At Grossbart's instigation, the writer got even, by seeing to it that the young soldier's orders were changed so that he went to the Pacific with the rest instead of to N.J. Bellow was speaking about Roth's 1969 novel “Portnoy's Complaint,” but the hubbub over that book-and others that Roth has published since-often obscures the strong reaction occasioned by Roth's short story “Defender of the Faith,” which appeared a decade earlier in the March 14, 1959, issue of The. IN MAY OF 1945, ONLY A FEW WEEKS AFTER the fighting had ended in Europe, I was rotated back to the States, where I spent the remainder of the war with a training company at Camp Crowder, Missouri. Philip Roth: “Defender of Faith” page 1 of 27. Yes, some things are more important to some Jews than other things to other Jews.įortunately for us, telling the complicated and sometimes ugly truth was supremely important to Philip Roth.SAVE CANCEL already exists Would you an analysis of defender of the faith by philip roth like to merge this question into it? Of the faith philip roth pdf an analysis of defender of the faith by philip roth defender of Defender of the faith analysis pdf Start studying US LIT Final: Philip Roth and John Barth. Of course, Marx does not know what Philip Roth did: the atomic bomb would shortly end the War in the Pacific, so his anguish over having pushed a fellow Jew into the line of fire was wasted, as anguish often is. So one Jewish soldier goes out of his way to have another sent to his probable death.
Marx has his revenge, pulling strings to reverse Grossbarts successful campaign to be sent to Monmouth, New Jersey, rather than the Pacific. Marx, the tough, secular Jewish combat veteran finally gives in to Grossbarts incessant whining and gives him and several of his friends the pass they crave.Īfter all, for all his cynicism, Marx still remembers his own grandmothers loving attention and its lesson that mercy overrides justice. Yet Marx was perfectly willing to eat non-kosher food as part of his army service.
In an even more outrageous violation of Jewish solidarity, it is the vaguely anti-Semitic Captain Barrett who rather sensibly points out to Grossbart the hypocrisy of his religious scruples, stating that Marx had been killing Nazis in Europe when he, Grossbart, was still in high school. When Marx shows disdain for the soldiers implausible fidelity to Jewish law, Grossbart compares him to the passive Jews who had only recently allowed themselves to be slaughtered: Thats what happened in GermanyThey didnt stick together.īefore the term Holocaust had even come into use, Roth has one Jewish character accuse another of complicity in this horror. Grossbarts scheme to get Marx to sign off on a leave from base during basic training involves a persistent claim that he needs to eat kosher food, and to attend his aunts Seder, although Passover has been over for a month. The letter ends up on the desk of a goddam congressman, forcing the ambivalent Jew Nathan Marx to explain to his superiors that Jewish parents, sirtheyre apt to be more protective than you expect. Respect for parents Grossbart forges a letter from his mother complaining about the non-kosher food he is forced to eat. Roth explodes every sacred stereotype about Jewish life, leaving ugly little fragments. As Grossbart explains to a non-Jewish captain frustrated with his odd requests for religious accommodations, Some things are more important to some Jews than other things to other Jews.
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