American Pastoral

“Or was a book about a sweet star savagely and unjustly punished—a book about a greatly gifted innocent whose worst fault is a tendency to keep his right shoulder down and swing up but whom the thundering heavens destroy nonetheless—simply a book between those ‘Thinker’ book ends up on his shelf?”

Roth ponders a great many questions in American Pastoral, and he foreshadows one of the biggest right at the beginning. Using a young adult novel, The Kid From Tompkinsville, as a metaphor for the Swede’s life, he wonders if there is some cosmic rationale behind the Swede’s great tragedy or if everything is random. It’s an unanswerable question but one that humans, in their quest to understand their own lives, cannot stop themselves from asking.

“The Swede returned home in 47 […] at twenty unencumbered by a Gentile wife and all the more glamorously heroic for having made his mark as a Jewish marine.”

All the Swede’s heroics—from his feats on the athletic field to his military service—are prefaced by his Judaism. In literary terms, the Swede is a tragic hero, and Zuckerman thus holds him to a higher standard than other people. His task is to transcend, on behalf of his whole community, the discrimination they face for their Jewish identity. By withstanding the brutal training of Parris Island, lettering in three sports, and marrying a Gentile beauty queen, the Swede proves to himself and his community that they can break free of the limitations that have been imposed on them.