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Restoring the Universal: Roth’s Use of Archetypes in his Zuckerman Trilogy

William Dever

     “Furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us. The labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero...and where we had thought to be alone, we will be with all the world.”

-Joseph Campbell

In several of the works of author Phillip Roth, the semi-fictitious world of (author) Nathan Zuckerman is reflected in his story telling of the people he has know in his (fictitious) life that constitutes the “Zuckerman Trilogy”: American Pastoral, I married a Communist, and The Human Stain. Roth’s Zuckerman presents a commentary on the human condition and cultural values that exist for him and the characters he writes about. Through interpretation of the primary characters via Zuckerman’s eyes, an argument can be put forth that these are manifestation of classic literary and cultural archetypes which generate enough gravitas to facilitate the reader with identifiable aspects of the human condition, as well as render meaning that defies the relativity of the literary landscape of deconstruction. Through these figures, as well as his input through literary devices in the novels, Roth’s sends a message that universal meaning can be an obtainable condition through storytelling. This can be transposed onto the field of literary theory as well, which can be said with no uncertainty to be moving beyond deconstruction in the post 9-11 academic world.

While it can be logically said that Roth is not Zuckerman, Zuckerman is Roth. Therefore, I contend that a point can be made that although the narrator is primarily ambivalent in his feelings towards cultural interpretation, Roth offers subtle clues to his stance on literary and cultural meaning-seeking through the various asides in the novels; such as undelivered speeches, letters, or third-party interjections of opinion. Once accepted as Roth’s rhetorical stance on issues of postmodern culture, these asides can be applied to the corresponding aspects of literary criticism as they relate to the notion of a newer possible trend in this period of post post-structuralism, specifically in this case; an archetypical/existential form of inquiry. Roth makes it plain that his characters themselves are grounded in a reality all to themselves, where the interest or conflict is not with their inability to self-identify, but their inability to sustain this identification in their surrounding universe. Often this means a reflection of postmodern society that has little use for traditionalists like Coleman Silk, or Platonic idealists like Swede Levov.  

First and foremost, one must address the narrator within the narration aspect of the novels. Is the narrator Zuckerman a trustworthy filter through which the aspirations, feelings, and developments of the main characters come across as unbiased and ambivalent? He himself admits that at his age, along with his experience and immediate setting, is somewhat disconnected from those he would write about. Clearly Zuckerman is a presence that cannot be circumvented in the novels. Does his story telling supersede the actual stories of the characters themselves? The perspective of the author-in-hibernation is not new in literature, but for Zuckerman to be believed as a narrator possessing an extra-perspective to the narrative, it becomes crucial, and his prolonged isolation from society, both physically and cohesively, lends more credence to him as a source than one less distant. I contend that Roth’s objectives for Zuckerman are made clear from the beginnings of the trilogy. The reader is left to see the world reflected through a filter of an aging, New Jersey born, Jewish writer that has been left both incontinent and impotent by prostate surgery, and who has chosen to live, as he tells Jerry Levov in American Pastoral; “Up in the woods. About ten miles from Athena. I met a famous writer up there... [he] lived like a hermit. Reclusion looked awfully austere to a kid. He maintained it solved his problems. Now it solves mine” (63). This early insight provides the reader with a sense of apathy from the narrator that would later be confirmed in Roth’s novel Exit Ghost. The question is whether Zuckerman has a meta-awareness of this presence in the novels, and how that affects meaning. He addresses this awareness in I married a Communist: “My seclusion is not the story here. It is not a story in any way. I came here because I don't want a story any longer. I've had my story" (71). At this point, Roth is stating to the reader that he or she should not try to infer any ulterior meaning from the text because of this narrative structure. Roth’s fictional author offers a somewhat flawed perspective of these characters in a somber retrospect, which lends an ominous feel to much of the novels' narratives. Gloria Fisk uses several Greek terms to describe works such as these. Diegesis is one, referring to the telling of a story by an author. She ascertains that: “This mitigating presence [Zuckerman] comes after the disaster much as the reader inevitably does: to look back, and try in vain to imagine how horrible it must have been” (Fisk 5). The reader must only discern the difference between Roth’s Diegesis and Zuckerman’s. This may be true in I Married a Communist more so than any of the others, because the story of Ira Ringold (young Zuckerman’s hero) comes to the reader third-hand as he relates his conversations with Ira’s brother, Murray, about the controversial communist. The same is true about the author’s portrayal of “Swede” Levov in American Pastoral, for most of Levov’s story is admittedly created by Zuckerman throughout the novel to fill in the period they were not in contact. In that story, as well as The Human Stain, the protagonists have also asked the author to write about some aspects of their lives. In effect, these literary requests provide Zuckerman with the task of creative interjection and literary license. For this reason, his stories become messages of learning, each a crucial system, self-defined and available as a moral lesson, complete with its own mythos, ethos, and pathos.

The interpretation presented by Zuckerman is not omnipresent; therefore the only trustworthy aspects of the novels are the actual inputs and asides by the fictional author himself, which serve as rhetoric for the reader. If a true rhetorical meaning of the moral message is to be interpreted from the text correctly, then the voice of Zuckerman must be accepted as a valid conduit for the descriptive adaptation of the protagonists in the novels and the events that transpire within. The validity of the event’s connotation is secondary to what they mean to Zuckerman. In essence, the message outweighs the messenger, regardless of factuality. Derek Royal agrees when he states that:

          Given that Zuckerman "can't know anything" about all that happened to Silk, he relies on   

          the power of his own imaginings, a narrative strategy he effectively utilized in American

          Pastoral. And as in the previous novel, his attempts to re-imagine another life, his

          forgetting about being right or wrong and ‘just going along for the ride,’ help to reveal the

          ways in which he constructs his own identity. (Royal 121)

This creates a situation where the author is approaching, or judging the subject from an outside, or extra-perspective. Critics that support Derrida’s and others’ view of deconstruction would argue that this interpretation is flawed, since there is never a true “outside” or “universal” source, or a “god” perspective. Friedrich Nietzsche, would agree. He states in The Will to Power that “There are no isolated judgments! An isolated judgment is never ‘true’, never knowledge, only in the connection and relation of many judgments is there any surety” (Nietzsche 287, WP 530). The German philosopher is suggesting that in the metaphysical universe of thought, there are only a collection of other judgments, whose validity or precedence depend solely on the context in which they exist. While this may be true for interpreting the meaning of a text, I argue that the task of character interpretation is solely Zuckerman’s, and that through his fable-weaving they convert into mythical figures whose stories form a moral pedagogy.

Staunch proponents of deconstruction may consider the basis of learning to be contextual, however, I would answer that while that may be true in relation to judgments, it does not discount the primal forces which reinforce the concept of universal understanding through the collective physiological and sociological history of humankind. Darwinian Theory teaches survival of the fittest, and in this case one could argue that those early human animals who learned from others mistakes survived. Nietzsche also reminds us that while animals have no sense of history, thereby enjoying the freedoms of spontaneous living, they lack the collective understanding of humankind that allows it to flourish. Insight related to learning is especially consistent when considering these metaphysical aspects of the human mind. Let us further that thought by not forgetting that the interpretive facets of the human being, although varied and independently marked by age, sex, and every other aspect of the socioeconomic strata, are based on the same primitive physiological principles that were employed by our genetically identical ancestors. Their learning processes separately, but collectively, prescribed similar meanings to physical phenomena worldwide; such as death, lightning, and other mysterious entities. These processes led to the establishment of mythology as a learning tool for survival. I argue that Roth recognizes the difference between the establishment of a true epistemological method, in which the mythologies of his characters contain precepts of self-preservation and empowerment as true universal human conditions, and simple cultural identification, based on interpretation. In other words, we can learn from others’ mistakes. The communal visages of human experience can, as Bill Moyers’ question of Joseph Campbell, indicate a “standard pattern of human aspiration and thought...something we have in common, whether we lived a million years ago or...a thousand years from now” (Campbell 157). The first pedagogical steps focused on the primal forces: fear and desire, and these primitive survival stories and explanations formed the basis of mythology. According to Campbell; “The stages of human development are the same today as they were in ancient times” (87). He is referring to the life’s journey, different for all, but intrinsically tied to the same basic process of growth and death, and its affect on the epistemological development: “The folk idea unshells the elementary idea, which guides you to your own inward life” (87). What then, are some specific mythological lessons of Roth’s trilogy?

It can be said that the fictional Zuckerman stories offer a readily identifiable character base which translates to the real-life contemporary America, allowing the reader to form associations that can be traced back to all forms of familiar archetypes: Greek, biblical, and other literary figures, as well as the more contemporary American-Jewish stereotypes. The Swede in American Pastoral can be viewed as a sort of god, or demigod. In fact, he is worshiped by Zuckerman as an example of the anti-typical Jewish hero (the blond-haired, blue-eyed jock). During the course of the novel, Swede’s external actions remain true to his noble ambitions, and he succeeds in his role as the Heracles, or Zeus to his people. The need for hero worship, and the need for that hero to fail, is apparent t o all but him. His weakness is not his ambition, or is it his attempt to stabilize a changing world, but his refusal to recognize his place among the mortals, especially as the father of the destructive, anti-hero; Meredith, who for him became his “Minerva”: “Zeus’ favorite child who was not born but sprang from his head” (Hamilton 30). As the hero he is not content with her own self-contained identity, and perceives her as a personal failure which dominates the other aspects of his conscience. The Swede will sacrifice everything based on his idealism and unselfishness, blaming himself for the actions of his misguided offspring and protect her at all cost. In this case, it could also be said that a sort of Oedipus complex existed between the father and daughter, one in which the Swede’s legacy must be supplanted or amended by the (mis)deeds of the child. The inability of the god-like Swede to be mortal causes his fall. His rose-colored perception of the world is offset by his pragmatic brother Jerry. Here, as in I Married a Communist is the dichotomy of the two brothers. Like the stories of the prodigal son or Cane and Abel, the brother with the supposed higher morality is not the one that ultimately succeeds, but rather learns that life has its own set of rules and orders that are sometimes vicious and unfair. This propensity for the strong, or more knowledgeable surviving, invokes Darwinian concepts on a sociological level, for these conditions are not limited to a place or time, but describe aspects of the human condition as recognized as universal by many since the ancient times. Like many mythical story tellers, Zuckerman describes the rise and fall of the Swede within an air of inevitability, hinting to the reader an ominous fate. The same can be said of Ira Ringold.

The controversial activist and radio personality is a hero to the young Zuckerman, much as the Swede was. His lesser accomplished, but likeably common brother, Murray, is not as meaningful to young Nathan or the reader. It is the hero, or shadowy anti-hero, that we seek to identify with. The stories of their fated journeys become our lessons. Where Jung has made these figures the focus, I maintain that in these types of novels, it is the narrator’s story, or Diegesis, which serve as the learning system for the reader. Specifically, this means that the characters themselves become tools for learning, and the natural psychological processes of identification and association commence as quickly as possible for the reader. In all of the three stories the characters are unaware of their own tragic flaws. Neither the character nor the narrator may have access to the universal message in any work of fiction, that is to say they do not really “know” the entire truth, but the audience has the advantage of knowing that it does not know. This acceptance of ignorance represents an evolved state of knowledge and is a form of Socratic learning where the process in ongoing and applicable on a personal basis. Barbara Freedman sums this up brilliantly: “In traditional pedagogy, knowledge is cumulative and strengthens the stability of subject positions; the pedagological counter-tradition, however, implies a subject who is constituted by this continual shift in the relation of ignorance and knowledge” (Freedman 175). In the novels discussed, as it is with The Human Stain, It is not a matter of rooting for or against a protagonist whose fate has been established early in the novel; rather, it is accepting Roth’s rhetorical methodology for transcribing the specific lesson within the text surrounding that signifying archetype.

The Greek word prolepsis (anticipation) becomes a critical linguistic term useful in describing many of Roth’s character’s stories. The word is defined as “Speaking of something future as though already done or existing” and is a very apropos description of the narratives of Swede Levov, Ira Ringold, and Coleman Silk (Prolepsis 1). They exist as likeable characters because of their personality traits, strong adherence to a belief system, and Platonic idealism. Through Zuckerman’s eyes, however, they are fated to misery and despair that eclipses the bounds of their own comprehension. Fisk speaks to the concept of prolepsis in the novels, stating that it “functions in these novels to create histories that function as a secular vision of fate. With this temporal inversion, they invite their readers to identify ambivalently with protagonists who have no hope of a happy ending” (Fisk 4). This is especially true for the character of Coleman Silk.

Within Roth’s third novel of the trilogy, and amidst the social commentary on the Clinton white house, Vietnam, and political correctness, the reader discovers almost immediately that the main character has died. In this novel particularly, Roth creates a fictional world in which the tenets of postmodern interpretation dominate. One example is Professor Coleman Silk, who, unknowingly to mostly everyone, is African American. He is reprimanded his use of the word "spooks" in a reference to some missing students. For some, this demonstrated his lack of sensitivity in a world that according to deconstruction, no stable definitions exist. This is where Roth takes issue with some tenets of postmodernism, demonstrating the plight of one man’s downfall in a world he refuses to acquiesce to. The identification issues of Silk as an archetype stem from the lessons of his life as told in retrospect as a Greek tragedy. His character offers us a unique insight into self-awareness, pride, and epistemology; all as strengths and weaknesses. At one point he is called Achilles by Zuckerman, and he himself is cognizant of his own actions regarding the decisions he has made. His pride and commitment to a specific ideal leads him to personal destruction that he remains reticent about, with the exception of the insights provided by Zuckerman. His awareness of the similarities between himself and the classic figures are remarkable. While considering his relationship with his children, his wife’s death, and his resignation, he laments that “he knew...that indignation on such a scale was a form of madness, and one to which he could succumb...He knew from the wrath of Achilles...the many horrors that can ensue when the highest degree of indignation is achieved and...a cycle of retaliation begins” (63). The Achilles analogies are considerable here. One reference informs that his mother Thetis “tried to make her son immortal by dipping him into the River Styx, while holding him by his ankle. His ankle was therefore the only portion of him capable of sustaining a mortal wound” (Gill 1). Coleman can be viewed as one reared by his parents for an existence that would transcend the perceived limitations of his race, one with higher expectations as a learned man strengthened by the filial and cultural precepts needed to succeed, only to have that invulnerability become a weakness by demonstrating it to a culture that is intolerant of such indignation. His refusal to submit to an order he feels superior to, regardless of the human impact, is his weak ankle. The most obvious aspect of universal identification here is the issue of remaining true to the self in spite of the difficulty of that path. Such a concept is as vital here as it was in Hamlet. Another facet of the Achilles metaphor being applied to Coleman Silk is in the abandonment of his true racial identification for personal comfort. He can no longer identify with the black race, yet cannot bring himself to accept the alternative. This is akin to the Greek hero staying in the tent for safety while his army fought a battle he felt they could/should win on their own, saying to his friend Patroclus: “Go, take my armor, my men too, and defend the ships. I cannot go, I am a man dishonored...I will not fight for men who have disgraced me” (Hamilton 196). The irony is that his use of the word “spooks”, and his refusal to recant that term or apologize for the use of it, has ultimately come from a black man himself. The hero abandons his flock only to see them in turn abandon him. The lesson for Coleman and others is that identity can be self-generated, yet still secondary to the ultimate identifiers, such as the Platonic, ultimate singularity of true knowledge; the so called “god view” of Zuckerman. This can be classified as the view of the “other” taking predominance over the projected view of the "one.” The specific details of Coleman Silk’s personal history take a backseat to the perception he generates from the subconscious as the true self, and of the society around him, regardless of intent when using the word “spooks”. Ultimately, regardless of “truth,” he is what he is perceived to be by others, but in that relativity, Roth makes it clear that the hierarchy of character status based on “true” value is in dire need of return to the interpretive cultural landscape.

Roth could be construed as suggesting that the critic logically separate the facets of Platonic, universal identifiers from the predominant Aristotelian view which dictates the reality of the here-and-now as a social construct based on a shared sense of phenomenology. A follower of Derrida argues that acceptance of the temporal understanding of phenomena, i.e., the “now”, is simply a trick of the mind that cannot be separated from the underlying structures that permeate and subjugate the subconscious mind, regardless of intellectual insight or objectivity. This may lead one to misinterpret the interim programming of the surrounding culture as an insight into some universal condition of man’s existence. While this may be true of literary and social interpretation, it can also be said that the human physiological and communal elements of the interpretive process are connected by the evolutionary process and existential-driven primal functions. The interpretive qualities of the surrounding text remain in place as relative signals, but the archetype is viewed as a constant figure whose quest is deciphered by the narrator. In all three books of the trilogy, the protagonist’s dilemma is fighting for a higher power that only they can understand. Roth also uses the books to interpret certain social aspects of the American mythos.

Roth's uses insights into contemporary American systems to comment on the value of postmodern interpretation, both good and bad. He accepts deconstruction's interpretive qualities, specifically by first feigning sentimentality for the world of his youth, then later dismissing the validity of that feeling as a result of information deficiency. In a polemic first eschewing moral and generational relativism, Roth delivers (through an undelivered Zuckerman speech in American Pastoral) a demonstrative message that defines and defends the post-world war two generation. The five page statement is somewhat sentimental in its delivery of what it meant to live in booming industrial times, rich with solidarity, familiarity, and inspiration. The speech is an attempt by Zuckerman to identify what was once great, and now missing from American culture, specifically, the community as it existed as a cultural bonding agent during the post war generation. Speaking of the neighborhood, he asks; “Am I wrong to think that we delighted in living there?”(42). He describes how identification came naturally, and meaning was stable. They took comfort in knowing the details of each other’s environments; “the house, every floor of every house- the walls, ceilings, doors, and windows of every last friend’s family apartment-came to be...individualized” (43). Personal identification issues are no less readily available as he continues; “we knew who had what kind of lunch...and who ordered what kind of hot dog/ we knew...who walked pigeon-toed and who had breasts/ we knew who was belligerent and who was friendly” (43).  About forty pages later, Zuckerman is informed that during this same period he is reflecting about, his would-be girlfriend had several personal issues that were unknown to the neighborhood, which led to certain generalizations about her by others in regards to her reclusiveness. Joy tells him at the reunion that her father’s death and how her brother Harold “slept in the kitchen” and that “I didn’t want you to be my boyfriend and come pick me up and see where my brother slept, I didn’t want anybody to know [about that]” (84). This form of insight reinforces the poststructuralist view of historical and political revision through exploring various viewpoints. He seems to this exploration of nostalgia’s good and bad features.

The glorious times that Zuckerman recounts in the Pastoral speech, and the boxing days of young Coleman Silk, are always occurring in the period immediately after the Second World War. These are the very times Ira Ringold sees as an opportunity for the labor force to unite under communist undertakings. The separation of industry and labor is a key element in the various books of the trilogy, for it is an integral part of Zuckerman’s yarn-spinning in relation to cultural shifts. Ringold represents the Marxist archetype, peppered with Zuckerman’s unique insight into the liberal, blue collar, Jewish, world of his native New Jersey. Zuckerman, through his Diegesis, recounts Ira’s doomed plight in the changing American fifties. Roth must associate these newer values into the modern society based on the shifts in cultural values since the Second World War. Ira Ringold is faced with the fact that socialism will never be utilized as a practical form of government, but his passion and feelings are examples of a “lost generation” which Roth recognizes as superior in spirit to the postmodern world spoiled by Vietnam, government mistrust, and later apathy. Lou Levov (Swede’s father) sees a world deteriorating from the post-war glory to one in which black and white are relative terms. During the final scene at the barbeque, Lou laments the change in child-rearing, societal tolerance of former taboos, and morality in general, specifically when confronted by the newer, more radical character of Marcia Umanoff, who states that “kids today have learned to take [these things]...in stride”. He counters that “degrading things should not be taken in their stride! ...I remember when kids used to be at home doing their homework and not out seeing movies like this [Deep Throat]” (358). Roth treats Lou with sympathy, but literally sticks a fork in him- sending the message that those interpretive measures were not universal, but Lou’s alone.

Ultimately, it is Roth’s valuing of knowledge that substantiates the claim that not all positions are equally valid. There are numerous dialogues where Roth identifies with the American stereotype of the Jewish liberal; sympathetic to the working man, but valuing “advanced degrees” (American Pastoral 3). Our interpretation of his mythological representations invariably returns to this basic, universal truth; we are to learn that there are those that know, and those who do not. Here again is the Socratic method of learning. This method is recognized by sociologists as the dominant form of cultural separation that is to come (supplanting the identifiers of industrial ownership and labor). Grusky and Sorensen agree that “The dominant form of revisionism, at least within the American sociology, rests on the claim that long standing cleavages of class, occupation, and status are giving way to new ones generated in institutional areas (schools, e.g.) (Grusky, Sorenson1188). Coleman Silk’s sister, Ernestine illuminates her take on epistemology in the postmodern era; “Reading the classics is too difficult, therefore it’s the classics that are to blame. Today the student asserts his incapacity as a privilege. I can’t learn it, so there’s something wrong with it” (331).  Maximilian Pakaluk's online NRO critique of Michael Berube's “What's Liberal About the Liberal Arts?” demonstrates that the fictional Ernestine is not alone in questioning the tolerant and interpretive methods of higher learning, offering the consevative’s criticism which; “skewers postmodernism and relativism, warns of falling standards, and bemoans the neglect and butchering of classic texts” (Pakaluk 1).  Regardless of these opinions, the literary practice of deconstruction has intertwined with epistemological functions to the point of being made an eternal facet within the knowledge-acquiring structures, therefore, seeking to eradicate the essence of the philosophy with some new form of critical practice, one that would act as an caustic agent, is both unfeasible and uninventive.   

Although Roth seems to detest political correctness, there are substantially notable counter-offerings that at the very least support the validity and/or dominance of the post-structuralist position in the contemporary American culture. Neither Roth, nor Zuckerman, try to elevate the modernist period over the postmodern with mere sap and nostalgia, but present an honest collection of stories that can be interpreted by various means and deliver a protagonist the reader can identify with. Larry Schwartz voices a reliable appraisal of American Pastoral, stating that: “[It] can be read as generically advertised ...a story of Arcadian bliss into which the serpent inexorably creeps. It can be read as an American Book of Job, a story of undeserved suffering and the fickleness of fate” (Schwartz 9). The narratives are not meant to be sentimental lamentations about the absence of singular, conservative persuasions, but learning methodologies. Like representation of epideictic rhetoric, they provide an atmosphere in which a sense of we is created, one in which the heroes are doomed, but right, identifiable, yet unable to self-identify. Roth uses the main characters as identifiers to a larger, unprocurable argument for universal categorization. The reader associates with the story teller’s narrative, and the shared sense of social designation leads to a sympathetic leaning to the “others” when they suffer through undeserved tragedies, whether big or small. This effect counters the relativization of all experience as offered by Derrida and other post-structuralists. The tools of deconstruction can be applied to the meaning-seeking critic as a means of furthering the investigative process into the protagonist’s world, but the narrator’s moral story should be accepted as a more “set” aspect of the work. This consists of a separation of value identification, hierarchy, and interpretive methodology of meaning-seeking. Roth insinuates that through learning focused on traditional substance, and not facilitated as aspects of relative achievement, one can rise above the fray of constant revision. What is right, true, and universally acceptable, is left in the hands of the capable. In other words, the hero, or one recognized as a system changer, is a manifestation of the archetypes that can be learned from, or used in reflection of the themes of the larger textual context. It is as if Roth contends that some aspects of the postmodern dismantling of the social strata have gone too far, and although the tools may be valid, the boundless aspects of relativism as an interpretive process do not allow for any positivism whatsoever. He makes it understood that deconstruction as an interpretive measure is valid, but that transcendent figures can exist within those worlds, and, like dots, be connected with ideas long established in the human and American psyche, softening the blow of the nihilistic underpinnings of deconstruction. Roth makes a distinction between the establishment of a universal character, and simple perception by the typical observer. He especially uses specific meta-narratives that comment on the weakening condition of the learning process in general. Perhaps there is no way to ever legitimately provide literary or cultural criticism without using deconstructive methods, but the inclusion of the universal archetype as a instructing transcendent signifier will allow for a additional alternative to the analytical process. In this way the reader is taught a lesson that transcends the boundaries of the novel’s time and space, as well as the dramatic specifics to the characters’ plights in the plot. The archetype becomes a function of the reader’s interpretive abilities; a quasi-rhetorical figure that surpasses the ambiguity of either the author’s intent or the social relativization. The archetypes of ancient Greek, Roman, or religious mythology are not the identification sources as much as they are the first manifested interpretations of the original concepts of the universal human condition as an epistemological tool. Therefore, it can be surmised that regardless of the various interpretive aspects of the human condition, a transcendent signifier originates from the primal attributes that make the relative insight or background of the individual critic irrelevant when related to the theory of learning itself. If not, then Darwinian evolution is wrong and those that learn would have no advantage over those who did not.

Works Cited

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     Anchor-Random House, 1991.

Fisk, Gloria. Tragic Knowledge in Postmodern Novels. Diss. C.U.N.Y., 2003.

Freedman Barbara. “Pedagogy, Psychoanalysis, Theatre: Interrogating the Scene of Learning.”

     Shakespeare Quarterly, 41, 2 (1990): 174-186.

About.Com: Ancient History. "Achilles and the Trojan War.”  Ed. N.S. Gill.

     <http://ancienthistory.about.com/cs/achilles/g/Achilles.htm>. 1 Mar 2008.

Grusky, David B. and Sorensen, Jesper B. “Can Class Analysis be Salvaged?” The

American Journal of Sociology. 103, 5. 1998.

Hamilton, Edith. Mythology-Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes. New York: Warner Books,  

     1942. 352.

Nietzsche, Frederick. The Will to Power. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Random House,

     1967.

Pakaluk, Maximilian. “Typical Lib: Michael Bérubé Doesn’t Teach the Lesson he Intends.”

     National Review Online. Rev of What’s Liberal About the Liberal Arts? , by Michael Bérubé.  

     New York: WW Norton and Company, 2006. <

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MTlmY2QwMGU0YWU3OGYxOWQ1ODllNzcyYzUxNWUzYzI=#more> 6 Mar 2008.

“Prolepsis”: Rhetorical Figures. Silva Rhetoricae: The Forest of Rhetoric. Ed. Gideon Burton

     <http://rhetoric.byu.edu/.> 1 March 2008.

Roth, Phillip. American Pastoral. New York: Vintage Books, 1997.

- - -. I Married a Communist. New York: Vintage Books, 1999.

- - -. The Human Stain. New York: Vintage Books, 2000.

Royal, Derek Parker. “Plotting the Frames of Subjectivity: Identity, Death, and Narrative in   

     Philip Roth's The Human Stain.” Contemporary Literature 47, 1 (2006): 114-140.


Schwartz, Larry. “Roth, Race, and Newark.” Cultural Logic: An Electronic Journal of

     Marxist Theory and Practice. 2006 < http://clogic.eserver.org/2005/schwartz.html>. 27

     Feb 2008.


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