

 

or a vapor. And Sabbath has no other option but to beg for more life, more transgressive 

sex, as he only wants to be bound by his unstoppable desire and to keep saying offensive 

things to please himself. He feels betrayed and he could not have become somebody 

different, because in either case he would have been betrayed anyway, so this experience 

shapes Sabbath’s transgressive behavior in life. Paradoxically, what Drenka is asking of 

him in this scene at the Grotto is for him to be different, to betray his nature, as he puts it, 

by being faithful to her, and the reason, as she is about to reveal, is precisely because she 

is going to die. This time, the betrayal of death will bring about an appeal and an attempt 

of a reversal in his behavior.  

Posnock has written that “grief is deemed to be experience saturated with 

meaning, a crucible that forges strength, wisdom, maturity. In sum, grief is assumed to 

be a supreme teacher” (2006: 191). However, Sabbath shows how one learns nothing 

from grief, instead. This is why, as seen in the previous section, instead of being loaden 

with meaning, pain is paradoxically represented as the erasure of the mark of the stain. 

That is why Emerson said ‘I grieve that grief can teach me nothing, nor carry me one step 

into real nature’ (473, qtd. in Posnock 2006:191).  

 

Instead of providing anchorage, grief reveals the quicksand of nonmeaning normally 

hidden by the merciful quotidian routines of the midworld. […] We project these 

meanings into experience, as if desperate to populate the vacancy of its stark, casual 

indifferency. […] Grieving Sabbath at the shore discovers nothing but how ‘immoderate’ 

is grief; ‘staring into the sea and up at the sky and seeing nothing and everything and 

nothing.’ He reaches no sharp peaks and edges of epiphanic illumination. (Posnock 2006: 

191, ellipsis mine).  

 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

328 

 

Just as Sabbath reaches no illumination, the human stain permeates the experience 

of life darkly, under the shadow of death.  

 

 

III.2.5. The Fear and the Trauma 

 

The fear of dying puts the human being in chains like no other fear does. It 

imprisons people and makes slaves of them. Not only do human beings experience the 

fear of death; they also suffer from the shame of being human, and consequently of 

bearing the human stain. This shame is precisely what Roth’s characters have to deal with, 

especially in ST. However, Sabbath seems shameless, searching into his stain and his 

humanity and not hesitating to show it to the world. It is the fear of death what he has to 

fight the most. This is connected with the fact that the obsession with death is a typically 

Jewish theme. In Job 3:25, the biblical character who embodies suffering, Job, cries out: 

«What I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened to me». 

That is why it is important to consider how Roth portrays human beings as they 

become vulnerable and weak. In DA, illness is represented as the center of trauma: “And 

I was thinking, She is dying before my eyes, she too is now dying” (Roth 2001: 128). The 

fact that Consuela can be touched by cancer and die indicates that this story is not about 

a deity, it is about a human being, who is flawed and mortal. Her body is a “dying animal” 

too. She not only loses her beauty (literally losing the breasts that made her so desirable), 

but also her identity becomes marked by her illness and her life is threatened and cut short 

by death. The female breast appeared earlier in Roth’s fiction, and it is significant, as 

Shostak argues, because “The Breast foregrounds the body as both a site of signification 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

329 

 

and a signifier in its own right” (Shostak 1999: 322). The breast was already chosen in 

The Breast as especially meaningful because it has “a tradition as the object of looking, 

burdened with the complex of meanings associated with the feminine as a maternal and 

sexual being” (Shostak 1999: 323).  

In DA, however, it becomes obvious that sex is not only unable to stave off death; 

it is ruined by illness and the prospect of death. For a further exploration of the themes of 

illness, desire and death in this novel in particular, see Mark Shechner’s Up Society’s Ass, 

Copper (2003: 197-206), and Elaine Safer’ Mocking the Age (2006: 133-46). In this 

analysis, I will focus on the images of the stain and how these represent illness.  

As Aimee Pozorski states in her book Roth and Trauma, “Roth interrogates in this 

novel the connection between sex and death” (Pozorski 2011: 105). She argues that 

Kepesh has to come to terms with the fact that in spite of all his knowledge, “his body, 

too, will some day fail him” (105). In my view, this interrogation consists in questioning 

the idea that sex really is a revenge on death. The characters may delight and take comfort 

and strength from sex, but eventually death rules over life, for it takes away every single 

lover. 

 This is an idea which can also be found in ST, as Drenka is described similarly 

as a beautiful, almost divine, mighty Venus-like figure, but she shocks her lover Sabbath 

revealing the fact that she has got cancer, therefore losing her vitality and strength and 

eventually she dies. Sex loses when confronted to death, the ultimate and cruel ruler. For 

example, in ST there is a description of how Michelle suffers from the hot flashes of 

menopause and there is a vivid description of how death will leap on Michelle, mocking 

her desire. Just as happened with Drenka, as she is aging, there is a repetition of the word 

“sick” as Michelle is “sick of everything” (Roth 1995: 306-307). Her husband, Linc, us 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

330 

 

“marked” by reasonableness […] the way others are scarred by insanity or illness” (306, 

ellipsis mine). The scar of the stain can be present both in illness and in what is socially 

accepted as health. Finally, what is represented most dramatically is the scar of aging, as 

the text depicts dusk as descending on Michelle and sexual pleasure racing away at a 

tremendous speed: “Death on top of us […], over us, ruling us” (307, ellipsis mine). 

Bodily decay, to sum up, mocks desire although Sabbath still fools around with Michelle, 

trying to touch her, still reaching for satisfaction in spite of everything. 

In contrast, witnessing the approach of Consuela’s death is a traumatic experience 

for Kepesh and he cannot help but to relate it to the recent death of his friend and to his 

own mortality. The account is moving and appalling because it spares no painful physical 

and emotional details, and it is also compassionate because at least Kepesh tries to keep 

Consuela company and offer her some comfort in her hour of need. 

 

I said ‘Are you afraid right now?’ And she said, ‘Very. Very much afraid. I’m all right 

for two minutes, I’m thinking of something else, and then the bottom falls out of my 

stomach and I can’t believe what’s happening. It’s a roller coaster, and it doesn’t stop. It 

can’t stop unless the cancer stops. (Roth 2001: 129)  

 

Cancer will very likely lead to death and there is very little possibility to get rid 

of it, so there is reason to fear it. There is no consolation, no hopeful frame of mind, and 

no reason that enlightens life in the face of this threat: “No, nothing puts anything in 

perspective” (Roth 2001: 129). This is similar to Sabbath’s acceptance of the 

“meaningless mess” of life, in which the memory of the death of the people he loved, 

their loss and their suffering does not really give a new explanation to life. (See Roth 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

331 

 

1995: 90-91, for example, in which Sabbath explains how there is no pattern, just chaos.) 

The only request Consuela has for her former lover is about her body: “And she said ‘I 

even want more of you. Because I know you love my breasts.’ I said, ‘What do you want?’ 

‘I want you to feel my cancer” (Roth 2001: 130). She wants him to take pictures of her 

breasts before they are ruined in order to take the cancer out, and she had gone to him 

because he had really loved her body and seen her at her most glorious. He is not aroused 

anymore. He feels the cancer, analyzing it coldly but also with tenderness. “I couldn’t 

have slept with her, and yet I kept thinking about it. Because they’re so beautiful, her 

breasts. [...] It was so mean, so degrading, these breasts, her breasts -I just thought, They 

can’t be destroyed!” (135, ellipsis mine). 

That is Kepesh’s first reaction, to ask whether this must happen precisely to this 

woman, who has got such gorgeous breasts. He is infuriated because cancer will destroy 

her most precious trait. Shostak believes it is meaningful because “The breast is the object 

of comfort and nourishment, the promise of endlessness, the signifier of wholeness, and 

its withdrawal –by the mother, by erotic failure, by aging –is merely the proof that the 

subject, too, will disappear” (2004: 65). Trendel states that “the breast caught between 

Eros and Thanatos is the heart of the question of pedagogy” (2007: 5). If we compare 

Kepesh’s mourning over Consuela’s body to Sabbath’s over Drenka’s, in ST there is also 

a strong sense of rage because the character loses what gave him such pleasure, what he 

considered most valuable, and this loss of what gave his life meaning is his greatest grief. 

Here the body becomes the means by which the aesthetic, the visual becomes 

inextricably linked to love, affection, the invisible and the spiritual. “After you, I never 

had a boyfriend or a lover who loved my body as much as you loved it” (Roth 2001: 130). 

Debra Shostak notes how “this is an important shift, because Consuela, diagnosed with 

breast cancer, no longer has the luxury of defining her subjectivity as distinct from her 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

332 

 

body” because she “redefines David’s objectification of her body as love, collapsing 

George’s opposition of the aesthetic and the sentimental” (Shostak 2004: 63). Shostak 

speaks of this as an important contribution to the idea of the “embodiment of selfhood”: 

“When I want to be loved ‘for myself’, is it politically necessary to exclude from that 

desire a need to be loved ‘for my body’? Does David’s love for Consuela’s body preclude 

a love of her ‘self’, or is it the entrance to and sign of that love?” (63). This is illuminating 

because it shows how the judgement of those who consider carnal passion, sexual desire, 

something impure, can be turned around if it is seen as a trigger or a symptom, something 

inseparable from a “pure love” for the whole person.  

As Shostak says about the issues of subjectivity and the value and recognition of 

the self in DA: “[d]ecay and death make these questions urgent,” and Consuela wishes to 

retain evidence of the self that is threatened with mutilation and death, a self that she 

experiences as inseparable from her body. […] Consuela adopts the position of the sexual 

object in order to install and record her own subjectivity, to enable her body to become 

‘self-aware by way of the other’ before some of that selfhood is lost to cancer treatment” 

(2004: 63-4, ellipsis mine). Consuela’s expression of horror at the dissociation she will 

feel from her body highlights how linked the body is to her identity: “Because this is my 

body and that won’t be my body. That won’t be anything” (Roth 2001: 132). Pain and 

illness bring about an awareness of how the human being is joined to his or her body. In 

AL, Zuckerman comments on the invisibility of the nearness of death: “It stays unseen, 

out of sight, and you come to it. Illness is a message from the grave. Greetings: You and 

your body are one.” (Roth 1983: 660). In the end, selfhood is inextricable from the body. 

Finally, in Roth the fear of death describes the utter loneliness and the panic of the 

individual who is confronted with the end of life: “How did I feel? The greatest pain I felt 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

333 

 

that night was over her being alone and panicking in her bed. Panicking about death” 

(Roth 2001: 138).  

 

 

III.2.6. The Stain that Ruins Desire 

 

In Countertexts, Counterlives, Debra Shostak explains how aging and sickness 

prevents Roth’s characters from fulfilling their desires, and this is especially visible in 

ST: “If Sabbath’s theater is his body, however, then time must inevitably ravage his 

capacity to perform the self, and it is for this reason that Roth’s novel is as obsessed with 

death as it is with the erotic” (Shostak 2004: 51). In consequence, little signs become 

looming markers of Sabbath’s inability to perform. For example, Shostak sees that 

Kathy’s “failure of manipulation is figured metaphorically as well as in the crippling, 

disfiguring arthritis that has caused Sabbath to suffer chronic pain and to renounce his 

vocation as puppeteer” and she comes to the conclusion that “for Sabbath death means 

impotence and viceversa” (Shostak 2004: 51). In dying there will be nothing more to 

desire, then. It is important to note the pivoting point between the novels of ST and DA 

when it comes to this subject. As Shostak has noted, in these novels Roth “once again 

explores the way the subject teeters between ‘fucking’ and ‘dying’” (Shostak 2004: 59). 

In her essay titled “Roth’s Graveyards, Narrative Desire, and ‘Professional 

Competition with Death’”, Shostak develops this idea further by arguing that in the 

“primal scene” of the graveyard, Roth confronts the reality of death in various ways 

through his narrative strategies (2014: 2). Shostak lists different ways of confronting 

death in these scenes, analyzing different novels. One possibility is to express erotic 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

334 

 

desire; another one is to talk to the dead; and yet another one is to gaze upon death refusing 

any comfort about its meaning (2). Shostak also points out that the characters are unable 

to control the narrative of their own life when faced with “the inescapable materiality of 

loss” (3). However, in my view, the materiality of loss is not only hinted at by means of 

the description of a box or the grave, but it is done mostly by means of the human stain. 

This can be seen in scenes such as Sabbath holding the dirt in his crooked fingers at the 

graveyard in ST, which has been mentioned earlier in this Chapter. When looking closely 

at this scene, the reader will notice that Sabbath looks at various marks of the human stain 

in his body and in his memories of the dead. Here, he reflects on attachments that are 

stronger than the erotic ones.  

Even at the beginning of the scene, when Sabbath looks for the cemetery but all 

he finds is a place where people dump garbage, we find the first signs of the stain in the 

description of broken household remains. The narration is ironically aware of the search 

for meaning in this picture: “Mist and drizzling rain to ensure the picture’s permanent 

place in the North American wing of his memory’s museum of earthly blight” (Roth 1995: 

353). The “earthly blight” that spoils and damages everything, the human stain, is present 

in this picture, but Sabbath jokes, complaining about the effect of the rain (which 

paradoxically signals destruction instead of renewal, as the other descriptions of water in 

the book): “The rain bestowed more meaning than was necessary. That was realism for 

you. More meaning than was necessary was in the nature of things” (353). The wet ground 

and the mud soil the characters’ boots (360), added to the description of his memory of 

cleaning the fish with his brother (365), and finally, his own hands in the mud, bring him 

to a confrontation with the fact that he can gain no wisdom when reflecting upon death, 

only a yearning for more life.  



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

335 

 

While in DA, Kepesh’s own body is marked by the signs of old age, there is also 

an emphasis on marks that seem to mar women’s beauty. Here, another image of the 

abject stain and its devastating effect on the body and the subject appears in the narrative: 

Kepesh tells the record of the women he encountered who bore marks of some kind, in 

order to explain why he doubts he would be able to sleep with Consuela and the cancer 

in her breast. “In all my years, I’ve never slept with a woman who has been mutilated in 

this manner” (Roth 2001: 138). He was unable to do so once, and he tells the story: “I 

once slept with a woman who had a dark brownish wine stain -between her breasts and 

partly over her breasts, a huge birthmark” (139). Here, the stain is like the outward form 

of a cancer, significantly covering the breasts, the objects of beauty and desire. Though 

Kepesh tried to hide it, he was shocked by the stain: 

 

And I started overdoing things. Kissing the birthmark. Touching it. Playing with it. Being 

polite. Making her feel happy with it. Saying I loved it. Such things aren’t easy to take in 

stride. But you’re supposed to be able to take charge, to act unhysterically, to deal with 

such things with grace. Not to recoil from anything that a body must abide. That wine 

stain. It was tragic for her. Six foot five. Men drawn to her, as I was, by this amazing 

height. And with every man, the same story: ‘There’s something wrong with me.’ (Roth 

2001: 140)  

 

Although Kepesh tries to be graceful about the stain, he cannot brush it away. It 

taints beauty and there is no solution, no way around it. Kepesh cannot have sex with 

Consuela and makes a reference to the image of the stain which is so central in the novel: 

“not even I who licked the blood from her”, implying that having sex with her while 

knowing that she has cancer would have been even more impure than to lick her 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

336 

 

menstruation blood. As Shostak explains, Kepesh recognizes revulsion as he anticipates 

the dead body and this ruins his desire, which, in addition to his inability to perform sex, 

leads to the conclusion that “to be a subject is to be placed irreversibly in abjection” 

(2004: 64). This is the beginning of the disappointment that Kepesh experiences as he 

sees his coping mechanisms failing and he is forced to know the pain of real loss, as 

Stephanie Cherolis has written in her essay on the role of the “pornography of 

destruction” in DA (Cherolis 2006: 146). In my view this change is most powerfully 

conveyed by the means of images of the stain, in the form of two paintings of nudes. 

It is at this point, when there is no hope for comfort in sex when facing illness and 

death and bearing in mind the human stain that cannot be cured, that Roth includes a 

description of Stanley Spencer’s painting, a double nude portrait: Aged bodies that have 

lost their appeal, next to two pieces of raw meat. In contrast to the second painting, 

Modigliani’s nude, which signifies beauty at its prime, this is a contrasting image, a 

description of an entirely different painting that is marked by the human stain.  

 

Every time I think about Consuela, I envision that raw leg of lamb shaped like a primitive 

club beside the blatantly exhibited bodies of this husband and wife. Its being there, so 

close to their mattress, becomes less and less incongruous the longer you look. There’s 

melancholy resignation in the somewhat stunned expression of the wife, and there is that 

butchered hunk of meat having nothing in common with a living lamb, and, for three 

weeks now, ever since Consuela’s visit, I can get neither image out of my mind. (Roth 

2001: 143-144)  

 

The body, when it ages or becomes ill, is as different from its beauty when it was 

young and strong, as a living lamb and a piece of dead meat. It is horrifying and shocking, 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

337 

 

because this is not only what Kepesh remembers Consuela by, he also appears in the 

picture. As Trendel sees, “the ‘bull’s meat,’ so appetizing at the beginning of the novel, 

has become repulsive” (2007: 6). It seems out of place in the world of the living, the 

opposite of life, as if it does not belong in this world. 

In DA, illness is portrayed with a very particular setting that makes the nearness 

of death relevant at a global scale. As Kepesh and Consuela are watching the millennial 

New Year’s Eve celebration, the somber irony at this scene highlights the fact that there 

is nothing to celebrate for these characters who are facing death, the end of everything, 

while people celebrate that the end of the world has not come. “Maybe that’s what 

everyone was celebrating -that it hadn’t come, never came, that the disaster of the end 

will now never arrive.” This provides for a stark contrast, as instead of destruction there 

will be prosperity in the world:  

 

No bombs go off, no blood is shed -the next bang you hear will be the boom of prosperity 

and the explosion of markets. The slightest lucidity about the misery made ordinary by 

our era sedated by the grandiose stimulation of the grandest illusion. Watching this hyped-

up production of staged pandemonium, I have a sense of the monied world eagerly 

entering the prosperous dark ages. (Roth 2001: 145)  

 

Any enlightened grasping of misery is thus stifled by an illusion that stimulates 

and sedates society at the same time. This blindness affects everybody, but Kepesh and 

Consuela’s blind has fallen off their eyes because of the shaking reality of death. This 

makes them aware of misery and so they see this celebration as a terrible state of illusion 

which prevents people from looking at the grim truth straight in the eye. As Aimee 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

338 

 

Pozorski states in her study about Roth’s Late Novels, this passage emphasizes a 

“counterintuitive longing for Armageddon” and it serves as an illustration of the human 

desire for events in life “to be significant in some way, only to turn out woefully 

inadequate in the end” (Pozorski 2011: 103). The mark of the passage of time that 

precedes the end of our lives is an image of the human stain, described as “the swim” 

where people sink in and finally drown in, because it is impossible to escape from it. 

 

[...] why should anyone care, about something that gives us a sense that we’re 

understanding something that we’re not understanding? The passage of time. We’re in 

the swim, sinking in time, until finally we drown and go. This nonevent made into a great 

event while Consuela is here suffering the biggest event in her life. The Big Ending, 

though no one knows what, if anything, is ending and certainly no one knows what is 

beginning. (Roth 2011: 147-148, ellipsis mine) 

 

Death changes everything, for it does not seem natural at all to Roth’s characters 

when they know the “wound of age” in their own flesh (Roth 2011: 148).  

 

Getting old is unimaginable to anyone but the aging, but that is no longer so for Consuela.  

She no longer measures time like the young, marking backward to when you started. Time 

for the young is always made up of what is past, but for Consuela time is now how much 

future she has left, and she doesn’t believe there is any. Now she measures time counting 

forward, counting time by the closeness of death. The illusion has been broken, the 

metronomic illusion, the comforting thought that, tick tock, everything happens in its 

proper time. Her sense of time is now the same as mine, speeded up and more forlorn 

even than mine. She, in fact, has overtaken me. (Roth 2011: 148) 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

339 

 

 

The mark of illness acts as an antidote to yet another illusion, just as the stain 

worked to expose the false pastoral, as seen earlier. When Sabbath goes to his friend’s 

funeral in ST, he is also haunted by the memories of his first wife, Nikki. Going to New 

York and thinking about her is “the perennial time bomb” (Roth 1995: 159). Even though 

Sabbath claims he has murdered Nikki, the text reveals his thoughts and his questions 

about her mysterious death. He asks himself whether she used a razor to kill herself. Nikki 

is like a mark on his memory, and even though her body has disappeared she has left an 

“indelible” stain on him: “Nikki […] whose mark on him was indelible” (138). In this 

image of the human, embodied by Nikki, Roth portrays the importance of how her 

selfhood is linked to her body: “it was the body of his first wife that he could never stop 

thinking about, her body, alive” (139, emphasis in original). 

Because of what her illness has shown her about the false illusion of time, 

Consuela holds a deep knowledge now, Kepesh realizes: “But Consuela has not been 

lucky, and so beside me she sits, under the sentence of death [...]” and he listens to her 

because “[...] she began to speak about herself as she never had before, never had cause 

to before, as, perhaps, she’d not even known herself before” (Roth 2001: 149, ellipsis 

mine). Thus, the nearness of death seems to help one to figure out the reality of one’s life 

like never before, and see through the veil of mystery that usually hangs over the 

characters during their lives. And this is what Consuela reveals, what she finds in herself: 

“Terrible longing” for the lost homeland, the beloved family members left behind, who 

are missed so much. She experiences great sadness at the loss, so her loss is doubled, as 

the imminent loss of her life is linked to a feeling of fear and permanent exile, not 

belonging to the place where she lives, and so she feels lost. That is why Consuela thinks 

about what could have been and will never be, and about hanging out at the Malecón, in 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

340 

 

Cuba. “The road that might have been [...] Should have been” (152, ellipsis mine). She 

feels grief “for everything she feared she was about to leave” (153). According to 

Pozorski, trauma studies is an appropriate discipline to read this novel in order to show 

“the way that time becomes skewed for those living with cancer; as Roth’s fiction 

ultimately shows, the traumatic impact of the diagnosis is not simply related to the horror 

of the disease, but also to one’s alienated and alienating sense of the passage of time” 

(2011: 108-109). Indeed, in Roth’s fiction, the body reflects the fear of the mind. 

The longing that Consuela feels is a wish for her body not to disappear: “Terrible, 

terrible longing. But it’s for myself. It’s for my life. I feel myself, I feel my body with my 

hands, I think, This is my body! It can’t go away! This can’t be real! This can’t be 

happening! How can it go away? I don’t want to die! David, I’m afraid to die!” (Roth 

2001: 150). Other characters in Roth’s work also feel they would like to go back in time 

to a beautiful past where everything was fine and everlasting, like Sabbath. In ST, there 

is a detailed description of the life Sabbath enjoyed with Morty during the holidays and 

the sheer pleasure they had in life, and the water of the sea represents the vastness of this 

life (Roth 1995: 30-31). In Everyman (2006) too, Aarons notes how the main character 

“wants to return to an innocent, Edenic existence before the fall; he wants to retain that 

state of unawareness of death” (2007:121). This desire to return to Eden is at the center 

of AP, so that there is a connection between ST, Everyman and AP because the 

protagonists of these novels have a deep longing for the idea of “Eden”, which embodies 

a pristine (i.e., pure, that is utopian, non-existent) place. 

It is evident from the narrative in ST, for example, that such a state was not real, 

it was a lie, only a paradise on the surface, because the child is unaware and inexperienced 

and that is why he is happy. Nevertheless, that does not make the feeling of horror at the 

experience of pain and the nearness of death less real, and Roth treats these complex 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

341 

 

emotions with realism and sympathy in his stories by showing the frustration of failing to 

control time. This is made worse by the false hopes raised by the momentary fulfilment 

of desire. One could argue that this is a similar experience to the one Seymour feels when 

confronting impurity and violence in his daughter in AP, because he also thinks he can 

hold on to the happiness of the past but this does not comfort him in his present grief. 

Likewise, Coleman faces accusation and judgement by trying to lose himself in the 

relationship with Faunia. Sabbath, too, in ST, relies on sexual pleasure in order to alleviate 

his tough circumstances. While Patrick Hayes argues that pleasure is a principle in Roth’s 

fiction, influenced by a Nietzschean orientation, I have to disagree with him when he 

writes about the intuition that “grief can be a state of strength rather than vulnerability” 

(Hayes 2019: 64). Rather, in Roth’s writing grief breaks the characters’ strength. 

Faith in the return to a paradise in the past reveals the need for eternity, a paradise 

where there is no death nor pain, even though the characters reject the Jewish or Christian 

vision. Everyman’s main character laments: “death is so unjust… Once one has tasted 

life, death does not even seem natural. I had thought -secretly I was certain -that life goes 

on and on” (qtd. in Aarons 2007: 126). This is why Aarons argues that the character of 

Everyman actually has his own set of beliefs: “Smugly believing himself immune to the 

evasions of religion, the protagonist insists that the fulfilment of desire can replace the 

necessity to believe in something beyond oneself” (123). Aarons claims that this belief 

relies on the personal link with the past generations, but maybe this proves to be a meager 

hope when one compares it with the experience of Coleman, for example, who feels far 

away from the people he comes from, and with Seymour, who also feels alone in his 

predicament.  

Sabbath, too, can only recall some memories from his grandmother but when he 

visits his old cousin, who is the living link to the past, instead of being a comforting 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

342 

 

moment, it only throws light upon the miserable state of an aging, lonely person who has 

even lost his own memories. His cousin, named Fish, lives in a house that is filled with 

images of the human stain and the detailed description of this filth and Sabbath’s 

preoccupation with the lack of cleaning are very important in this passage. Even though 

Fish claims he does not feel any pain, his mind is not right and his memory is failing, so 

he is really unaware of the state he is in: “A lucky man you are, Fish, not to have pain” 

(Roth 1995: 388). Unable to get the answer he is looking for, Sabbath sees a mark of the 

stain in his cousin, who is struggling, a “blot”: “There is a big blot there, obscuring the 

answer” (388). Sabbath insists on the importance of cleanliness: “Who cleans for you?” 

and he is astonished by the amount of “the filth, the dirt” everywhere in the house. The 

furniture is broken, the floor is covered in debris and dust. However, Fish does not see it, 

he is blind to its reality and this is part of his illness. 

Sabbath is in a position where he sees the nearness of his cousin to death through 

the state of filth he is in, and in spite of his old age, it comes as a shock. The “knowledge 

that you are born to live and you die instead” that plagues the character in Everyman 

becomes the source of the deepest pain because the human being feels betrayed in its 

expectations from life (Roth qtd. in Aarons 2007: 123). Sabbath voiced his complaint at 

this false promise of life too in ST, just like Kepesh when he speaks about Consuela in 

DA: “The transition from thinking of someone in the way you’ve always thought of that 

person -as just as alive as you are-to whatever signifies to you, as her fuzzy hairlessness 

did to me, that the person is close to death, is dying, I experienced at that moment not 

only as a shock but as a betrayal” (Roth 2001: 154). 

Consuela wants Kepesh to tell her about “the beauty of her body” (Roth 2001: 

155). The breast will be removed because the cancer is too serious, and he is going to stay 

with her. He must go with her, he knows she needs him because she is in terror. He will 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

343 

 

run the risk of being finished. (156). But it is not certain what Kepesh will learn about 

death in the end: As Trendel explains, “the novel leaves this lesson suspended. Will 

Kepesh respond to Consuela’s call? Will he leap, in fear and trembling, into his calling? 

What sense will he make of mortality?” (2007: 6). In my view, the novel’s ending presents 

cancer again as a stain that will be removed from the body. The repetition of the words 

“her body” and “removed” places emphasis on the materiality of the fact that Consuela’s 

breast will probably be removed with surgery. Kepesh is fully aware now of her need for 

company and care, and he knows that once he goes to be with her, there will be no turning 

back.  

 

 

III.2.7. Lessons in Empathy  

 

Shostak has analyzed the embodied self in her book Countertexts, Counterlives, 

looking at how Roth in ST and DA “composes both paeans to and elegies for the dying 

male body, stressing that the experience of subjectivity is inextricable from materiality” 

(2004: 15). This description of the effect of the stain on the character who sees how his 

body gets old and sick and will eventually die, can be observed in ST, DA and also in HS. 

Pozorski acknowledges “the tumor as the ultimate symbol for death” in Exit Ghost, and 

highlights, as the majority of the scholars do, that death is an extremely important topic 

in Roth’s fiction (2011: 119). 

But in DA it is not only about the dying male body, but also about the dying female 

body, and therein lies the blow of the story. The shocking reality that the first to go will 

be the younger one, as it is Consuela, the healthy young girl who will fall very ill with 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

344 

 

cancer and faces the prospect of an early death. Thus, there seems to be an inversion: 

Kepesh, an old man who is the one who should die, is actually faced with the fact that the 

one who will die, unexpectedly, is Consuela, so young and beautiful. In “Confronting the 

‘C’ Word: Cancer and Death in Philip Roth’s fiction”, Aimee Pozorski addresses the issue 

of cancer in female characters in order to highlight an interpretation of Roth’s work as 

revealing a specific sensitivity towards this reality.  

 

An artistic understanding of women that is more ethical than objectifying, more humane 

than sexually predatory. Such a reading, I hope, not only defends Roth against the charge 

of misogyny, but also casts him in a fully ethical light: by shifting our focus from one ‘c-

word’ to another-from ‘cunt’, so often the focus in reading Roth’s fiction, to ‘cancer’ -we 

can see more about Roth’s approach to women and indeed, humanity, in general. 

(Pozorski 2015: 106) 

 

Pozorski has also argued how Roth’s work shows an “appreciation for parenthood 

and for the delicate figure of the child -one who is confronted with violence on almost 

every corner of the world stage while simultaneously brought to believe in the tenets of 

freedom and democracy” (Pozorski 2011: x). This is especially in reference to Merry and 

her parents in AP, and it can be compared to the vulnerable position of Consuela, who is 

confronted to the violence of cancer and the meaninglessness of life in her youth.  

The research on the representation of illness in female Roth characters was 

relatively new one decade ago, according to Pozorski: “Such recent dissertations as those 

written by Kristen M. Hetrick, Michael Rolland Sunga, and April Nicole Patrick reveal 

that the intersection of women and cancer is an emergent trend in literary scholarship” 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

345 

 

(2011: 109). This topic is still being studied, but I believe that taking into account the 

resource of the human stain sheds light on this topic. In addition, considering the claim 

that Roth’s work fosters empathy in its portrayal of sickness, it is necessary to look at 

how this is achieved. Pozorski argues that these scenes revolve about a moral dilemma: 

“In this fiction depicting women and cancer, Roth seems to take on the biggest ethical 

conundrum: How do I relate to someone other than me? In what ways does radical 

otherness entailed by living with or dying from a terminal disease test the boundaries of 

our relationship?” (Pozorski 2011: 121). By looking at key scenes in these novels, I intend 

to show how the stain makes such an approach possible. 

If we consider the representation of women and cancer, and, in addition, how the 

female body and the female sexual organs particularly are the ones which are precisely 

chosen in the narrative as the place where cancer grows, it is so for an important reason 

and with a strong effect. Precisely what gives pleasure is where destruction begins, and it 

has a striking, thought-provoking result. How is it possible that what made someone so 

powerful can make him or her so miserable? In ST, Drenka’s cancer starts in her ovaries, 

and in DA, Consuela suffers from cancer in her breast. I would even claim it is not that 

different from cancer in the brain, as in Patrimony (1991) in the account of Roth’s father’s 

illness, or in Amy Bellette’s brain in Exit Ghost (2007).  

Amy Bellette first appeared as a character in Roth’s novel The Ghost Writer 

(1979), and she is a mysterious character whom Zuckerman imagines as Anne Frank, 

alive and living incognito in the United States. In this instance, Roth explores a story of 

suffering and develops a character who invents another character in order to survive, and 

in turn this is revealed as a fiction made up in order to seduce Zuckerman. When she 

appears again, in Roth’s 2007 novel, she is older, sick and she tells her own Holocaust 

story. It is the same type of loss of life, the corruption of the body and of the parts of the 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

346 

 

body which are their identity. However, most importantly, as Aimee Pozorski explains in 

her book Roth and Trauma, what connects Consuela with Drenka from ST is that she is 

a woman who is “able to teach the otherwise unchanging, unchangeable protagonist a 

lesson through her illness and suffering” (Pozorski 2011: 108). I would like to add that 

this lesson is made possible in the narrative through the human stain. Only through the 

connecting web of images of the stain that revolve around the presence, illness and 

absence of their lovers do the protagonists change their mind or their way of thinking and 

feeling. This change of heart is possible in Sabbath when he sees that Drenka’s 

omnivorous cancer is too strong even for her: “The tumor pressing on the aorta, […]. 

Cancer too widespread for surgery” (Roth 1995: 416, ellipsis mine). The physical details 

he observes when visiting her in hospital are described vividly to show her fragility and 

how he needs to get used to this change in “Drenka’s flesh” (417).  

As they recall the wetness and the fluids that made her so alive and desirable, they 

regret the loss of “all of it”, meaning not only her body but also everything that she is as 

a person (424). The dryness that she suffers now, the loss of the fluids that represent her 

life, are the opposite of a very special moment they recall, when Sabbath pissed on Drenka 

and it was something forbidden but it made her feel no shame, instead of that, it was not 

only lustful but also a “feeling of giving”, an “innocent” act and a “rite of passage” (426-

429). This moment where the images of the stain abound, represents the union and the 

freedom these two characters have found and as they are drenched in their tears, they 

acknowledge how they gave their selves in their relationship. 

Similarly, in the case of Kepesh and Consuela in DA, when she is sick and comes 

to his house to ask him to take pictures of her naked body, he understands it was “as far 

as you could get from pornography” (Roth 2011: 140). To her this was a natural, intuitive 

idea, with no reason behind it; but it comes at a time that “the erotic power of Consuela’s 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

347 

 

body was over” (142). In the scene where they are both watching TV as she talks about 

her fear of dying, of leaving, there are also tears as in ST (52). Externalizing the fear “of 

her body”, she reveals a “second person” that was hidden inside her; and she does this in 

two ways: Firstly, by revealing her stories from the past, her hopes and regrets, and 

secondly, by showing him her head with its “fuzzy hairlessness” (154). Only then does 

Kepesh experience the change in how he perceives Consuela, because he knows she will 

die. 

In both ST and DA, the description of the sickness in women leads to an imminent 

sense of death that deeply affects the male characters especially because of the sexual 

connection they enjoyed with them. Pozorski also points at the idea of that connection 

between sex and illness: “As Roth seems to convey throughout his career, the unexpected 

reality of the body turning against itself is the other side of that experience: the body gives 

us pleasure; the body gives us pain. And the body gives us life as naturally as it takes it 

away” (2011: 108). I agree with everything but that last remark, because I believe that the 

nearness of death is described as traumatic and horrifying, anything but natural. It is a 

“betrayal”, “traumatic”, “all the horror of it” visible in the dying body in Kepesh’s words 

(Roth 2001: 155). Similarly, in ST, Drenka leaves this world suddenly, because of a blood 

clot and so life is brutally taken away. 

Even though Kepesh tries to comfort Consuela by listening to her and he also tries 

to come to terms with her illness by learning all the medical details of her cancer, there is 

an unknown factor that troubles him. As Pozorski states,  

 

In saying there’s ‘something about her case I’m failing to understand,’ Kepesh 

acknowledges a limit-point to his ability to help as well as the absolute fear that something 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

348 

 

will slip through the cracks and go unnoticed, unchecked, untreated. Beyond Kepesh’s 

ultimately reinforcing belief that if he catches everything, he can solve it, Roth also 

quietly signals the cancerous body’s resistance to being caught up in any general 

narrative. (Pozorski 2011: 115) 

 

At the end of the novel, according to Pozorski, “Kepesh is going out in search of 

death. What will ‘finish’ him is an encounter not with Consuela’s sexuality, but with her 

illness and mortality” (2011: 117). Ultimately, the human stain confronts him not only 

with his awareness of her as a person, but also with the reality of his own mortality. 

To sum up, the images of cancer in the body function in the novels to challenge 

the characters as they have to face the reality of death and its impact not only on the body 

but also on the mind. Pozorski remarks how “questions of the body, of its beauty, are 

inextricably bound up with conversations about cancer itself.” This is how Roth treats 

this experience, “the absolute terror of confronting cancer in another –in these cases, a 

woman his protagonist desperately loves –and, in so doing, confronting one’s own 

mortality as well. Kepesh’s story goes a step further still, showing us that this 

confrontation is, horrifically, a final betrayal of the one we loved, as we turn from her 

plight to our own” (2011: 121). The presence of the human stain is visible in the sick 

person but it reveals the invisible, hidden reality of the stain in the healthy person who 

sees that eventually he too will die. 

• • • 

After considering the biblical references for the human stain in the aspect of illness 

it is clear that just as the health of the body is used as the measure of purity and justice in 

the Old Testament (see Leviticus 21: 16-20), in Roth’s work, illness signals the 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

349 

 

problematic presence of impurity and injustice. The body’s decay, through illness or 

aging, figures in Roth’s fiction as a metonymy for failure to come to terms with mortality, 

as Aarons (2007) has argued. Cancer is the most important image of the human stain in 

this area because it is like a tumor that is hidden, but destroys the whole body eventually. 

According to Pozorski (2011), it is the ultimate symbol of death. By taking these readings 

of the significance of illness to all four of the novels, I look at how cancer is depicted in 

Drenka (ST), Consuela (DA) and other characters. In AP, the Swede also suffers from 

cancer but Merry’s stuttering is the most important image of the stain in this novel. I have 

explored the questions of the different meanings or concepts of illness, and looked at the 

various opinions about which are the real symptoms of the characters’ sickness.  

Paradoxically, the organs that are meant to give life, which signify endlessness 

(Drenka’s ovaries and Consuela’s breasts) are suffering from a cancer that will lead to 

death, highlighting the particular experience of women who suffer cancer, as studied by 

Pozorski (2011) and Jaffe-Foger (2012; 2014; 2020). While Jaffe-Foger interprets bodily 

language as an empathetic response in order to show love to the person who experiences 

suffering in the midst of an illness (2014), I disagree with her reading of these passages 

because I believe that the human stain has a stronger impact in that it reveals the disgust 

and the horror felt by those who confront the reality of illness. In the end, even though it 

seems that there is no final epiphany in Roth’s work and that pain does not teach the 

characters anything, the human stain’s presence does make some important changes in 

the narrative. It reveals the devastating reality of illness in the body and its effect as it 

renders people helpless and fragile. At the same time, it confronts the rest to their own 

mortality and it helps to reflect on the meaning of the whole life of the person and on the 

nature of their relationships. 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

350 

 

In conclusion, the reality of death comes back again and again as the “first and 

most important theme” as Saul Bellow wrote in Humboldt’s Gift (1975: 36), and this is 

because, as the German philosopher Heidegger said, living is getting ready to die. 

Concerning this subject, there is an interview of Bellow with Jane Howard included in 

Conversations with Saul Bellow (1994) edited by Gloria Cronin and Ben Siegel. Bellow 

shares his thoughts about death at the end of this interview, saying that “the real problem 

is the problem of death. If people don’t know how to come to terms with it, and souls 

have no preparation, then the only thing is to be externally young and in pursuit of 

pleasure, and further sexual and hedonistic horizons” (1994: 82-83). Roth definitely 

understood the pressing need to come to terms with death, as Bellow did, but he also saw 

it in relation to the urge to retain one’s youth and beauty and the desire and the pursuit of 

pleasure which stays with people even in the face of death. 

 

 

III.3. EROS AND THANATOS 

 

“There’s Nothing on Earth that Keeps Its Promise” 

 

Death is considered one of the most important themes in Jewish American 

Literature. But why? Nicole Krauss, a Jewish American author who has been much 

influenced by Roth’s writing, and has written about love and loss, the disappearance of 

people in novels such as The History of Love (2005), writes about the presence of death 

in her book Great House (2010). She explains that in Judaism, there is no assurance or 

knowledge of what will happen after death. Therefore, the Jew needs to get used to living 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

351 

 

with Death, get to terms with it. And as he has no answers, he is always thinking about it, 

living in its nearness, even building his home under its shadow, and never questioning it 

(Krauss 2010: 211). Roth’s fiction certainly presents people who live under its shadow.  

In his introduction to Great Jewish Short Stories, Saul Bellow outlines the 

recurrent themes in these Jewish stories. One of them is death, and he recalls what his 

father used to tell him: “So you see, when it comes to dying […], nobody is really ready” 

(Bellow 1963: 11). This topic, however, is characterized in Jewish literature, according 

to Bellow, by a peculiar narrative mode that uses two seemingly opposed tones. That is 

why when “laughter and trembling” are so mingled that it is not easy to determine the 

relations between the two, this is a characteristically Jewish trait in a story (12). This trait 

can definitely be found in Roth’s fiction, along with the idea that nobody is ready for 

death.  

In many of Roth’s novels, the story of the life of the characters is shown to be 

driven both by desire and by death, as the narrator of AP says: “Let’s speak further of 

death and of desire—understandably in the aging a Desperate desire—to forestall death, 

to resist it, to resort to whatever means are necessary to see death with anything, anything, 

anything but clarity” (Roth 1997: 47). This quality of desire holds the hope of resisting 

death. By examining the human stain in relation to death the question will be how 

effective this resistance really is.  

 Just as desire has been the main subject of Roth scholarship, death is the other 

topic that has to be written about if one is to understand Roth’s oeuvre. It has been present 

in his work from the very beginning until the last books. These two forces which I have 

partly analyzed before, Eros and Thanatos, motivate the action in stories like that of 

Everyman (2006), as Victoria Aarons has argued (2007). As mentioned above, Debra 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

352 

 

Shostak has written about the “competition with Death” that Roth’s characters engage in, 

looking at key graveyard scenes in various novels (2004; 2014). In Chapter II of this 

thesis, the power of desire is shown to give Roth’s characters comfort in their lives, 

especially when death is near, while it is ironically also a source for frustration. Death is 

always near, too close, actually, and it is often the starting point of Roth’s stories: “Thus 

the ‘end’ is an appropriate place for Roth to begin” as Aarons put it, referring to Everyman 

particularly (2007: 116). In DA, especially, it is important to consider the shadow of death 

that hovers over the characters. But it is not only in Roth’s late work that this subject is 

found. Death always comes as a surprise, like in Roth’s early work, with Epstein, whose 

life seems to be in danger at the end of the story when he suffers from a heart attack. Or 

later, in HS with Coleman and Faunia, whose lives end in a fatal accident. Death always 

arrives unexpectedly and it is a surprise to the reader just like it is to the character, for 

“what is given as certain is artfully taken away” in the narration, as Aarons says (2007: 

117).  

Roth tried to control the narrative of his own life and joked that he hoped death 

would arrive before his biography was published: “Biography gives a new dimension of 

terror to dying” (qtd. in Kellman, n.p.). Death was especially present in the author’s life 

when he wrote the four novels that this dissertation focuses on. Firstly, Roth began writing 

ST because he was looking for a plot to be buried in. He realized he had to take care of 

that because he was getting old and because Janet Hobhouse, his friend and former lover, 

had died of cancer, and he was in charge of burying her. This visit he made to the New 

Jersey cemetery where his parents are buried was the inspiration for the core of the novel 

of ST. The humor of the cemetery warden and the situation inspired him: “It began to 

dawn on me [...] that someone who’s looking for a grave to be buried in might be 

interesting -especially if he’s going to commit suicide” (Roth Pierpont 2013: 189-190, 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

353 

 

ellipsis mine). Later, Roth also visited his friend’s grave at night, seeking inspiration for 

his novel (197). These experiences helped him to create key scenes where the images of 

the human stain abound.  

Roth chose to speak about ST, out of all of his work, in his 80th anniversary 

speech. He joked that he should have titled the novel Death and the Art of Dying, for in 

it, breakdown, suicide, hatred, lust, disobedience and death are out of control (Roth 2014: 

58). In ST there is a quick turn from the power of life to the power of death, so there is a 

constant struggle or dance between both realities. Sabbath is immersed in the pain of 

figuring out the meaning of his life as he faces death. Kafka, who inspired Roth so much, 

wrote “the meaning of life is that it stops” (qtd. in Roth 2014: 58). From Sabbath to 

Kepesh there is a change in how Roth wrote about the nearness of death. Eventually, DA 

introduces the short form that Roth would use during his late work at the same time that 

it introduces the theme of the toll that age takes on the body. 

Among the Roth scholars, Debra Shostak has written extensively about the topic 

of death, analyzing the role of the grave in his work: “It may seem as if all Roth's roads 

lead to the grave” (Shostak in Sánchez Canales & Aarons 2014: 3). Shostak identifies 

several forms in which this concern is represented in the narrative: Firstly, a cyclical 

structure in which the character remembers the trauma of death and tells it. Secondly, the 

tone switches “between oppositions—such as love and hate, transcendence and 

materiality, tragedy and irony” (3). Thirdly, the awareness of the presence of his mother 

plagues Sabbath, and finally, there is a tension, a fight between Eros and Thanatos. 

Consequently, it is relevant to observe how Sabbath tries to make Drenka come back to 

life when he visits her grave. Additionally, as I see it, this structure works together with 

the images of the stain to illustrate the themes and work towards the events of the plot of 

the novels. 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

354 

 

In Patrimony (1991), the novella in which Roth faces the loss of his father, the 

main character also tries to engage with the dead as if they could still live. Shostak 

describes this as a realistic representation of the paradox human beings experience when 

facing death: “Mixing eros and thanatos with infantile wishes, highlights the lengths to 

which the human imagination may go in cloaking the fundamental reality of death. In the 

unmasked narrative voice of Patrimony, Roth makes such paradoxical gestures plain” (4). 

The fact that human imagination “cloaks” the reality of death is shown by the use of the 

human stain, which as seen earlier, has the power to unveil, that is to take the cloak off 

certain unavoidable realities that are difficult to confront. Death is the final reality that is 

unmasked by the human stain. In addition to those literary resources highlighted by the 

scholars, I would like to propose that it is the human stain which allows the narrative to 

lead the reader to the grave, figuratively speaking. In this section I will explore the images 

of death (Thanatos) and of desire (Eros) in the face of death.  

 

 

III.3.1. The Human Stain: The Mark on the Grave 

 

Death is represented in the physical body with a description of its materiality 

through the human stain in Roth’s writing. It can be found in the descriptions of the dead 

body, bodily fluids, urine, blood and semen. A combination of all of these images can be 

found in the graveyard scenes in ST, shockingly. Firstly, ST is haunted by death, and the 

images of death can be found not only in Sabbath, who wants to commit suicide; but also 

in his wife Roseanna, who is an alcoholic, suffers from depression and has a nervous 

breakdown. Secondly, the novel not only includes descriptions of Sabbath’s friend’s 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

355 

 

funeral and of Drenka’s death and the visits to her grave, but also descriptions of deaths 

from the past, such as Nikki’s mother and Sabbath’s brother.  

According to Shostak, in ST the narrative revolves around Eros and Thanatos and 

moves from past to present in a cycle because it enacts Freud’s idea of a repetition 

compulsion as described in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) as the psyche’s attempt 

to control loss (2004: 53). While Shostak sees Sabbath’s performance as a “masking 

device”, his desire as coming from “a central lack” (53), I think that even though he does 

put on a performance and despite his use of a mask, this does not hide, but rather shows 

the desperate thirst for life he has. In my view, the human stain makes this desire visible 

and it can be interpreted as a knowledge and an experience that Sabbath gains through 

this performance, although the gap that has to be filled (the loss of the people who have 

died) can never be filled, truly. It is true that death initiates action in ST’s narrative, as 

Shostak argues (53), and this origin in Morty’s death and in Nikki’s death, as well as in 

Drenka’s death, is what Sabbath has to live with and confront. The idea that the meaning 

of life is that it stops is most evident in a scene in which while he drives, Sabbath has a 

conversation with the ghost of his mother and the account of his life leads to an epiphany. 

He seems to realize he is on the road to perdition, to the end of life, as he’s driving, as if 

he were on his way to the gates of Death:  

 

The drive was interminable. Had he missed a turn or was this itself the next abode: a 

coffin that you endlessly steer through the placeless darkness, recounting and recounting 

the uncontrollable events that induced you to become someone unforeseen. And so fast! 

So quickly! Everything runs away, beginning with who you are, and at some indefinable 

point you come to half understand that the ruthless antagonist is yourself. (Roth 1995: 

111) 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

356 

 

 

 From this speech it cannot simply be understood that Sabbath is saying that loss 

and death have shaped his identity, but the impact of these realities on him certainly offers 

an explanation for the mess he is in. The inability to do anything to avoid the losses that 

are experienced so suddenly in life does not prevent Sabbath from considering how he 

has lost not only the presence of the people he loved, but also his own being, in a way. 

The person he used to be is not there any longer, he has changed, has ran away from 

himself too. He is his own “ruthless enemy” because he tends to be self-destructive, or 

rather, he discovers that it is mostly because of his own nature, actions and decisions that 

he has suffered so much. Sabbath finds out that the worst war is actually fought within 

himself. Facing these troubles, Sabbath exhibits an appetite for life that indulges in his 

illicit affair with Drenka. This is portrayed with a bitter irony and a dark humor by Roth.  

Granted, the transgression Sabbath indulges in is “for fun,” his obscene and 

indecent acts are his way to exercise his free will, for pleasure, but he only started doing 

this after his brother’s death. Roth Pierpont also points this out in her biography: If 

Sabbath is free of constraints, “it is because he has already lost so much [...] Sabbath can 

do whatever he wants, at whatever risk, because nothing more can be taken from him” 

(Roth Pierpont 2013: 192, ellipsis mine). Moreover, after Nikki’s disappearance (his 

former partner), his life took another turn and he began to live with the dead, as it were. 

Not only that, but also, as David Brauner writes, “If Sabbath’s libido is limitless, however, 

his body is all too painfully circumscribed by its mortality” (2007: 129). In every attempt 

to pursue his goals, he finds his attempt frustrated by the failings of his body or the 

nearness of death. This can be interpreted, as Howard Jacobson has done, as the result of 

the resources of comedy, in which “the phallus [functions] as [a] site of comic 

forgetfulness, irresponsibility, freedom, but for Sabbath in this passage and in the novel 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

357 

 

as a whole, phallic clowning does not banish, but rather evokes tormenting memories: of 

lost loved ones, of forsaken responsibilities, of the cost of taking liberties” (Jacobson 

1997 qtd. in Brauner 2007: 129). It is about that loss and death that the reader has to think 

in order to better understand the source of Sabbath’s transgression, and the reader is 

introduced to his traumatic memories by means of images of the human stain in the body. 

Sabbath’s profanity consists in invading the sacred space of the dead by 

communing with them. Narrated with grotesque details and switching between serious 

and comical speech at short intervals, the visits Sabbath pays to Drenka’s grave at night, 

in secret, are very important. Sabbath outs his grief throwing himself to the grave, having 

this imaginary sexual encounter with Drenka “sobbing as he could not sob at the funeral” 

(Roth 1995: 64). He is drawn to this place so he can pay his respects to his dead lover, 

whom he misses so much. Only the ghost of his mother is a witness to this, and it is her 

presence which makes him doubt whether he is going crazy: “These visitations had been 

going on too regularly to be a mental aberration […] Unless he was mentally aberrant and 

the unreality was going to worsen as life became even more unendurable. Without Drenka 

it was unendurable –he didn’t have a life, except at the cemetery” (Roth 1995: 51, ellipsis 

mine). As Roth Pierpont points out, this novel elevates “the familiar theme of sex as 

freedom into sex as a protest against the grave itself” (Roth Pierpont 2013: 193). Thus, 

Sabbath lives in communion with the dead, as he explains after the account of Nikki’s 

struggle to part with her mother’s body. 

The unexpected events following Drenka’s relationship with Sabbath are very 

significant when analyzing how grief is portrayed. Pozorski claims about ST that “the 

grief at the heart of the story is expressed for Drenka Balich, Sabbath’s married Croatian 

mistress in whom he has met his match” (2015: 109-110). To support this reading of the 

focus of the novel, Pozorski shows how “Significantly, Drenka’s early death haunts the 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

358 

 

entire text, much like Morty’s. In fact, Sabbath’s Theater can be read as a novel structured 

around grave scenes, with frequent visits to Drenka’s grave in particular punctuating the 

narrative” (111). It could be said that Drenka’s death (in addition to Morty’s and Nikki’s 

disappearance) haunts ST as much as the question of why Merry became a terrorist haunts 

AP, or as the secrets of Coleman’s past haunt HS. 

In addition, the representation of the experience of suffering derived from death 

is accompanied by a constant philosophical reflection on death. Sabbath has got his “death 

books” to read, and in one of them he reads about different attitudes towards death, one 

of them being the resignation to a collective fate, and the second one being the worry 

about one’s own death, and then there is the preoccupation with the death of the other 

person (Roth 1995: 88-89). Sabbath is a philosopher, in a way, especially if one 

understands philosophy as a meditation on death, as Socrates wrote in the Phaedo. In 

Sabbath’s own personal experience, he feels as if he himself died when his brother died, 

so his anxiety is mostly about the death of the people he loved which remind him of his 

own pending death. The identification with his brother is so strong, that when he writes 

his will, first he writes that year, 1944 instead of 1994, by mistake. He wants to be buried 

naked, “unclothed”, and surrounded by the things that belonged to his brother. The 

description of the pain that Sabbath suffers when he finds the objects that belonged to his 

brother shows the reality that grief breaks the human being as it reveals the emptiness of 

our being. The scene at the beach is truly moving, and it follows a detailed description of 

Sabbath going through his dead brother’s objects. Sabbath holds on to his dead brother’s 

things as his only valuable possession, and discovering them is a very emotional 

experience. It is very moving to read Morty’s letters and think about the loss the family 

suffered. Morty’s things seem to face Sabbath with a blankness, as they “transformed 

nothing, abated nothing, neither merged him with what was gone nor separated him from 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

359 

 

what was here” (423). The physical objects make no change, as there is no way of bringing 

the living closer to the dead, nor, on the other hand, can he leave this world, this life. 

Sabbath may be a reckless man, but he is wise in that he does not scorn death, he fears it 

and considers its reality constantly, aware of the limits and barriers between himself and 

the dead. 

This awareness of death is also present in Roth’s next novel, AP, although in a 

different way. In the novel’s opening, during the scene of the high school reunion, “the 

Angel of Time” is as present as the band. Driven by his desire to “forestall death”, 

Zuckerman tries to fight against the thought of impending Death by holding on to 

memories and seeking a Proust-like revelation unsuccessfully (Roth 1997: 47). It is ironic 

because the more Zuckerman tries to obscure death, the clearer it becomes, and so 

underneath bright memories of his youth, the shadow of a dark fate emerges. Furthermore, 

what initially could be comprehended by reason becomes meaningless and what was first 

chaotic is now clear: “Death had become perfectly understandable while everything 

unenigmatic [...] had become inexplicable” (53, ellipsis mine). This reversal permeates 

the novel and illustrates the narrator’s helplessness and the lack of clues to interpret 

reality. 

Memories from the past arise with irony as life leaves its mark on the characters’ 

bodies. As seen in Chapters I and II, the body is full with meaning in Roth’s texts, and 

characters realize with time that the spell they cast on each other, physical attraction, the 

interest in another person and his or her body is “as serious a thing as there is in life. The 

body, from which one cannot strip oneself however one tries, from which one is not to be 

freed this side of death” (Roth 1997: 79). In this scene, Zuckerman is thinking about “the 

Swede and the tyranny that his body held over him” (79). The Swede and his wife have 

both been endowed with strong, beautiful bodies, but they will not conform to what is 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

360 

 

expected of them. Ironically, as the narrator puts it, “The Swede wanted what he took to 

be a higher calling, and his bad luck was to have found one” (79). Being a hero carried a 

weight of responsibility that turned out to be heavier than he thought. The Swede, who is 

supposed to lead people away from the reality of death, from the war, as a savior who has 

to beat evil, brings into the world a seed of evil: A killer, bringing destruction to the 

indestructible. The human stain in the Swede’s story brings him to his death, as the 

narrator gives the story a dramatic tone, comparing the events to President John F. 

Kennedy’s assassination: “who could have imagined that his life would come apart in this 

horrible way?” (83). As Roth wrote in Patrimony, the account of his father’s illness and 

death, the attempt of the living to feel close to the dead can only end in disappointment: 

 

‘If there’s no one in the cemetery to observe you, you can do some pretty crazy things to 

make the dead seem something other than dead.’ He shrugs, ‘Oh, you can try talking to 

the dead if you feel that’ll help […] but it’s hard not to know […] that you might as well 

be conversing with the column of vertebrae hanging in the osteopath’s office’ […] Even 

if you succeed and get yourself worked up enough to feel their presence, you still walk 

away without them. What cemeteries prove […] is not that the dead are present but that 

they are gone. They are gone and, as yet, we aren’t. (Roth 1991: 21, ellipsis mine) 

 

 Sabbath learns that endlessness ends and yet, he does not want to leave the 

graveyard. The pain that comes from realizing that the dead cannot be recovered, that 

they are really gone, is represented fully in this novel, in an unpleasant way, because Roth 

seeks to have his characters live real human lives, which means real suffering, without 

anaesthetizing their feelings or thoughts. The human being struggles with death because 

it does not seem natural that life can just stop like that. This idea can be compared to the 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

361 

 

thoughts of the character in Everyman: “Death does not even seem natural. I had 

thought—secretly I was certain—that life goes on and on” (Roth 2006: 169). Sabbath 

suffers from anxiety as he has to face the reality of loss, and as Posnock points out, his 

speech is always referring to the past: “Even the most sustained present-tense swatch of 

narrative […] is rife with holes that expose the ever present past” (Posnock 173, ellipsis 

mine). This quality is also present, although in a less evident way, in AP and HS. But in 

these novels, it is different because the past does not reveal the wound caused by death. 

In order to represent how death is perceived as unnatural, in ST Roth shows the 

thoughts and actions of the character of Nikki through Sabbath’s eyes. To her, it is 

impossible to part with the dead body of her mother. “It’s unbearable. It’s dreadful,’ Nikki 

said. ‘I’m going to stay with her. I’ll sleep here. I don’t want her to be alone’” (Roth 1995: 

111). She is in a state of denial that seems childish and unnatural to Sabbath. That is why 

he keeps them company and is disgusted by details such as Nikki blowing her nose with 

the tissue that they had laid over the dead mother’s face: “and that seemed to me altogether 

crazy” (113). There is a lot of black humor in this account, and as the funeral director 

says when speaking about death: “At the risk of being indelicate”, it is impossible to be 

delicate about death. This truth is what Sabbath’s story communicates through the human 

stain, the impossibility of purity when it comes to death. And paradoxically enough, 

Sabbath mentions in several occasions how he treated Nikki “delicately” and “gently”. It 

seems like a different character than the rude man we know. He seems compassionate and 

careful not to hurt her feelings or indulge in his own desires at this time of grief. 

When Sabbath helps the embalmer to remove the jewelry off the dead body of 

Nikki’s mother, he notes “She is so dead, I thought –and this is becoming insufferable” 

(Roth 1995: 115). He cannot really bear the feel of the dead, it disgusts and horrifies him. 

And yet, he has crazy thoughts about communion with the dead and the living, as when 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

362 

 

he holds her head and notes this “was by far the most intimate we had been” and when he 

thinks “the unthinkable” about the embalmer having sexual contact with the corpse. This 

grotesque thought of his imagination that is sparked by a comment about being seen is 

another indication of the unsettling unnaturalness of death. When the embalmer is 

finished and says everything is as it was and that there were flowers beside her, he is 

bothered by the “tableau”, the theater that is arranged for the dead (116). As he thinks 

later, “We are dealing here with death, fuck the flowers!” (120). Those flowers enrage 

Sabbath so much that he feels an impulse to throw them into the wastebasket, because he 

feels the ugly reality of the dead is being hidden, as the corpse is disguised as if she were 

a statue. The “fluid self”, that natural liquid that represents life, is gone.  

 

All her fluid self is gone, I thought, suctioned into those black cases and then –what? 

Down the toilet bowl at the back of the shop? I could just see that giant in his black suit 

tossing about the naked body once it was the two of them alone in the room with the 

curtains drawn and there was no longer any need to be as dainty as he’d been with the 

jewelry. Evacuating the bowels, emptying the bladder, draining the blood, injecting the 

formaldehyde, if formaldehyde was what I smelled. (Roth 1995: 118) 

 

To Sabbath, it feels wrong to get rid of that which makes a person human, 

throwing it away like waste, garbage, down the toilet. In order to leave the house clean, 

Sabbath has to pour out the milk so that it does not go bad and starts smelling, and he 

takes the garbage out with the same purpose. But with a person it ought to be different. 

The feeling of distress gets worse when Sabbath considers the loss of the human stain. 

When only the body is left, the traces of the stain are removed, out of sight, hidden. They 

disappear with the person. (Roth 1995:  118). 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

363 

 

The profane invades the sacred also in the area of death. And yet, Sabbath is 

disgusted by how Nikki keeps touching the dead body of her mother, and he knows she 

needs help. In Judaism the Law says it is forbidden to touch a dead body. In fact, in the 

Law it is the highest degree of uncleanness and people would defile anything they touch 

after being in contact with a corpse (see Numbers 19: 11-22). Even though he is not 

thinking about the Jewish Law, it is important that in this scene there is a reference to 

impurity, although the rage that Sabbath feels is due to the pretense that the dead are like 

the living; that death should be kept nice and natural, while really, it is not. That is why 

he delivers this speech to try to make Nikki come to her senses: “You are not living with 

the dead, you are living with the living. It’s as simple as that […]” (Roth 1995: 121, 

ellipsis mine). The separation between life and death must be respected. However, the 

truth is, as Nikki’s own traumatized behavior and Sabbath’s own conversations with his 

mother and his visits to Drenka show that it is not that simple at all. Roth crosses the 

boundaries of this separation in an unsettling way by connecting life and death through 

these images. 

 

 

III.3.2. How to Keep Death at Bay 

 

The human stain can also appear in images of urine and semen in order to show 

how Roth’s characters fight against death. Earlier, in Chapter II, this study looked at how 

Sabbath is more of a feminist than a misogynist in Elisa Albert’s view. Along the lines of 

that interpretation, sex is this character’s way of asserting himself against death. The sheer 

energy of Sabbath in his fight against death is inspiring, and as Albert says, the writing is 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

364 

 

brimming with feeling, which is what makes it possible: “Oh, the offensive, gluttonous, 

hurtful, obtuse, obsessive sweep of this one little human being’s feelings. It’s a reminder: 

remember what it was like to have an inner life?” (Albert 2020: 10).  

Death is represented with physical images of the body because it cannot be 

understood or explained into rational stages, nor played or acted on the stage: “There are 

no stages. She is dead. That is the only stage. Do you hear me? That is the only stage, and 

you are not on the stage. This is no act. This is all becoming very offensive” (Roth 1995: 

121). It is shocking to hear from Sabbath’s mouth the judgment that something is very 

offensive to him. It is unexpected to read this because from the beginning of the novel the 

reader has witnessed how Sabbath has no qualms in doing crazy things of all sorts and 

delighting in transgression, counting any offense as a blessing. He recognizes this: “And 

that’s when I took on the job and began a life with the dead that has, by now, put those 

antics of Nikki’s to shame. To think how repelled I was by her –as though it were Nikki 

and not Death who had overstepped the limits” (121). As Death (depicted as a character 

in literature, always as a cunning figure and winning the game) oversteps the limits, why 

not go along with it? This seems to be Sabbath’s response. He has grown to make his own 

that mad behavior because what is repelling is death, not the people who are shocked by 

it. “Sabbath’s immoderate grief is a source for his disdain for any form of the moderate, 

the cardinal bourgeois virtue that, for him, bespeaks a desperate effort at control, an effort 

to escape being blindsided by experience” (Posnock 2006: 176). Because of his awareness 

of the immoderate action of death, he is also immoderate in his grief as a result of it and 

he knows the experience of death is impossible to control. 

Not only is death impossible to control, it is also impossible to interpret. In ST, 

there is an insistence upon the fact that human beings are made of flesh and blood, and so 

there can be no artificial reading of a pattern on their bodies. In dealing with death, Roth’s 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

365 

 

narration describes the contradictions that we deal with when confronting death of the 

other and also of oneself. Part II of this novel is titled “To be or not to be” alluding both 

at the thought of suicide and, in the context of Hamlet’s speech, to the general state of 

hesitation of a person who has a task at hand and fears to do it, doubts whether to go on 

with it or to take his life. This is not only Sabbath’s case. To live or to die is also 

Roseanna’s struggle, and many other characters’ fight in life. Finally, Sabbath himself 

contemplates his own will to die. Sabbath must attend the funeral old colleague who has 

committed suicide. It is introduced as a horrible thing he has to witness. He embarks on 

a journey to visit old friends, searching for ghosts from the past (Nikki), goes to visit the 

graves of his parents and his brother, and also pays a visit to his aged uncle. It is very 

much like a few days’ journey toward death. 

In treating his idea of suicide as an act, a show, Sabbath even points out the 

comedy in it. This is enhanced especially with his being a puppeteer, as he plans to take 

his own life: “A man who wants to die. A living being choosing death. That’s 

entertainment” (Roth 1995: 443). But in this comedy, there can also be seriousness, as 

Sabbath warns at the beginning of the novel: “Luxurious unseriousness was what the 

outsmarter often felt the greater the seriousness with which he conversed. Detailed, 

scrupulous, loquacious rationality was generally to be suspected when Morris Sabbath 

was the speaker. Though not even he could always be certain whether the nonsense so 

articulated was wholly nonsensical” (21). This follows the playful logic of Philip Roth’s 

famous saying: “Sheer Playfulness and Deadly Seriousness are my closest friends” (Roth 

2017: 120; see also Oates in Searles 1992: 89-99). So, the reader has to be on his guard, 

for in this novel there is a constant ambivalence of tones. Often the text is serious and 

playful at the same time, and there is a double meaning to everything. Finally, Sabbath 

decides not to write a suicide note because “notes are a sham” (Roth 1995: 443) for words 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

366 

 

are not necessary, just the act will speak for itself. But eventually he realizes he could not 

kill himself, exit life, because as he states at the end: “Everything he hated was here” 

(451). 

In one of the most extreme images of the human stain, and in accordance with the 

logic of Eros and Thanatos, Sabbath, in masturbating at Drenka’s grave, is trying to bring 

his dead lover back to life by conjuring up the very physical substance of her. That is why 

he imagines her being excited as if she were alive and he also urinates on her. The text 

presents these actions first through Sabbath witnessing another character’s attempt to 

commune with the dead. The image of the human stain in the form of semen is presented 

in an intriguing way at this point as Sabbath wonders about the nature of the sticky, wet 

substance on the flowers at the grave: “His hands were covered with it” and the flowers 

were “drenched” with it (Roth 1995: 73). This scene emphasizes the extraordinary and 

eerie quality of what to Sabbath is an “abomination”, even though he is also impure, as 

marked by his “dirty” jacket (72-73). In contrast, the setting of the scene is wet because 

it is raining that night. Seeing this image of another man masturbating at Drenka’s grave 

makes him remember how Drenka told him stories about how she was “awash with the 

sperm of other men” (74). Again, the human stain takes on an ambiguous meaning by 

turning what is considered impure into something pure, similar to water. 

As Pozorski notes, “the novel ends with Mickey at Drenka’s grave, in a swamp of 

springtime images suggesting new life” (Pozorski 2015: 112) as Sabbath is “ankle-deep 

in the pudding of the springtime mud, blindly engulfed by the alien, inland woods, by the 

rainmaking trees and the rainwashed boulders -and with no one to kill him except himself. 

And he couldn’t do it” (Roth 1995: 451). Pozorski reads this as him being “challenged to 

live, despite himself -a reclamation of life on Roth’s part in a novel written in the wake 

of deaths in his own life” (Pozorski 2015: 113). However, when Sabbath tries to make 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

367 

 

Drenka come back to life, he is reminded that this is impossible. He is surprised he forgot 

this, he who reminded himself so often of it. “There is nothing on earth more firmly 

established, it’s all that you can know for sure –and no one wants to know it” (Roth 1995: 

445). So those images may suggest new life, but in the end, it is a false hope. Not even 

his “clean come” can revive her, the human stain does not give life, to remind the reader 

that “Nobody beloved gets out alive” (364). 

Additionally, the human stain also appears in the form of urine when Sabbath is 

trying to urinate on Drenka’s grave, his intention is “to anoint this sacred ground”: 

 

Could what was impending the urine flow be that wall of conscience that deprives a 

person of what is most himself?  What had happened to his entire conception of life? It 

had cost him dearly to clear a space where he could exist in the world as antagonistically 

as he liked. Where was the contempt with which he had overridden their hatred; where 

were the laws, the code of conduct, by which he had labored to be free from their stupidly 

harmonious expectations? Yes, the strictures that had inspired his buffoonery were taking 

their vengeance at last. All the taboos that seek to abate our monstrosity had shut his water 

down. (Roth 1995: 444) 

 

It seems like in Sabbath’s view, conscience is the enemy of humanity. That moral 

awareness or rule is against the human stain, which is what makes or describes us as 

human. Sabbath understands that we cannot expect harmony from human actions, only 

chaos. He describes the show, the acting that is his life, as a reaction to those limiting 

laws. Interestingly, he has devised his own contempt, his own laws and code of conduct 

to counteract “theirs”. These other people are stupid and unrealistic in his view.  



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

368 

 

The act of urinating on Drenka’s grave is charged with meaning. It goes back to 

Drenka’s act of courage as she did something considered forbidden, and Sabbath admired 

her for that. But it is also as if he were crying tears of grief. Furthermore, he tries to show 

his adoration to her as an extraordinary human creature. Roth is careful not to turn her 

into a goddess, repeating the words human and describing her physical secretions. He 

invokes her in a style of praise: “Drenched Drenka, bubbling spring, mother of moisture 

and overflow, surging, streaming Drenka, drinker of the juices of the human vine –

sweetheart, rise up before you turn to dust, come back and be revived, oozing all your 

secretions. But even by watering all spring and summer the plot that all her men had 

seeded, he could not bring her back, either Drenka or anyone else” (Roth 1995: 445). The 

word “drenched”, along with all the words that refer to liquid and wetness, are an image 

of the stain signifying the life she exuded when she was alive. But indeed, even the urine 

and semen that are intended to “water” her seed cannot make her grow back to life as if 

she were a plant.  

This is what is done by masturbating at her grave, these former lovers are 

spreading their seed, trying to make her come back to life in a way. But it is a frustrated 

attempt, as there is no way to do this. The dead do not live again. Maybe it is the 

realization of this truth what brings him to the final decision. When he decides he will not 

live any longer it is because “It was played out, that thing which allowed him to improvise 

endlessly and which had kept him alive. The nutty tawdriness is over” (Roth 1995: 446). 

This refers to Sabbath’s sexual decay and also to his loss of Drenka. Furthermore, it refers 

to every human being’s encounter with death, which causes such anxiety. This is 

something ineluctable and, as such, tragic. Gustavo Sánchez Canales has written about 

the comedy vs. tragedy dichotomy: tragedy represents the human being’s fate as 

inevitable, while comedy shows the attempt to escape it and this brings about a funny 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

369 

 

situation which show the innate human inability to keep things under control (Sánchez 

Canales in Durán et al. 2018). The reader can inquire about Sabbath whether he lost sight 

of the purpose of his existence, or if he just lost the will to live in the end. What is certain 

is that Sabbath could not have come to the conclusion that it is meaningless to continue 

provoking the law, because he goes on challenging the law till the very end of the novel.  

As seen in Chapter II in the discussion about representation of transgressive sexual 

acts, semen is an image that is loaded with meaning because of its cultural and religious 

significance, as can be seen in the Old Testament, in the case of the Jewish context. In his 

essay about Roth’s presumed anti-Semitism, Sánchez Canales points out how there is a 

biblical episode that refers to Onan, to be precise (2021). On the other hand, Cooper has 

pointed out that in ST, semen can be interpreted as a metaphor for the energy it suggests 

(Cooper 1996: 281). So, depending on the rite of passage or the laws, the representation 

of semen may refer to the symbolical seed of life it spreads or to the rules that are broken. 

The description of semen at this point, that is, this image of the human stain, can be 

connected with Roth’s homonymous novel. As seen earlier in the analysis of HS, the 

image of semen is a reference to the Clinton-Lewinski affair and, to use Othello’s famous 

phrase, “the ocular proof.” This visible sign refers to the invisible stain.  

But the characters enter the cemetery, which represents the nearness of the realm 

of death, as blind people would, trying to interpret what they touch and hear with their 

other senses. As in Shakespeare’s plays, the use of light and blackness is important to 

understand the meaning of the scenes: The night Sabbath goes to the cemetery to get ready 

to die, the light of his flashlight grows thin and “Outside the car the blackness was 

immense, shocking, a night as challenging to the mind as any he had known at sea” (Roth 

1995: 442). This is the main character’s dark night of the soul: Sabbath dislikes this 

blindness he is subjected to: “Unlike suicide, seeing nothing was not amusing” and he 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

370 

 

feels very old, stepping “into the black granite world of the blind” (443). He is completely 

helpless now. He is like King Lear or blind Gloucester, at his worst time. He stumbles 

and falls in the mud, covered in dirt, amidst the graves. But Roth suffuses this scene with 

a lot of humor, of course. When Sabbath expects to be killed, instead he finds himself left 

alone, abandoned, on his own, ankle-deep in the mud, blind in the darkness of the woods.  

Pozorski points out that Shakespeare’s play The Tempest (1611) just like Roth’s 

novel, is full of “language of water, rain, cleanliness, and renewal” which contrasts with 

the dark reality of the grave which is also present in the novel (Pozorski 2015: 113). 

Regarding the references to water which could be interpreted as purity and stand in 

opposition to the images of the stain, as seen previously. At this final scene, because “the 

ground was drenched with the day’s heavy rain” (Roth 1995: 443), Sabbath eventually is 

not washed by the water, but instead of that, when he falls on the ground, he is covered 

in mud: “leaving Sabbath ankle-deep in the pudding of the springtime mud, blindly 

engulfed by the alien, inland woods” (451). To my mind, this would be the opposite of 

the catharsis or purification that are suggested by the watery images initially, which in 

the Christian imagination is a metaphor that signifies purity in literature. In conclusion, 

at the end even the rain and the water cannot wash away the human stain and Sabbath 

feels compelled to remain in this world. 

 

 

III.3.3. The Desire to Keep Desiring, to Continue Living  

 

As seen before, it is clear that Sabbath does not in the end want to die, for, in spite 

of his attempts to die, “there’s a divine spark propelling him toward light, toward action, 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

371 

 

toward revolt, toward being alive” as Elisa Albert puts it (2020: 10).  Desire, then, carries 

people back to life. Shostak states that DA insists that “abjection typifies human 

subjectivity because it is inevitably constituted by the body” and yet, in DA, as in 

“Epstein” and ST, desire, which mocks the aging person by suggesting satisfaction and 

renewal just when these will not be possible for much longer, instead of ceasing to be, 

continues very much alive (Shostak 2004: 60-1). In contrast, in HS Coleman does find 

this satisfaction in his relationship with Faunia. But in general, the desire to desire more 

is nonetheless startling when it spins out of control; it is not something that the characters 

seek intentionally, as the characters find themselves unable to avoid that desire, and others 

are shocked by it. 

Unlike other scholars (see Neelakantan 2017), I believe Sabbath does not really 

find the will to live in the memories of the past nor in the voice of the ghosts that appear 

in the novel. For instance, Mellard interprets the presence of Besse’s ghost in Sabbath’s 

life as having the purpose to restore him to life rather than lead him to death (Mellard 

2000: 121). He argues that his mother’s ghost has a similar function to Hamlet’s in that it 

brings Sabbath “to the symbolization of the grief that has driven his outrageously 

transgressive life” (2000: 121-122). However, I think that when Sabbath finds his 

brother’s things and he feels the blow of suffering, instead of realizing that he has to keep 

living because he needs to look after his brother’s memories, he is further driven towards 

utter desperation. 

Rather than finding the will to live in the memories of the past, Sabbath definitely 

finds it in his feelings of hate and desire. The hate he feels towards those who pretend to 

live a pure life in a world that has let him down in innumerable ways. In “Eros and Death 

in Roth’s Later Fiction”, Jay Halio has argued that Kepesh and Sabbath embody 

contradictory approaches to the relation between Eros and Thanatos, as their lovers die 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

372 

 

because of cancer, because Sabbath’s eroticism resists death while Kepesh’s vanishes in 

the clash with death (Halio 2005: 205). Indeed, Sabbath still experiences the force of 

desire in spite of Drenka’s death, while Kepesh arguably loses all desire for Consuela 

when he sees her approaching death. DA, written a few years later than the previous 

novels, absolutely has a different perception of desire in the face of death. 

 The theme of desire and death is explored in depth by Judith Yaross Lee’s 

“Affairs of the Breast” (2010). However, Yaross claims that it is not necessarily true that 

Kepesh has no desire for Consuela, because “you don’t have to believe that le petit morte 

of orgasm cheats death and avenges life’s disappointments to accept the tenet that we are 

our bodies, that our selves are in the body.” (Yaross 2010: 84). Yaross further claims that 

when Consuela states that Kepesh loved her body (Roth 2001: 130), the implication is 

that “great passion honors the beloved through her body” (Yaross 2010: 84). Truly, 

Kepesh is even ready to risk his own death because of the love he feels for Consuela at 

the end of DA. And, as Yaross points out, Kepesh learns that he was mistaken, firstly 

when he thinks “that the critic creates the work of art from his gaze and appreciation, that 

“she had only to be there, on view, and the understanding of her importance flowed from 

me” (Roth 2001: 37), then again in mistaking the transitory beauty of a life being for the 

enduring beauty of art” (Yaross 2010: 77). 

However, Consuela’s beautiful body is revealed as something different than art, 

as it is a life, a human being. While initially love means loss and lust is a gain to Roth’s 

protagonist, here these principles are inverted. According to Yaross, the novel shows that 

“love can replace lust when lost. Without rejecting his earlier premise that sexual desires 

define us and enact through the body the spirit of great art, Roth concludes the Kepesh 

trilogy with a new mathematics: in love we lose part of ourselves, but lust gains us part 

of the lover, a gain that is to the good.” (Yaross 2010: 77). However, this formula is not 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

373 

 

so clear in the use of the human stain in DA. The body of Consuela is stained by cancer 

and she is completely separated from health, and yet, she needs the human touch, contact 

and company of a comforter. 

The subject of the loneliness of the individual when facing death is found in 

Sabbath in ST, the Swede in AP, in Coleman in HS and finally also in Kepesh in DA: 

“What changes Kepesh is his awareness of loneliness” (Yaross 2010: 83). This lesson 

comes at the end of life and also in Roth’s late fiction, especially. Trendel observes that 

“the question of what the teacher learns becomes more important than the issue of the 

student’s education. Roth’s novella, which features a master in the process of learning, 

can certainly be read as a bildungsroman, but one whose main character is an aging man, 

not a hopeful youth” (Trendel 2007: 4). The Modigliani painting reproduced in the 

postcard Consuela sends to Kepesh leads him to think about his sexual desire for her but 

also about death: “A nude represented with her eyes closed, defended, like Consuela, by 

nothing other than her erotic power, at once, like Consuela, elemental and elegant. A 

golden-skinned nude inexplicably asleep over a velvety black abyss that, in my mood, I 

associated with the grave. One long, undulating line, she lies there awaiting you, still as 

death” (Roth 2001: 98). She is enveloped by the light of Eros but she lies in the darkness 

of Thanatos.  

Later, when Consuela is afraid of dying, she will tell Kepesh she knew he loved 

her body very much, more than all her other lovers, and that seemed to give her comfort. 

The body tells the story, the question is how this is done. The narrative that can be found 

in Consuela’s breast, for example, as seen in the previous section, is about beauty marred 

by illness, but also about the biological clock being reversed. In a definition based on 

images of cleanliness and corruption, and on the “flesh”, using the human stain, Kepesh 

says that sex is irreplaceable in life, arguing it is a basic need of human beings:  



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

374 

 

 

(It) is based in your physical being, in the flesh that is born and the flesh that dies. Because 

only when you fuck is everything that you dislike in life and everything by which you are 

defeated in life purely, if momentarily, revenged. Only then are you most cleanly alive 

and most cleanly yourself. It’s not the sex that’s the corruption -it’s the rest. Sex isn’t just 

friction and shallow fun. Sex is also the revenge on death. Don’t forget death. Don’t ever 

forget it. Yes, sex too is limited in its power. I know very well how limited. But tell me, 

what power is greater?” (Roth 2001: 69)  

 

In this important passage, sex is described as challenging the power of death. Sex 

is “clean” and connected to life and to the person’s self, to his or her identity. That is why 

it is not impure, it is not “the corruption”, instead it is the pure force that allows people to 

live, to battle against death, even though it has a limited power. It is the theme of Eros 

and Thanatos, As in ST, the main character clings to sexuality as what makes him feel 

most alive and as the most valuable and worthwhile thing, the only thing that gives him 

strength or comfort in the little life he has left. However, it proves to be ineffectual when 

facing the intense pain of loss and the characters are abandoned to their confusion. 

In Countertexts, Counterlives, Shostak wrote in depth about the revelation of the 

disappointment of the hope suggested by Eros and Thanatos in Roth’s work: “Desire 

seems to mock the consciousness of an aging subject, since it suggests the possibility of 

satisfaction, continuance, and renewal –as if desire could thwart the fate that the body so 

forthrightly predicts” (Shostak 2004: 60). Shostak quotes from “Sailing to Byzantium”, 

the poem by W.B: Yeats alluded to in the title of the novel, (that flesh is “sick with 

desire/And fastened to a dying animal/ It knows not what it is”) in order to explain how 

“Yeats suggests that the yoking of the two human conditions –desire and mortal 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

375 

 

embodiment –deprives the subject of identity […]” (Shostak 2004: 61, ellipsis mine). The 

flesh is sick with desire and while the text shows how desire is clean, because the human 

being is fastened to a dying animal, at the same time it suffers from this impending 

corruption and it struggles to know itself. 

• • • 

 In Jewish American literature, suffering and illness have been widely studied as 

important themes, but one of the most characteristic subjects it deals with is the reality of 

death. Roth’s work treats this theme starting from his early work but most intensely in his 

late work, and especially in the four novels that I turn to in this dissertation. It has been 

pointed out how Roth’s work reveals that the human imagination tends to cloak the reality 

of death, and I have looked at the device that Roth uses to take this cloak off the reality 

of death, figuratively speaking. This is carried out by the resource of the human stain, and 

it is present in various images: The pervasive darkness of the graveyard; the dead body 

itself, rid of the liquids that represent its life; the dryness that contrasts with being 

“drenched” in the liquids of the stain; and finally, the semen and urine that are used to try 

to make the dead come back to life in an attempt to commune with the death. This last 

function of the stain reveals an important Rothian theme that Debra Shostak has written 

about in depth (2014).  

Desire, which was at the heart of the power of the human stain to transgress, has 

led to the subject of this Chapter. As desire becomes the will to live in its struggle against 

Death (Eros and Thanatos), the realities of suffering, illness and death have been shown 

as the consequence of the disorder marked by the human stain. Through this resource, it 

will be shown how death casts its shadow over the narrative and although the protagonists 

fight against it with their desire, eventually as it is the final enemy, it will win. For 



CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING 

 

 

376 

 

instance, the darkness of death is described as a black background in the Modigliani 

painting in DA, enveloping the human figure, enclosing it despite the power of its desire. 

Finally there is no reprieve, as death reminds human beings that they are “one 

with their body”, thereby changing the protagonists’ mindset, as argued by Yaross (2010) 

and Trendel (2007). And this is shown through the images of the stain that reveal how in 

spite of all efforts to make death invisible, the marks of the stain will reveal its presence 

and its devastating darkness. 



FINAL CONCLUSIONS 

 

 

377 

 

FINAL CONCLUSIONS 

 

Still relevant today, in novels such as HS, Roth captures “the antinomies of our 

growing intolerance of our own deep imperfection, paired with our growing lassitude in 

the face of human corruption and violence” (O’Donnell 2019: 112). He carries out this 

protest against reductionism by revealing how guilt and innocence and purity and 

impurity are separated and how these concepts articulate contemporary American reality.  

The marks of imperfection appear in the works of many American novelists and 

it is especially present in Jewish American Literature particularly, as pointed at by Ihab 

Hassan in Radical Innocence (1961). But the human stain appears as a symbol of the 

impossibility of purity most clearly when it is used consistently, when form expresses 

content in a way that spreads throughout the novels. The work of Philip Roth provides an 

interesting example of the complexity and the possibilities of this literary resource. In this 

dissertation, I have focused on four of his major novels to show how he worked out some 

of his major themes by using the images of the human stain, with the intention to point 

out new readings of his work by looking at it through the lens of the stain. This thesis has 

interpreted the stain in Sabbath’s Theater (1995), American Pastoral (1997), The Human 

Stain (2000) and The Dying Animal (2001), with reference to the first traces in Roth’s 

early short story titled “Epstein” (Goodbye, Columbus and other stories, 1959). 

In American literature, from the beginning, there seems to be a search for purity 

and a struggle with the fact that it is always marred by imperfection in the end. The curious 

thing is that this can be portrayed in fiction by means of a realist narrative mode that 

employs certain images or symbols. Dealing with reality in an age when the individual 

subject’s very existence is put into question is very difficult. Indeed, it is almost 

impossible. Describing the nature of reality is of the utmost importance to everybody, but 



FINAL CONCLUSIONS 

 

 

378 

 

it is more so to the writer, and Roth captured the dilemma he faced when he remarked 

back in 1960, in “Writing American Fiction” that “the American writer in the middle of 

the twentieth century has his hands full in trying to understand, describe, and then make 

credible much of the American reality” (Roth 2017: 27). How can fiction make sense of 

a world that is seemingly senseless, that outdoes the imagination?  

When I began writing this dissertation, I thought that studying the stain had no 

connection at all with Roth’s Jewish American identity, even though at first, I chose to 

ignore these themes during my analysis of the human stain, I kept finding that elements 

of Judaism appeared and that his background and interest in the Jewish laws and rituals 

was relevant after all to the study of the human stain. Not only that, the texts where the 

stain is most evident have literary traits that can be traced back to biblical texts and these 

are connected with questions and issues related to Jewish themes. So I could not ignore it 

any longer -the Jewish origin of the human stain is at the heart of the thesis after all, in 

spite of my initial misgivings. 

This thesis has been organized into different chapters as follows: Chapter I, titled 

“The Impossibility of Purity”, points out how Roth integrated elements from his Jewish 

religious, moral and literary background as the human stain is an image that in part comes 

from the biblical story of original sin and other images of blemishes on the body from the 

Old Testament. I point out that from his early work on, Roth was concerned with 

portraying how individuals discover that they bear a human stain. Especially throughout 

the novels chosen for this study, the stain is used to reveal the characters’ impurity.  

In the first section, “The Stain on the Body”, I have undertaken an exploration of 

the biblical roots of the images of a physical blemish on the skin that function as a mark 

of transgression. In the Bible, sin is characterized as physical impurity. The illness of 



FINAL CONCLUSIONS 

 

 

379 

 

leprosy with its stains serves as a metaphor for human sinfulness. Secondly, the bodily 

fluids, such as blood, menstruation blood, semen, etc. render the body impure so they 

have to be washed and there are rituals for this. The lamb with no blemish would represent 

the opposite, purity. The way in which sin enters the world and attacks humans is through 

the figure of the serpent, and it is also described as a crouching beast. This source has 

definitely inspired Roth in his use of images of the stain by using them in literature, he 

challenges the notions of purity and impurity. The first traces of the stain are analyzed in 

“Epstein” in order to show the origin of the image of transgression that will later by 

developed in the other novels. By comparing Roth’s use of the human stain and the 

significance the stain has in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birth Mark”, it will be clear 

how in both texts the ambivalent meanings of purity and imperfection are put across 

through this device. My analysis of the use of the stain establishes the connection in 

Roth’s work between the representation of the body and the issue of impurity. 

In the second section, “The Graphic Stain”, I have presented the stain as more 

than a single image, consisting in much more than a mark on the skin of the characters, 

as it actually appears as a web of images that permeates the whole text. I set out to 

discover how it characterizes Roth’s style in a unique way, considering the author’s 

obsession with materiality and the complex structure of his novels, where the sum of their 

parts and the role of the narrators work together with the link between the vivid 

descriptions and the main themes. The first text I have considered is a key passage in HS 

that contains both a definition and a meeting point of the marks and symptoms of the 

human stain: “we leave a trail, an imprint” consisting of “Impurity, cruelty, abuse, error, 

excrement, semen”, and finally, the assertion that “there is no other way to be here” (Roth 

2000: 242). This leads to the question of how the invisible stain becomes visible in Roth’s 

fiction.  



FINAL CONCLUSIONS 

 

 

380 

 

HS and AP feature a similar structure found in all of the Zuckerman novels, in 

which the narrator, Nathan Zuckerman, learns something shocking about the life of one 

of his friends and then, as he imagines their lives, he searches for the origin of the human 

stain as he embarks on a quest to track its traces and he shows the symptoms of the stain 

in his friend’s life. From this point on, there emerges a pattern of the discovery of the 

stain. First, Roth’s characters believe that they are pure, and then, they discern that they 

are impure. But this only happens with some characters, because there are others who 

know they are impure, such as Faunia or Sabbath, and others who never accept that they 

are in fact impure.  

The objective in this section is to identify the symptoms of the human stain and 

to ask how they are portrayed in the novels. I have found that through the description of 

restlessness, weakness, vulnerability, blindness and the lack of control, the characters find 

that the human stain is inescapable. Indeed, Roth’s fiction contemplates the predicament 

of the blighted, the bruised and the assailable in particular through these symptoms of the 

stain. If, as Debra Shostak (2004) has argued, Roth finds his subject where he finds his 

subject, my claim is that Roth finds his driving force and his exploration of selfhood 

through the use of the stain, by leaving its marks and revealing its symptoms in the novels. 

As I set out to tackle the question of how Roth expresses meaning through the human 

stain, by comparing it to Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, I have analyzed how Roth 

describes depravity in detail in order to show how human disorder is everywhere. For 

instance, while Faunia embodies country purity because of her job as a cleaner and 

working at the farm, instead of expressing life and fertility as her name suggests, her story 

is marked by the mess of her experience of pain and desire.  

In the third section, “The Mirage of Purity”, by looking at how Roth writes about 

the illusion of purity, I have chosen the images of Paradise and the Fall as one of the most 



FINAL CONCLUSIONS 

 

 

381 

 

important and recurrent motifs where the human stain works together with the main 

themes in these novels. Roth exposes the dangers of upholding a fantasy of achieving 

purity in various ways, and while the scholars have studied the references to Milton’s 

Paradise Lost in AP, for example, I have looked at the account in Genesis in order to go 

back to the original biblical source of the images of temptation and sin.  

It has been acknowledged that the presence of images of Paradise and the Fall in 

American literature is connected to the Puritan legacy of the American Dream, and the 

idea I put forward is that the device of the human stain works in such a way that it presents 

the act of temptation in order to finally reveal the reality of impurity to the characters and 

open their eyes to the stain that is within their idea of Paradise. For example, Merry’s 

stutter in AP and Kepesh licking Consuela’s blood in DA are images that bring about this 

knowledge. In this way, the stain that appears as something impure or ill actually acts as 

an antidote to the poisonous fantasy of purity. As a consequence, the conclusion is that in 

an earthly paradise people cannot be immune to the stain and their highest aspirations to 

purity are revealed as being eventually polluted, for example in the Swede’s life in Old 

Rimrock and his daughter’s Jainism in AP. But it is precisely in that moment of discovery 

of the stain, that the father is able to see that his dream was just a mirage, a delusion. This 

effect of the stain as an antidote to false pastorals is still relevant nowadays, as the fantasy 

of purity still exists. 

In Chapter II, titled “The Stain of Transgression”, I have attempted to show that 

the refractory quality of Roth’s characters, that is, their position in how they oppose moral 

standards with their rebellion, resides in the power of the human stain to transgress in the 

narrative. If their refractory condition is like a virus that is difficult to cure, an illness that 

they suffer from and compels them to transgress, it also allows them to delight in their 

transgression, like Sabbath in ST. This has been present in Roth’s work since the 



FINAL CONCLUSIONS 

 

 

382 

 

publication of PC, and it is connected to how Roth writes about the struggle generated by 

the imperative to be a good Jew and the individual’s desire to be free.  

In the first section, “The Stain in Sexuality”, drawing on studies by scholars such 

as Debra Shostak (1999; 2004) and David Brauner (2004; 2007), I analyze the references 

to the Judaic laws related to food and sexuality, as in Roth, the descriptions of forbidden 

food are linked to transgressive desire as well as bodily fluids that are the proof of 

forbidden sexual actions or relations. In this sense, one may claim that in Roth’s fiction 

the presence of the disgusting works as an opposing force to what is falsely perceived as 

clean. By presenting the repellent as a common human heritage, Roth highlights its reality 

because in his novels these images become more obvious especially when there is a search 

for purity. However, the human stain acts with ambivalence as the water, which may 

signify ritual cleansing, is compared to semen, for example, to convey the freedom 

inherent in the experience of transgression.  

Evidently, the issue of Roth’s representation of women and the charges of 

misogyny cannot be ignored when studying his work in our current times. To my mind, 

just as the human stain allows male characters to transgress in Roth’s fiction, it works in 

a similar way with the female characters. Considering the charges of obscenity and of 

misogyny that Roth’s fiction has received, the human stain is important to study Roth’s 

texts. In order to address the relevance of the issue of how women are represented in his 

fiction, I have reassessed some of the most important female characters of the four novels, 

along with the most problematic scenes. I have come to the conclusion that in Roth’s 

fiction, lust, both in men and in women, appears as an expression of rebellion and of the 

desire to be free from moral strictures. There is an eternal Eros/Thanatos struggle, because 

lust is a way to cleave to life, or to try to escape from the unavoidable reality of death. 



FINAL CONCLUSIONS 

 

 

383 

 

The human stain allows the characters to challenge preconceived notions about 

independence and vulnerability as it questions the concepts of purity.  

In the second section, “The Stain in the Eyes of Society”, the human stain allows 

for an exploration of how Roth presents his moral fantasies in fiction. In order to 

understand how the stain shows how wrong people’s judgement of each other is, I set out 

to examine different instances of the images of the stain in this terrain. Roth’s fiction does 

more than just calling for the readers’ sympathy for the characters’ errors and failures. In 

making visible the difficulty in reading people accurately, the stain represents the 

blindness of those who think see correctly. The human stain works in two directions: On 

the one hand, when people fail to notice the mistakes and the chaos in their own lives; 

and on the other hand, when they misjudge others for the stain in their lives.  

In order to outline this particular function of the stain I have analyzed how Roth’s 

characters defy society’s expectations and rules by embracing the stain. The stain acts not 

only as a mirror, but also as the sword that shows people’s double nature by revealing lies 

and bringing conflict in the narrative. As David Brauner argues, Roth’s realism is an 

antidote to the poisonous idealism of rigid notions of morality. By tracing the influence 

of ideas and writings by Nietzsche, Emerson and Dostoevsky on Roth’s fiction, it 

becomes clear that the human stain is an appropriate way to represent the characters’ 

struggles. Appearing as the physical bodily fluid that signifies liquid or changing identity, 

it also represents the irrational element which characterizes the main characters. Finally, 

the constant presence of Jewish references in the human stain shows that there is a strong 

link after all between the stain as it appears in HS and the stain in “Epstein”. 

Eventually, in the process of going from an initial rejection of the stain to an 

acceptance of it, it becomes an instrument of unblinding for Roth’s characters, and the 



FINAL CONCLUSIONS 

 

 

384 

 

horror of self-reflection is performed by means of the mirror of the human stain. This 

looking-glass forces people to look at themselves, as it interrupts the normalcy of their 

lives: It is the extraordinary breaking into the ordinary, entering their reality and opening 

their eyes to it. 

In the third section, “The Stain in America”, not only the individual, but the whole 

nation is marked by the stain. In this case, it is blighted by corruption, compared to a 

plague. The individual is blindsided by history, taken by surprise by the forces that 

destroy their lives and shed chaos everywhere. The depiction of World War II, the Wars 

of Korea and Vietnam, the protest movements, the Watergate and the Clinton scandals, 

the American Dream and the Sexual Revolution, as well as the celebration of the new 

millennium are all characterized by the role of descriptions of filth, illness and violence. 

Roth exposes the beliefs that have given shape to the narrative of postwar America by the 

means of images of the human stain. 

In Chapter III, titled “The Stain of Suffering” addresses the question of how the 

human stain represents pain, loss, illness and death in Roth’s fiction. While the experience 

of suffering is a prominent theme in American Jewish literature, Roth has not only written 

about it regarding the Holocaust, but when writing about pain, aging and the nearness of 

death as felt in the physical body. While scholars such as Debra Shostak have looked at 

the question of how to invent a self in the face of desire and death, I have turned to the 

issue of how this experience is marked by the human stain in Roth’s fiction. Looking back 

at the biblical sources for the representation of the stain, it is in the description of suffering 

that we find the mark of the consequences of the transgression seen in the second Chapter. 

The impossibility to conceal the stain means that the wounds and scars from the suffering 

of the past are still felt in the character’s present.  



FINAL CONCLUSIONS 

 

 

385 

 

In the first section, “The Stain in Pain”, the images of the stain serve to make 

tangible the invisible reality of pain. But not only that, these images also represent the 

characters’ desperate search for a remedy for the suffering that they have experienced. In 

this attempt to erase the marks of the stain, they try to remove its traces from their face, 

as Dawn does in AP, for example. Or with their tears, their features are blurred and, just 

like with a rite of purification with water, they try to wash away their filth in a bath, like 

Sabbath does in ST. Finally, by reading Roth in the light of passages of the biblical book 

of Job, the connection between the Jewish images of utter despair and the questions that 

are linked to this experience of loss and Roth’s own portrayal of the permanent mark of 

pain.  

In the second section, “The Stain in Illness”, just as health signals purity and 

justice in the Old Testament, in Roth’s fiction, the descriptions of illness are connected 

with the realities of impurity and injustice. Cancer, with its hidden tumors that cause 

destruction, is the ultimate symbol of death and therefore it is also a clear image of the 

human stain. While Roth’s subject is compared to a patient, figuratively speaking, in this 

case, his subjects are also actual patients. The reality of illness comes to the surface in his 

fiction as that which is impossible to conceal, and through the descriptions of the human 

stain, the characters are allowed to come to terms with it. In AP, Merry suffers from her 

stutter but she herself is described as an illness, as if she were the cancer that the Swede 

really suffers from. His love for his daughter is also compared to an illness. In ST, Drenka 

suffers from ovaries cancer and in DA, Consuela suffers from cancer in her breast. In 

these novels, cancer appears as if it were endowed with a personality and an evil will of 

its own. The impact of the body’s decay on the mind of the person who suffers the illness 

also has consequences for the people who love the one who is ill. The protagonists see 

how life vanishes and this new sense of death brings about a change of heart in them. 



FINAL CONCLUSIONS 

 

 

386 

 

In the third section, “Eros and Thanatos”, the subject of death emerges as a central 

theme from the Jewish literary tradition that undergoes a transformation in Roth’s fiction 

because of the human stain. As in the Jewish imagination there is no assurance of what 

will happen after death, when the individual faces his or her mortality, they are doomed 

to live under its shadow with no certainties. As Saul Bellow wrote, nobody is ever ready 

for death and this is represented in Jewish American literature in particular with “laughter 

and trembling” (1963). Furthermore, Roth wrote about death with a focus on the 

devastating and the visible, concrete, repellent aspect of mortality.  

The variety of Roth’s work on death has led scholars such as Victoria Aarons 

(2007) focus on novels such as Everyman, because they deal solely with an individual’s 

death, and she studies Roth’s concrete rendering of the opposing forces of Eros and 

Thanatos, which I have brought to my analysis of these four novels. While Shostak (2004; 

2014) has focused on the graveyard scenes in novels such as Patrimony, there are many 

other instances of how Roth writes about the materiality of death. The physical reality of 

death is surprisingly found in more ethereal or imaginary representations of death, such 

as in the ghosts of dead people, but it is more often revealed in the physical reality of the 

dead body, devoid of the bodily fluids that stand for the human quality of life. In the 

Judaic law, the dead body and these fluids symbolize uncleanness, and Roth takes up this 

notion of impurity in his fiction. In contrast, the flow of urine, blood and semen work in 

the text in ambivalent ways, showing the unshakably human qualities of life. Finally, the 

human stain serves to render the impossibility of the wish to bring the dead back to life. 

Just as the human stain is no salve to our troubled times, Roth’s work does not 

offer an answer to the reality of suffering. Although his characters, as in the book of Job, 

ask themselves what they have done to deserve their misery, in Roth in the end there is 

no answer from above.



FUTURE RESEARCH LINES 

 

 

387 

 

FUTURE RESEARCH LINES 

 

As mentioned earlier in Chapter III, recently there has been a surge of interest in 

the topic of Roth’s response to Judaism and the impact of the Torah and the Talmud on 

Roth’s work, as reflected in the Special Issue on Judaism for the Journal of Philip Roth 

Studies. Clearly, there is a need to expand our understanding of this issue in Roth studies, 

and I believe that it would be helpful to look particularly at the texts in the light of the 

biblical references, which is what I have tried to do throughout this dissertation.  

Many writers have raised the public’s interest because of their connection with 

Philip Roth. Recently, Lisa Halliday’s Asymmetry (2018) has received wide critical 

acclaim. In her novel, a much younger author who writes a fictional account based on her 

real relationship with Philip Roth feels the “anxiety of influence” to use Harold Bloom’s 

well-known term. She writes about a unique relationship and introduces a new counter 

voice to Roth’s narratives. She quotes Roth’s famous response, when he said that 

whenever he wrote fiction, they said it was autobiographical and whenever he wrote 

autobiography, they said it was fiction. His answer to this criticism was: why bother? Let 

them decide what it is. In her work, Lisa Halliday seeks to ask questions, not answer them. 

In this, she shares Roth’s outlook. The asymmetries that are present in her novel take up 

three sections, with different points of view, different characters, and the relationship 

between youth and old age, justice and injustice, and other juxtapositions that can be 

found in life. 

However, I am more interested in Roth’s legacy on a new, younger generation of 

Jewish American writers. I find Elisa Albert’s work particularly reflects the influence of 

Roth’s style and subject. She pursues the freedom to write about taboos and explores 

feelings of uneasiness with the Jewish tradition. One thing that Albert and Roth have in 



FUTURE RESEARCH LINES 

 

 

388 

 

common is that they both wrote a collection of short stories that is entirely about the topic 

of Jews, and these were published as their first books: Goodbye, Columbus and Other 

Stories (1959) was Roth’s, and Albert published How This Night is Different in 2006. She 

takes up the question of what it means to be Jewish in America in the present, and tackles 

the problem of not being able or not wanting to conform to the rules, but the difference is 

that she has chosen to speak from the women perspective and experience. After reading 

her work, I find that she and Roth share more than a label, a subject and a style: they both 

use the motif of the human stain. Albert seems to be left out of the Jewish American canon 

because she is a woman or for her uncanny representation of female sexuality and 

motherhood. This characteristic is evident in her novel After Birth (2015), for example. 

The use of the literary resource of the human stain in the representation of illness is also 

present in The Book of Dahlia (2008). Her emphasis on the connection between soul and 

body is very important, as this quote from her novel After Birth demonstrates: “Feminism 

without a focus on the body, the soul, and the relationship between the two, is of no 

interest to me” (Albert 2015: 136).  

In fact, Albert’s work is deeply connected to Roth’s voice and subject, but it also 

offers a new, fresh perspective, as has already been explored by Aimee Pozorski and 

Miriam Jaffe (2017). As stated in the introduction and the first Chapter of this thesis, Roth 

told his readers to avoid a reductive ethnic categorization of his work as Jewish-American 

literature. But as Pozorski and Jaffe point out in their essay, Albert argues that she needed 

to produce “[a] Great Jewish-American Novel” as if it were a biological imperative 

(Albert, 2006: 179). As Pozorski and Jaffe note: “Although Malamud and Roth thought 

that the Jewish label might affect their relevance, Albert claims the Jewish label with a 

prideful appreciation of those who were labeled against their will. In this way, she takes 



FUTURE RESEARCH LINES 

 

 

389 

 

up Roth’s freedom to be contrary to tradition while simultaneously—and paradoxically—

seeking to become a part of that tradition herself” (2017).  

From my perspective, it is clear that Elisa Albert writes about the lack of 

innocence in America in a way that is relevant nowadays, and she does this using the 

legacy of Roth’s resource of the human stain, which is spilt everywhere in Albert’s 

fiction. In her speech at the Roth Society, during the Roth Remembered Conference (held 

in 2019), she presented a new reading of her own fictional letter addressed to Roth, but 

she also gave a new interpretation of Mickey Sabbath, which I refer to in Chapter II of 

this thesis. To sum up, there is much to be written about this promising Jewish American 

writer, Elisa Albert. In addition, there are many other Jewish American authors whose 

work is certainly worth studying, especially considering the transmission of trauma and 

memory through the generations, as Victoria Aarons explains in the book she edited about 

third-generation writers, Third-Generation Holocaust Narratives: Memory in Memoir 

and Fiction (2016). 

 

 

 

 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

 

 

390 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

 

PRIMARY SOURCES 

 

Roth, Philip. “The Conversion of the Jews”. Goodbye, Columbus and other stories. 

Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1959. 

---. “Eli the Fanatic”. Goodbye, Columbus and other stories. Boston: Houghton Mifflin 

Co., 1959.  

---. “Epstein”. Goodbye, Columbus and other stories. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 

1959. 

---. Portnoy’s Complaint. New York: Vintage, 1994. (first ed. 1969). 

---. Deception. London: Vintage, 2006. (first ed. 1990). 

---. Sabbath’s Theater. New York: Vintage, 1996. (first ed. 1995). 

---. Patrimony. A True Story. New York: Vintage, 1996. 

---. American Pastoral. London: Vintage, 1998. (first ed. 1997).  

---. The Human Stain. London: Vintage, 2001. (first ed. 2000). 

---. The Dying Animal. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2001. 

---. Exit Ghost. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2007. 

---. Indignation. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2008. 

---. Nemesis. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2010.  



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

 

 

391 

 

SECONDARY SOURCES 

 

Aarons, Victoria. “‘There’s No Remaking Reality’: Philip Roth’s Everyman and the 

Ironies of Body and Spirit.” Xavier Review, vol. 21., no. 1, 2007, 116-27. 

Aarons, Victoria. “Not Getting It: The Allure of the Counterlife in Early and Late 

Roth.” Philip Roth Studies, vol. 13, no. 1, 2017, 29-44. 

Aarons, Victoria, ed. The New Jewish American Literary Studies. Cambridge University 

Press, 2019. 

Aarons, Victoria. “Reading Roth/Reading Ourselves: Looking Back.” Philip Roth 

Studies, vol. 15, no. 1, 2019, 27-32. 

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. “In Conversation: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.” 

Interview by David Marchesa, Vulture, 9 July 2018. 

www.vulture.com/2018/07/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-in-conversation.html. 

Accessed 22 May 2021. 

Albert, Elisa. “Divine Spark: On the Radical Feminism of Roth.” Philip Roth Studies, 

vol. 16, no. 1, 2020, 6-13. 

Andrzejczak, Krzysztof. “Roth, Kafka, Czechoslovakia; Towards the Uneasy 

Schriftstellersein.” Crossing Borders: American Literature and Other Artistic 

Media. Ed. Jadwiga Maszewska. Lodz: Polish Scientific Press, 1992, 31-38. 

Bakewell, Geoffrey W. “Philip Roth’s Oedipal Stain.” Classical and Modern 

Literature, vol. 24, no. 2, 2004, 29-46. 

http://www.vulture.com/2018/07/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-in-conversation.html


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

 

 

392 

 

Banita, Georgiana. “Philip Roth’s Fictions of Intimacy and the Aging of America.” 

Narratives of Life: Mediating Age. Ed. Heike Hartung and Roberta Maierhofer. 

Wien: LIT, 2009, 91-112. 

Barta, Damon. “Philip Roth’s American Pastoral and the Culture War: Innocence, 

Nostalgia and American Historiography” Philip Roth Studies, vol. 14, no. 1, 25-

35. 

Basu, Ann. “Remembering Roth: The Sharp Mustard Flavor of The Human Stain.” 

Philip Roth Studies, vol. 15, no. 1, 2019, 33-38. 

Baumgarten, Murray, and Barbara Gottfried. Understanding Philip Roth. Columbia: 

University of South Carolina Press, 1990. 

Bellow, Saul, ed. “Introduction” in Great Jewish Stories. New York: Dell Publishing 

Co., 1963. 

Berger, Alan L., and Cronin, Gloria L. Jewish American and Holocaust Literature: 

Representation in the Postmodern World. State University of New York Press, 

2004. 

Berlinerblau, Jacques. “What Is Secular Literature? Philip Roth as Case Study.” Philip 

Roth Studies, vol. 14, no. 2, 2018, 66-89. 

Biale, David. “Dilemmas of Desire.” Eros and the Jews: From Biblical Israel to 

Contemporary America. By David Biale. Berkeley: University of California 

Press, 1997, 1-10. 

The Bible. New International Version. Bible Gateway. 

www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%207&version=NIV. 

Accessed 22 May 2021. 

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%207&version=NIV


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

 

 

393 

 

Blochner, Henri. Original Sin: Illuminating the Riddle. Leicester: Apollos, 1997. 

Bloom, Harold, ed. Philip Roth, 2003. Philadelphia: Chelsea House. 

Bluefarb, Sam. “The Human Stain: A Satiric Tragedy of the Politically Incorrect” in 

Playful and Serious. Philip Roth as a Comic Writer. Newark: University of 

Delaware Press, 2010, 222-228. 

Body, Kasia. “Philip Roth’s Great Books: A Reading of The Human Stain.” The 

Cambridge Quarterly, vol. 39, no. 1, 2010, 39-60.  

Bradbury, Malcolm. The Modern American Novel. Oxford & New York: Oxford 

University Press, 1992 (updated edition). 

Brauner, David. “American Anti-Pastoral: Incontinence and Impurity in American 

Pastoral and The Human Stain.” Studies in American Jewish Literature, vol. 23, 

2004, 67-76. 

Brauner, David. Philip Roth. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007. 

Brauner, David. “Masturbation and its discontents; or, Serious Relief: Freudian Comedy 

in Portnoy’s Complaint.” in Playful and Serious. Philip Roth as a Comic Writer. 

Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2010, 47-67. 

Brühwiler, Claudia Franziska and Lee Trepanier, eds. A Political Companion to Philip 

Roth. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2017.  

Burch, C. Beth and Paul-William Burch. “The ‘World's Least Thunderous Person’: 

Another Look at Philip Roth’s ‘Conversion of the Jews’.” Philip Roth Studies, 

vol. 16, no. 2, 2020, 84-92. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

 

 

394 

 

Chametzky, Jules et al. “Wandering and Return: Literature since 1973” in Jewish-

American Literature. A Norton Anthology. Ed. Jules Chametzky, John Felstiner, 

Hilene Flanzbaum & Kathryn Hellerstein. New York & London: W. W. Norton 

& Company, 2001, 979-986. 

Chard-Hutchinson, Martine. “‘The Artifice of Eternity’: The Nude as Topos in Bernard 

Malamud’s ‘Naked Nude’ and Philip Roth’s The Dying Animal.” Philip Roth 

Studies, vol. 4, no. 1, 2008, 29-38.  

Cherolis, Stephanie. “Philip Roth’s Pornographic Elegy: The Dying Animal as a 

Contemporary Meditation on Loss.” Philip Roth Studies, vol. 2, no. 1, 2006, 13-

25. 

Cohen, Joseph. “Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained: Reflections on Philip Roth’s Recent 

Fiction.” Studies in American Jewish Literature, vol. 8, 1989, 196-204. 

Cohen, Samuel. After the End of History: American Fiction in the 1990s. University of 

Iowa Press, 2009.  

Connolly, Andy. “Posthumous Roth: Reflections on the Dilemmas of Historicizing 

Philip Roth’s Fiction.” Philip Roth Studies, vol. 15, no. 2, 2019, 5-23. 

Cooper, Alan. Philip Roth and the Jews. State University of New York Press, 1996. 

Daly, Mary. Gyn-Ecology. Beacon Press, 1978.  

Detweiler, Robert. “Philip Roth and the Test of the Dialogic Life.” Four Spiritual 

Crises in Mid-Century American Fiction. Gainesville: University Press of 

Florida, 1963, 25-35. 

Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. 

Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

 

 

395 

 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Essays and Lectures. New York: Library of America, 1983.  

Epstein, Isidore. Judaism: a historical presentation. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 

1959. 

Fahy, Thomas. “Filling the Love Vessel: Women and Religion in Philip Roth’s 

Uncollected Short Fiction.” Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish 

Studies, vol. 19, no. 1, 2000, 117-26. 

Field, Leslie. “Philip Roth: Days of Whine and Moses.” Studies in American Jewish 

Literature, vol. 5, no.2, 1979, 11-14. 

Fienkielkraut, Alain. The Imaginary Jew. [S.l.]: University of Nebraska Press, 1994 

(first ed. 1980).  

Furman, Andrew. “The Ineluctable Holocaust in the Fiction of Philip Roth.” Studies in 

American Jewish Literature (1981-), vol. 12, 1993, 109-121. 

Gilotta, David. “The Body in Shame: Philip Roth’s Physical Comedy” in Playful and 

Serious. Philip Roth as a Comic Writer. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 

2010, 92-116. 

Girgus, Sam B. “Between Goodbye, Columbus and Portnoy: Becoming a Man and a 

Writer in Roth’s Feminist ‘Family Romance’.” Studies in American Jewish 

Literature, vol. 8, no. 2, 1989, 143-53.  

Goldberg, RL. “‘Incest, Blood, Shame. Are They Not Enough to Make One Feel 

Sinful?’: Miltonic Figurations of Incest and Disobedience in Philip Roth’s 

American Pastoral.” Philip Roth Studies, vol. 16, no. 1, 2020, 33-52. 

Gooblar, David. The Major Phases of Philip Roth. London, New York: Continuum, 

2011. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

 

 

396 

 

Gooblar, David. “Introduction: Roth and Women.” Philip Roth Studies, no. 8, vol. 1, 

2012, 7-15.  

Green, Geoffrey. “Metamorphosing Kafka: The Example of Philip Roth.” The Dove and 

the Mole: Kafka's Journey into Darkness and Creativity. Ed. Ronald Gottesman 

and Moshe Lazar. Malibu: Undena, 1987. 35-46. 

Greenberg Robert. “Transgression in the Fiction of Philip Roth”, Twentieth Century 

Literature, vol. 43, no. 4, 1997, 487-506. 

Greenham, David. “The Concept of Irony: Jane Austen’s Emma and Philip Roth’s 

Sabbath’s Theater.” Philip Roth Studies, vol. 1, 2005, 163-174. 

Halio, Jay L. “American Pastoral, by Philip Roth.” West Lafayette, Shofar, vol. 18, no. 

1, 1999, 137. 

Halio, Jay L. and Siegel, Ben. Turning Up the Flame. Philip Roth’s Later Novels. 

Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2005. 

Halio, Jay L. “Eros and Death in Roth’s Later Fiction.” Turning up the Flame: Philip 

Roth’s Later Fiction. Ed. Jay L. Halio and Ben Siegel. Newark: University of 

Delaware P, 2005, 200-206. 

Halio, Jay L. and Siegel, Ben. Playful and Serious. Philip Roth as a Comic Writer. 

Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2010. 

Halliday, Lisa. Interviewed in the Podcast “Philip Roth in the #MeToo Era” by Dorothy 

Wickenden. The New Yorker (2018). www.newyorker.com/podcast/political-

scene/philip-roth-in-the-metoo-era . Accessed 22 May 2021. 

Hassan, Ihab, et al. Radical Innocence: Studies in the Contemporary American Novel. 

Princeton University, 1961. 

http://www.newyorker.com/podcast/political-scene/philip-roth-in-the-metoo-era
http://www.newyorker.com/podcast/political-scene/philip-roth-in-the-metoo-era


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

 

 

397 

 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. Columbus: Charles E. Merrill, 1969. 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Birthmark. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia 

Library, 1996. (first ed. 1843). 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Passages from the American Note-Books. Ed. Sophia 

Hawthorne. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1883. (first ed. 1868). 

Hayes, Patrick. “Philip Roth and Pleasure.” Philip Roth Studies, vol. 15 no. 1, 2019, 62-

67. 

Hayes, Patrick. Philip Roth: Fiction and Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. 

Hobbs, Alex. “Reading the Body in Philip Roth’s American Pastoral.” Philip Roth 

Studies, vol. 6, no. 1., 2010, 69-83. 

Hogan, Monika. “‘Something So Visceral in With the Rhetorical’: Race, Hypochondria, 

and the Un-Assimilated Body in American Pastoral.” Studies in American 

Jewish Literature, vol. 23, 2004, 1-14. 

Howard, Jane. “Mr Bellow Considers His Planet.” Conversations with Saul Bellow. Ed. 

Gloria L. Cronin & Ben Siegel. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1994, 

77-83. 

Howe, Irving. “Philip Roth Reconsidered.” Commentary, 1972, 69-77. 

Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. London: 

Routledge, 1988. 

Husband, Julie. “Female Hysteria and Sisterhood in Letting Go and When She Was 

Good.” Philip Roth: New Perspectives on an American Author. Ed. Derek 

Parker Royal. Wesport, Conn.: Praeger, 2005, 25-41. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

 

 

398 

 

Ivanova, Velichka. “The Ordinary Life of Ivan Ilych Levov: American Pastoral in 

Dialogue with Tolstoy.” Reading Philip Roth’s American Pastoral. Ed. Velichka 

Ivanova. Toulouse: Presses universitaires du Mirail, 2011, 241-254. 

Ivanova, Velichka, ed. Reading Philip Roth’s American Pastoral. Toulouse: Presses 

universitaires du Mirail, 2011. 

Ivanova, Velichka. “‘My Own Foe from the Other Gender: (Mis)representing Women 

in The Dying Animal’.” Philip Roth Studies, vol. 8, no. 1, 2012, 31-44. 

Ivanova, Velichka, ed. Philip Roth and World Literature. Transatlantic Perspectives 

and Uneasy Passages. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2014. 

Jaffe-Foger, Miriam and Aimee Pozorski. “‘[A]nything but Fragile and Yielding’: 

Women in Roth’s Recent Tetralogy.” Philip Roth Studies, vol. 8, no. 1, 2012, 

81-94. 

Jaffe-Foger, Miriam. “Roth’s Contribution to the Narrativization of Illness”. CLCWeb: 

Comparative Literature and Culture, vol. 16, no. 2, 2014. DOI: 

doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.2408. Accessed 22 May 2021. 

Jaffe-Foger, Miriam. “Narrative Medicine” Anthology on Philip Roth, ed. Maggie 

McKinley. Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 2021 (forthcoming). 

Johnson, Gary. “The Presence of Allegory: The Case of Philip Roth’s American 

Pastoral.” Narrative, vol. 12, no. 3, 2004, 233-48. 

Kaplan, Brett Ashley. “How Many Feminists Does It Take to Screw in a Light Bulb?” 

Philip Roth Studies, vol. 15, no. 1, 2019, 68-78. 

Kelly, Adam. “Imagining Tragedy: Philip Roth’s The Human Stain.” Philip Roth 

Studies, vol. 6, no. 2, 2010, 189-205. 

https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.2408


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

 

 

399 

 

Kermode, Frank. “Howl. Sabbath’s Theater by Philip Roth.” The New York Review of 

Books, vol. 42, no. 18, 1995, 20-23. 

Kliman, Bernice W. “Women in Roth’s Fiction.” Nassau Review, vol. 3, no. 4, 1978, 

75-88. 

Kimmage, Michael. “Fathers and Writers: Kafka’s ‘Letter to His Father’ and Philip 

Roth’s Non-Fiction.” Philip Roth Studies, vol. 9, no. 1, 2013, 27-40. 

Knopp, Josephine Z. “The Ways of Mentshlekhkayt: A Study of Morality in Some 

Fiction of Bernard Malamud and Philip Roth.” Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox 

Jewish Thought, vol. 13, no.3, 1973, 67-84. 

Knowles, Jack. “Yeatsian Agony in Late Roth.” Philip Roth Studies, vol. 13, no. 2, 

2017, 87–94. 

Knowles, Jack. “‘How the Other Half Lives’ American Pastoral and Roth’s Other 

Europe.” Philip Roth Studies, vol. 16, no. 1, 2020, 14-32. 

Krupnick, Mark. “‘A Shit-Filled Life’: Philip Roth’s Sabbath's Theater.” Jewish 

Writing and the Deep Places of the Imagination. Ed. Jean K. Carney and Mark 

Shechner. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005, 15-39. 

Lander, Joshua. “Entering into the Green: Philip Roth and the Pastoral Impulse.” Philip 

Roth Studies, vol. 15, no. 2, 2019, 44-65. 

Lee, Hermione. Philip Roth. New York: Methuen, 1982. 

Lederhendler, Eli. American Jewry. A New History. Cambridge: Cambridge University 

Press, 2017. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

 

 

400 

 

Lodge, David. “Sick with Desire: Philip Roth’s Libertine Professor.” Consciousness 

and the Novel: Connected Essays. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002, 

248-267. 

Louis, Ansu, and Gurumurthy Neelakantan. “Two Versions of Oedipus and Philip 

Roth’s The Human Stain.” Philip Roth Studies, vol. 6, no. 2, 2010, 167-187. 

Lyons, Bonnie. “Philip Roth and Jewish American Literature at the Millenium”. Jewish 

American and Holocaust Literature: Representation in the Postmodern World. 

Eds. Berger, Alan L., and Cronin, Gloria L. State University of New York Press, 

2004, 167-179. 

MacArthur, Kathleen L. “Shattering the American Pastoral: Philip Roth’s Vision of 

Trauma and the American Dream.” Studies in American Jewish Literature, vol. 

23, 2004, 15-26. 

Manea, Norman. “Nearby and Together: Norman Manea on his Friend Philip Roth” Los 

Angeles Review of Books, 23 June 2018. 

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/nearby-and-together-norman-manea-on-his-

friend-philip-roth/ Accessed 22 May 2021. 

Mathews, Peter. “The Pornography of Destruction: Performing Annihilation in The 

Dying Animal.” Philip Roth Studies, vol. 3, 2007, 44-55. 

Masiero, Pia. Philip Roth and the Zuckerman books: The Making of a Storyworld. 

Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2011.  

Masiero, Pia. “Philip Roth in His Silence.” Philip Roth Studies, vol. 15 no. 1, 2019, 86-

91. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

 

 

401 

 

Maxted, Luke. “‘This Is Life, Bozo, Not High Art’: Life, Literature, and the Academy 

in Philip Roth and Vladimir Nabokov.” Philip Roth Studies, vol. 14, no. 2, 2018, 

33-50. 

McDonald, Brian. “‘The Real American Crazy Shit’: On Adamism and Democratic 

Individuality in American Pastoral." Studies in American Jewish Literature, vol. 

23, 2004, 27-40. 

McGrath, Charles. “Zuckerman’s Alter Brain,” New York Times Book Review, May 7, 

2000. 

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/00/05/07/reviews/000507.

07mcgrat.html Accessed 22 May 2021. 

McGrath, Charles. “Philip Roth, Towering Novelist Who Explored Lust, Jewish Life 

and America, Dies at 85.” New York Times, 22 May 2018 

www.nytimes.com/2018/05/22/obituaries/philip-roth-dead.html Accessed 22 

May 2021. 

McGregor, Martha. “The NBA Winner Talks Back.” Conversations with Philip Roth. 

Ed. George J. Searles. Jackson & London: University Press of Mississippi, 1992, 

1-2. 

McKinley, Maggie. “‘I Wanted to Be Humanish: Manly, a Man’: Morality, Shame, and 

Masculinity in Philip Roth's My Life as a Man.” Philip Roth Studies, vol. 9, 

no.1, 2013, 89-101. 

McKinley, Maggie. “Testosterone and Sympathy.” Philip Roth Studies, vol. 15 no. 1, 

2019, 92-97. 

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/00/05/07/reviews/000507.07mcgrat.html
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/00/05/07/reviews/000507.07mcgrat.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/22/obituaries/philip-roth-dead.html


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

 

 

402 

 

McLennan, Rachael. “At Least Associated: When She Was Good and the Vietnam 

Years.” Philip Roth Studies, vol. 16, no. 1, 2020, 74-91. 

Medin, Daniel L. “Trials and Errors at the Turn of the Millennium: On The Human 

Stain and J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace.” Philip Roth Studies, vol.1, no.1, 2005, 82-

92. 

Medin, Daniel L. “Liebliche Lüge?: Philip Roth's ‘Looking at Kafka.’” Comparative 

Literature Studies, vol. 44, no.1-2, 2007, 38-50. 

Mellard, James M. “Death, Mourning, and Besse's Ghost: From Philip Roth's The Facts 

to Sabbath's Theater.” Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, 

vol. 19, no.1, 2000, 66-73. 

Meeter, Glenn. Bernard Malamud and Philip Roth: A Critical Essay. Grand Rapids: 

Eerdsmans, 1968. 

Milbauer, Asher Z. and Donald G. Watson, eds. Reading Philip Roth. New York: St. 

Martin’s Press, 1988. 

Mintz, Lawrence E. “Devil and Angel: Philip Roth’s Humor.” Studies in American 

Jewish Literature, vol. 8, no. 2, 1989, 154-167. 

Morley, Catherine. “‘The Book of My Life is a Book of Voices’: Philip Roth and the 

Bloodlines of his Fiction." Philip Roth Studies, vol. 15 no. 1, 2019, 98-104. 

Nadel, Ira. “Aquatic Roth” Philip Roth Studies, vol. 14, no. 1, 2018, 36-54. 

Neelakantan, Gurumurthy. “Sabbath’s Complaint: Philip Roth’s Black Comedy in 

Sabbath’s Theater” in Playful and Serious. Philip Roth as a Comic Writer. 

Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2010, 195-207. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

 

 

403 

 

Neelakantan, Gurumurthy. “Trauma, Ethics and Psychoanalysis in Philip Roth’s 

Sabbath’s Theater.” Philip Roth Studies, vol. 13, no. 1, 2017, 93-104. 

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. The Genealogy of Morals. The Complete Works, Volume 

Thirteen. Ed. Oscar Levy, 2016. 

O'Donoghue, Gerard. “Roth on the American Screen: ‘Serious’ Literature and Popular 

Democracy.” Philip Roth Studies, vol. 16, no. 1, 2020, 53-73. 

O'Donnell, Patrick. "Roth Memorial." Philip Roth Studies, vol. 15, no. 1, 2019, 111-

115. 

Ozick, Cynthia. “Cynthia Ozick Calls the New Philip Roth Biography a ‘Narrative 

Masterwork’” The New York Times. 1 April 2021. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/01/books/review/philip-roth-the-biography-

blake-bailey.html. Accessed 22 May 2021. 

Pinsker, Sanford. “Philip Roth: The Schlemiel as Fictional Autobiographer.” The 

Schlemiel as Metaphor: Studies in Yiddish and American Jewish Fiction. Ed. 

Sanford Pinsker. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991, 145-162. 

Posnock, Ross. “Purity and Danger: On Philip Roth.” Raritan, vol. 21, no.2, 2001, 85-

103. 

Posnock, Ross. Philip Roth’s Rude Truth. The Art of Immaturity. Princeton: Princeton 

University Press, 2006. 

Powell, Joshua. “The Aesthetics of Impersonation and Depersonalization: Samuel 

Beckett and Philip Roth” Philip Roth Studies, vol 14, no. 2, 2018, 16-32. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/01/books/review/philip-roth-the-biography-blake-bailey.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/01/books/review/philip-roth-the-biography-blake-bailey.html


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

 

 

404 

 

Pozorski, Aimee. “Transnational Trauma and ‘the Mockery of Armageddon’: The 

Dying Animal in the New Millennium.” Studies in American Jewish Literature, 

vol. 23, 2004, 122-134. 

Pozorski, Aimee. Roth and Trauma. The Problem of History in his Later Works (1995-

2010). New York: Continuum, 2011. 

Pozorski, Aimee et al. Roth and Celebrity. Ed. Aimee Pozorski. Lanham: Lexington 

Books, 2012. 

Pozorski, Aimee. “Confronting the ‘C’ Word: Cancer and Death in Philip Roth’s 

fiction” Philip Roth Studies, vol 11, no. 1, 2015, 105-123. 

Pozorski, Aimee. “‘about people like you’: PTSD and the Ethical Relation in Roth’s 

The Human Stain.” Philip Roth Studies, vol. 13 no. 1, 2017, 105-118. 

Pozorski, Aimee and Miriam Jaffe-Foger. “Writing Progeny: Elisa Albert and Philip 

Roth.” Open Library of Humanities, vol. 3, no. 2, 2017, p. 14. DOI: 

http://doi.org/10.16995/olh.262. Accessed 28 May 2021. 

Pozorski, Aimee. “Contemporary American Literature, 1933-2018: Or, the Life and 

Progeny of Philip Roth.” Philip Roth Studies, vol. 15 no. 1, 2019, 121-129. 

Rankine, Patrice D. “Passing as Tragedy: Philip Roth's The Human Stain, the Oedipus 

Myth, and the Self-Made Man.” Critique, vol. 47, no. 1, 2005, 101-112. 

“Refractory.” Cambridge Dictionary. Cambridge University Press, n.d., 

dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/refractory. Accessed 21 Dic. 

2020. 

Remnick, David. “Into the Clear: Philip Roth Puts Turbulence Into Its Place” The New 

Yorker. 8 May 2000, 84-89. 

http://doi.org/10.16995/olh.262


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

 

 

405 

 

Remnick, David. “Philip Roth at 70” Interview for the BBC. BBC4, London, 2003. 

Roberge, Valérie. “The Place of the ‘Aesthetic’ in Zuckerman Unbound: Roth's 

Conversation with Kierkegaard.” Philip Roth Studies, vol. 13, no. 1, 2017, 75-

91. 

Roberge, Valérie. “Roth’s Lesson in Irony”. Roth Remembered Conference, 2019.  

Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco. El río de la literatura. De Sumeria y Homero a 

Shakespeare y Cervantes. Barcelona: Ariel, 2014. 

Roth, Philip. Reading Myself and Others. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975. 

---. (ed.). Writers from the Other Europe. Penguin, 1989. 

---. Operation Shylock. 1993. Vintage, 1994. 

---. Shop Talk: A Writer and His Colleagues and Their Work. New York: Houghton 

Mifflin, 2001. 

---. Web of Stories Online Video Archive: Roth talks about his life and work in great 

depth and detail. Recorded in NYC, March 2011. 

---.  Philip Roth at 80. A Celebration. New York: The Library of America, 2014. 

---. “Interview with Le Nouvel Observateur.” Why Write? Collected Nonfiction 1960-

2013. Library of America, 2017, 123-134. 

---. Philip Roth: Why Write?: Collected Nonfiction 1960-2013. Library of America, 

2017. 

---. “A Celebration of the Life and Work of Philip Roth.” booktv.org (2013): 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

 

 

406 

 

www.booktv.org/Watch/14403/A+Celebration+of+the+Life+and+Work+of+Philip+Rot

h.aspx. Accessed 22 May 2021. 

Roth Pierpont, Claudia. Roth Unbound. A writer and his books. New York: Farrar, 

Straus and Giroux. 2013. 

Roth, Zoe. “Against Representation: Death, Desire, and Art in Philip Roth’s The Dying 

Animal.” Philip Roth Studies, vol. 8, no. 1, 2012, 95-100. 

Royal, Derek Parker. “Plotting the Frames of Subjectivity: Identity, Death, and 

Narrative in Philip Roth’s The Human Stain.” Contemporary Literature, vol. 47, 

no. 1, 2006, 114-140. 

Rudin, Max. “Remembering Philip Roth, prolific American writer and ‘ruthlessly 

honest observer’”. PBS News Hour, 23 May 2018. 

www.pbs.org/newshour/show/remembering-philip-roth-prolific-american-

writer-and-ruthlessly-honest-observer#transcript . Accessed 22 May 2021. 

Ruland, Richard, and Malcolm Bradbury. From Puritanism to Postmodernism: A 

History of American Literature. Penguin Books, 1992. 

Safer, Elaine B. “The Tragicomic in Philip Roth’s Sabbath’s Theater.” American 

Literary Dimensions: Poems and Essays in Honor of Melvin J. Friedman. Ed. 

Ben Siegel and Jay L. Halio. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1999, 168-

179. 

Safer, Elaine B. “Tragedy and Farce in Roth’s The Human Stain.” Critique: Studies in 

Contemporary Fiction, vol. 43, no. 3, 2002, 211-227. 

Safer, Elaine. Mocking the Age: The Later Novels of Philip Roth. New York: SUNY 

Press, 2006. 

http://www.booktv.org/Watch/14403/A+Celebration+of+the+Life+and+Work+of+Philip+Roth.aspx
http://www.booktv.org/Watch/14403/A+Celebration+of+the+Life+and+Work+of+Philip+Roth.aspx
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/remembering-philip-roth-prolific-american-writer-and-ruthlessly-honest-observer#transcript
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/remembering-philip-roth-prolific-american-writer-and-ruthlessly-honest-observer#transcript


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

 

 

407 

 

Safer, Elaine. “Operation Shylock: The Double, the Comic, and the Quest for Identity” 

in Playful and Serious. Philip Roth as a Comic Writer. Newark: University of 

Delaware Press, 2010, 152-180. 

Sánchez-Canales, Gustavo. “The Classical World and Modern Academia in Philip 

Roth’s The Human Stain.” Philip Roth Studies, vol. 5, no. 1, 2009, 111-128. 

Sánchez-Canales, Gustavo. “Interrelations between Literature and Life: Literary 

Mentors in Philip Roth’s The Professor of Desire.” The Icfai University Press, 

vol. 3, no.1-2, 2010, 68-79. 

Sánchez-Canales, Gustavo. “‘There Is a Bomb Blast in the Most Elegant Greek Revival 

House:’ Classical Motifs in Philip Roth’s American Pastoral.” Reading Philip 

Roth’s American Pastoral. Ed. Velichka D Ivanova. Toulouse: Presses 

Universitaires du Mirail, 2011a, 205-217. 

Sánchez-Canales, Gustavo. “About Society: A Book Review Article of Work on Roth 

and Kundera by Shostak and Ivanova.” CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and 

Culture, vol. 13, no. 4, 2011b. <https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.1872> 

Accessed 22 May 2021. 

Sánchez-Canales, Gustavo. “‘I Look at the Filthy Floor and See Myself Sweeping It’: 

The Influence of Franz Kafka’s Surreal World on Philip Roth’s The Professor of 

Desire and The Prague Orgy.” In The Dream: Readings in English and 

American Literature and Culture. Eds. Ilona Dobosiewicz and Jacek Gutorow. 

Uniwersytet Opolski, 2011c, 199-215. 

Sánchez-Canales, Gustavo, and Victoria Aarons, eds. History, Memory, and the Making 

of Character in Roth’s Fiction. Thematic Issue CLCWeb: Comparative 

https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.1872


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

 

 

408 

 

Literature and Culture, vol. 16, no. 2, 2014a. <https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-

4374.2403> Accessed 22 May 2021. 

Sánchez-Canales, Gustavo. “European Literary Tradition in Roth's Kepesh Trilogy.” 

Clcweb, vol. 16, no. 2, 2014b.  

Sánchez-Canales, Gustavo. “‘Suffering Post-traumatic Effects from a Genocide That 

Happened, But Not to Her’: Shalom Auslander’s Use of Comedy in Hope: A 

tragedy” in A Critical Gaze from the Old World: Transatlantic Perspectives on 

American Studies. Ed. Isabel Durán, Rebeca Gualberto, Eusebio de Lorenzo, 

Carmen M. Méndez-García & Eduardo Valls. Benn, Berlin, Bruxelles, New 

York, Oxford, Warszawa &Wien: Peter Lang, 2018, 251-269. 

Sánchez-Canales, Gustavo. Annotated Bibliography. Verbeia 3.3 (2019) 106-125.  

Sánchez-Canales, Gustavo. “Antisemitism.” Philip Roth in Context. Ed. Maggie 

McKinley. Cambridge University Press, 2021, 241-251. 

Savin, Ada. “Exposure and Concealment in The Human Stain” Eds. Lévy and Savin 

2002, 181-197. 

Searles, George J., ed. Conversations with Philip Roth. Jackson: University Press of 

Mississippi, 1992. 

Scheurer, Maren. “A Psychopathology of Everyday Women: Psychoanalytic Aesthetics 

and Gender Politics in Letting Go and ‘The Psychoanalytic Special’.” Philip 

Roth Studies, vol. 13 no. 1, 2017, 13-28.  

Schechner, Peter. “Roth’s Falstaff: Transgressive Humor in Sabbath’s Theater.” The 

Midwest Quarterly, vol. 46, no. 3, 2005, 220-35. 

https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.2403
https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.2403


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

 

 

409 

 

Schechner, Mark. Up Society’s Ass, Copper. Rereading Philip Roth. Madison: 

University of Wisconsin Press, 2003. 

Schechner, Mark. “Is Philip Roth an Erotic Writer?” Eros. USA: Essays on the Culture 

and Literature of Desire. Ed. Cheryl Alexander Malcolm and Jopi Nyman. 

Gdańsk: Gdańsk University, 2005, 75-85. 

Schreier, Benjamin. The Rise and Fall of Jewish American Literature. Ethnic Studies 

and the Challenge of Identity. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press. 

Seeley, Gabrielle and Jeffrey Rubin-Dorsky. “'The pointless meaningfulness of living': 

Illuminating The Human Stain through The Scarlet Letter.” Philip Roth. 

American Pastoral, The Human Stain, The Plot Against America. Ed. Shostak, 

Debra. Continuum, 2011. 

Sigrist-Sutton, Clare. “Mistaking Merry: Tearing Off the Veil in American Pastoral.” 

Philip Roth Studies, vol. 6, no. 1, 2010, 47-68. 

Siegel, Ben and Jay L. Halio. Playful and Serious: Philip Roth as Comic Writer. 

Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2010. 

Siegel, Ben. Turning Up the Flame: Philip Roth’s Later Novels. Ed. Jay L. Halio and 

Ben Siegel. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2005. 

Shakespeare, William, and Harold Bloom. Macbeth. Edited by Burton Raffel, Yale 

University Press, 2005. 

Shipe, Matthew. “Exit Ghost and the Politics of ‘Late Style.’” Philip Roth Studies, vol. 

5, no. 2, 2009, 189-204. 

Shipe, Matthew. “Roth at Century’s End: The Problem of Progress in The Dying 

Animal.” A Political Companion to Philip Roth. Eds. Claudia Franziska 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

 

 

410 

 

Brühwiler and Lee Trepanier, University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, 

Kentucky, 2017, 135-160. 

Shipe, Matthew “After the Fall. The Terror of History in Philip Roth’s Indignation.” 

Philip Roth Studies, vol. 14, no. 1, 2018, 1-24. 

Shipe, Matthew. “Getting People Wrong: Some Preliminary Thoughts on Philip Roth’s 

Passing.” Philip Roth Studies, vol. 15, no. 1, 2019, 130-134. 

Shostak, Debra. “Return to the Breast: The Body, the Masculine Subject, and Philip 

Roth.” Twentieth Century Literature, vol. 45, no. 3, 1999, 317–317. 

Shostak, Debra. Philip Roth: Countertexts, Counterlives. 2004. Columbia: University of 

South Carolina. 

Shostak, Debra. “Roth and Gender.” The Cambridge Companion to Philip Roth, edited 

by Timothy Parrish, Cambridge University Press, 2007, 111-26. 

Shostak, Debra, ed. American Pastoral, The Human Stain, The Plot Against America. 

London: Continuum, 2011. 

Shostak, Debra. “Late Style in the Later Novels.” Critical Insights: Philip Roth. Ed. 

Aimee Pozorski. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2013, 164-84. 

Shostak, Debra. “Roth’s Graveyards, Narrative Desire, and ‘Professional Competition 

with Death’.” CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, vol. 16, no. 2, 

2014.DOI:  http://dx.doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.2407. Accessed 22 May 2021. 

Shostak, Debra. “Philip Roth and Life as a Man.” A Political Companion to Philip Roth, 

edited by Claudia Franziska Brühwiler and Lee Trepanier. Lexington, Kentucky: 

University Press of Kentucky, 2017, 191-219.  

http://dx.doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.2407


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

 

 

411 

 

Showalter, Elaine. “Many feminists find Philip Roth’s work off-putting. Elaine 

Showalter thinks he’s a titan.” Interview with Christopher Shea, 2018. 

www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2018/5/25/17393762/philip-roth-elaine-showalter-

interview-death-portnoy-zuckerman-novels-literary-feminism. Accessed 22 May 

2021. 

Smith, Zadie. “Philip Roth, A Writer All the Way Down” The New Yorker, 23 May 

2018. www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/philip-roth-a-writer-all-the-way-

down. Accessed 22 May 2021. 

Taylor, Benjamin, ed. Saul Bellow. Letters. New York: Viking, 2010. 

Trendel, Aristi. “Master and Pupil in Philip Roth’s The Dying Animal.” Philip Roth 

Studies, vol. 3, no. 1, 2007, 56-65. 

Wade, Stephen. Jewish American Literature Since 1945: An Introduction. Edinburgh: 

Edinburgh University Press, 1999. 

Witcombe, Mike. “Counter-Reading Kepesh: Textual Subversion in Philip Roth’s The 

Dying Animal.” Litteraria Pragensia, vol 15, no. 49, 2015, 60-72. 

Witcombe, Mike. “In the Roth Archives: The Evolution of Philip Roth’s Kepesh 

Trilogy.” Philip Roth Studies, vol. 13, no. 1, 2017, 45-63. 

Witcombe, Mike. “Was Philip Roth a Misogynist?” The Conversation, 23 May 2018, 

https://theconversation.com/was-philip-roth-a-misogynist-97114. Accessed 22 

May 2021. 

Wisse, Ruth R. “Requiem in Several Voices.” The Schlemiel as Modern Hero. Ed. Ruth 

R. Wisse. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971, 118-123. 

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/philip-roth-a-writer-all-the-way-down
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/philip-roth-a-writer-all-the-way-down
https://theconversation.com/was-philip-roth-a-misogynist-97114


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

 

 

412 

 

Woods, James. “The Monk of Fornication: Philip Roth’s Nihilism.” The Broken Estate: 

Essays on Literature and Belief. Ed. James Woods. New York: Random House, 

1999, 200-212. 

Yaross Lee, Judith. “Affairs of the Breast: Philip Roth and David Kepesh.” Playful and 

Serious. Philip Roth as a Comic Writer. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 

2010, 68-91. 

Zamyatin, Yevgeny. A Soviet Heretic. Essays by Yevgeny Zamyatin. Ed. and trans. 

Mirra Ginsburg. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970. 

Zucker, David J. “Philip Roth: Desire and Death.” Studies in American Jewish 

Literature, vol. 23, 2004, 135-144. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 


	Tesis Lluvia de Segovia de Kraker
	PORTADA
	PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
	ABBREVIATIONS
	RESUMEN
	ABSTRACT
	TABLE OF CONTENTS
	INTRODUCTION
	CHAPTER I. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF PURITY
	CHAPTER II. THE STAIN OF TRANSGRESSION
	CHAPTER III. THE STAIN OF SUFFERING
	FINAL CONCLUSIONS
	BIBLIOGRAPHY