The End of Identity: Philip Roth's American Pastoral

Abstract

With American Pastoral Roth completes the assimilation story his fiction has previously been telling by rendering judgment upon its naive hopefulness. In rewriting Zuckerman's story through the story of Swede Levov, Roth rewrites his Zuckerman œuvre to stage a reconciliation with the Jewish past his fiction has struggled to escape. Through his identification with Swede, Zuckerman at last surrenders to the demands of the Jewish father. When Swede dies we understand that Zuckerman in a sense has died too. Zuckerman's performing American self inhabits Swede's corpse to identify the Jew who remains.